The Waldensians began with a merchant who gave away his wealth to preach, three hundred years before Luther.
Reformed1173 / 1532grew out of Catholic Church
Valdes, a merchant of Lyon, gave away his goods around 1173 and set out to preach the Gospel in the people's language; his followers were excommunicated in 1184 and survived for three centuries in the Alpine valleys of Piedmont. In 1532, at Chanforan, they joined the Reformed movement and paid for Olivétan's French Bible of 1535. Massacred in 1655 (Milton's sonnet is about them), granted civil rights in 1848, they are Italy's historic Protestant church, united with the Methodists since 1975.
The Waldensians began as a medieval Christian movement and joined the Protestant Reformation in 1532 11. The movement began with a rich man in Lyon who gave his money away in about 1173 so that he could preach, and the church he started is still meeting, largely in the same Alpine valleys it was driven into 4,5.
Valdes, known in English as Peter Waldo, was a wealthy clothier and merchant of Lyon and a man of some learning. Before he gave anything away he paid clerics to translate the New Testament into the everyday speech of the region, the Franco-Provencal, an important step in his preaching work 5,4. He then disposed of his property, preached apostolic poverty, and gathered followers who were called the Poor of Lyon and the Poor of Lombardy 4. In 1179 he and a disciple went to Rome, where Pope Alexander III and the curia received them and had them explain themselves to a panel of three clergymen, on the universal priesthood, the gospel in the common tongue, and voluntary poverty. Nothing was settled. The Third Lateran Council condemned Waldo's ideas that year without condemning the movement, and its leaders were not yet excommunicated 4.
They went on preaching anyway, and that was the whole quarrel. In 1184, at the Synod of Verona under Pope Lucius III, Waldo and his followers were excommunicated and put out of Lyon 4. The stated fault was never apostolic poverty, which the Franciscans preached too and were praised for. It was that these people would not accept the local bishop's authority over what they preached, nor the rules about who was fit to preach at all 4. By 1215 the church had formally condemned them for heresy. Innocent III offered a way back and many took it, becoming the Poor Catholics; many did not, and were hunted for the next four hundred years 4.
What they built to survive was a system rather than an institution. Preachers moved from town to town, met small groups in secret, heard confession and held a service, then were passed on to the next town by the households that had sheltered them. A travelling Waldensian preacher was called a barba 4. Waldo himself was never captured, and where and when he died is not known 4. Almost everything anyone knows about their medieval beliefs comes from the records of the church that was condemning them, which is a real limit on what can honestly be said 4. Their own long poem in Old Occitan, La nobla leyczon, survives in four manuscripts, two at Cambridge, one at Trinity College Dublin and one in Geneva 4.
In 1532 the Reformed churches of Switzerland and France sent Guillaume Farel and Antoine Saunier over the mountains to a meeting at Chanforan, and the Waldensians formally joined the Reformation, adopting Reformed theology and revising some of their older positions, among them their refusal to recognise secular courts 4. After three and a half centuries alone they had allies, and they needed them. In Provence, Francis I issued the Arret de Merindol against them in 1545 4. In the Duchy of Savoy the Edict of 15 May 1650 stripped away privileges of conscience the valleys had held for generations, and the Edict of 25 January 1655 ordered every Protestant family out of a list of named towns within three days, on pain of death and confiscation, unless they turned Catholic 6.
They refused, and more than fifteen thousand soldiers were quartered on the valleys. On 24 April 1655 the killing began, and estimates of the dead run from more than a thousand to six thousand 6. Protestant Europe was appalled. Oliver Cromwell threatened Savoy with intervention, and John Milton wrote the sonnet that begins, Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold 6,7. A peace, the Pinerolo Declaration of Mercy, followed on 18 August 6. Thirty years later Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and the Waldensians were driven out of their valleys altogether. In August 1689 their pastor Henri Arnaud led about a thousand exiles back over the mountains, armed with weapons the Dutch had supplied, in what is remembered as the Glorious Return. Cornered on the peak of the Balsiglia with three hundred left, facing four thousand French troops with cannon, they were saved when a storm and then thick cloud delayed the final assault, and the Duke of Savoy changed sides and agreed to defend them 4.
Legal freedom came in 1848, when Charles Albert of Sardinia granted them civil rights, and the church spread out of the valleys and through the Italian peninsula, opening elementary schools that were open to everyone and running charitable work wherever it went 4,1. Their own summary of those six centuries is four words long: harshly persecuted, they survived 1. In the Second World War, when northern Italy was under Nazi occupation, Waldensians hid Jews from extermination in the same mountain valleys where their own ancestors had taken refuge 4.
The church introduces itself in one sentence: we are a Christian church, a community of believers in Jesus Christ, united in listening to the Gospel and sharing in the sacraments 1.
It describes its own beginning the same plain way. The Waldensians arose in the Middle Ages as a movement calling the whole church back to the simplicity of the Gospel and letting laypeople preach; their preachers never wanted to be enrolled in a monastic order, and always lived among ordinary people 1. That is the thread that runs from Valdes to the present, and it explains why the movement was tolerated as long as it was quiet and condemned the moment it would not ask permission.
What the medieval Waldensians believed has to be said carefully, because the surviving accounts were mostly written by their prosecutors 4. They held the Trinity, and the earliest of them defended the real presence in the eucharist and the need of a priest to offer the Mass, while denying that a sinful priest had the right to give it; later some moved towards a more symbolic view of the bread and wine 4. They kept the forty-day fast of Lent and abstained on Fridays. They rejected confession to priests, the veneration of saints, oaths, secular courts and prayers for the dead 4. They held that temporal office and dignity were not for preachers of the Gospel, that relics were bones like any other bones, that pilgrimage served only to spend a person's money, that holy water was no better than rain water, and that a prayer said in a barn was as good as one said in a church 4. Modern scholars are cautious about calling them proto-Protestants: they may have held something like Scripture alone, but they did not hold justification by faith alone in the sense the sixteenth century meant it 4.
Since 1532 the church has been Reformed in theology and presbyterian in government, and it belongs to the World Communion of Reformed Churches 9,4. Since 1975 it has lived in a covenant of communion, collaboration and sharing with the Methodist church in Italy, and the two hold a single synod 1,10. The church states what it works at in its own words: ecumenism and the search for fellowship between Christians of different churches, the welcome of immigrants and refugees, the fight against racism and discrimination, peace, the sharing of food, water, education, justice, work and health among all human beings, and climate change 1.
Worship and practice
A Waldensian service is Reformed and plain. Scripture read and preached, singing, prayer, and the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which the church names as the things it is gathered around 1.
Government is by elected bodies rather than by bishops. Pastors serve alongside elders and deacons in each congregation, and the church as a whole is directed by the Tavola valdese, whose moderator is elected by the joint synod of the Methodist and Waldensian churches; the synod of August 2026 elected pastor William Jourdan, aged 44 1,2. For most of the church's history the characteristic minister was not a pastor at all but the barba, a travelling lay preacher who arrived on foot, stayed hidden, and moved on 4.
The most unusual thing about Waldensian life now is where the money comes from. Italian taxpayers assign eight parts in every thousand of their income tax to a recognised religious body or to a state welfare scheme. The Waldensian church has roughly 25,000 enrolled members, and more than 600,000 Italians choose to send their share to it, to support the community and its charitable works 4. The church marked thirty-five years of the Waldensian otto per mille in 2026 2. Support through this system extends beyond the church's enrolled membership.
Scripture and Bible translations
Everything here begins with a translation. Before Valdes gave away a coin he commissioned clerics of Lyon to put the New Testament into the language people around him actually spoke, and the whole subsequent history of this church, the preaching, the excommunication, the centuries in hiding, follows from his deciding that ordinary people should be able to hear it 5,4.
For three hundred years the barba carried and memorised Scripture in country where owning it in the vernacular could cost a person their life, and the church's own surviving medieval book, La nobla leyczon, is a long poem in Old Occitan 4. After joining the Reformation at Chanforan, the Waldensians participated in wider efforts to translate Scripture: within three years Pierre Robert Olivetan, a cousin of John Calvin, published at Neuchatel the first French Bible translated from Hebrew and Greek rather than from Latin, with a Latin preface by Calvin. It is reckoned the first French Protestant Bible 8.
Italian congregations read the Bible in Italian, and the Riveduta of 1927 is on this site for anyone who wants it in that language. The verses below are given in the Berean Standard Bible, plain modern English, which is in the spirit of a church whose first act was to have the New Testament put into whatever people spoke at home.
Documented use
The PC(USA) store publishes and sells NRSV pew and study Bibles, evidence of institutional availability rather than a universal rule. The PCA, OPC and other conservative Reformed bodies generally prescribe no single version; the ESV, NIV, NKJV and NASB are encountered in their congregations. Dutch Reformed churches historically read the Statenvertaling of 1637.
Heritage
The Geneva Bible of 1560, made in Calvin's Geneva, was the Bible of the Scottish Reformation and of the Pilgrims.
Waldensian
Italy's Waldensian church, Reformed since 1532 and older than the Reformation itself, reads the Nuova Riveduta, the current revision of Diodati's Italian Bible; the Riveduta of 1927, made under the Waldensian scholar Giovanni Luzzi, is here.
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”
Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor. A merchant of Lyon read this in about 1173, did it, and started a church that is still here.
But Peter and the other apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men.
We must obey God rather than men. The Waldensians were excommunicated in 1184 not for what they taught but for preaching without permission, which makes this the verse the whole quarrel turned on.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Eight centuries of a very small church saying so.
People
Valdes of Lyonabout 1140 to about 1205 A wealthy cloth merchant who paid to have the New Testament translated into the speech of his region, gave away his property, and began preaching poverty. He was excommunicated in 1184, never captured, and no one knows where he died.5
The barbathe travelling preachers, twelfth century onward Waldensian preachers who went from town to town in pairs, met small groups in secret, heard confession and held services, and were passed on by the households that hid them. The word means uncle. For three centuries they were the church.4
Pierre Robert Olivetanabout 1506 to 1538 Cousin of John Calvin and translator of the first French Bible made from Hebrew and Greek rather than from Latin, published at Neuchatel in 1535 with a Latin preface by Calvin, three years after the Waldensians joined the Reformation.8
The Waldensians of the valleyskilled from 24 April 1655 The families of Lucerna, Angrogna, Bobbio and the other valley towns who refused an order to leave their homes or convert, and were killed by ducal troops. Estimates of the dead run from more than a thousand to six thousand.6
Henri Arnaud1641 to 1721 Pastor and leader who took his exiled people back over the Alps in August 1689, the Glorious Return, and held out on the Balsiglia with three hundred men until weather and a change of alliance saved them.4
William Jourdanmoderator from 2026 Pastor, elected moderator of the Tavola valdese at the joint synod of the Methodist and Waldensian churches in August 2026, at the age of forty-four.2
Today
The Union of Methodist and Waldensian Churches, formed in 1975, reports 50,000 members: 45,000 Waldensians, of whom about 30,000 are in Italy and some 15,000 divided between Argentina and Uruguay, and 5,000 Methodists 10. The Waldensian Evangelical Church within it counts 170 congregations in Italy and seven in Switzerland, with about 25,000 members 9. The South American half of the church is not a mission but a migration: emigration to Argentina and Uruguay began about ten years after the grant of civil rights, and a substantial part of the world's Waldensians has lived there ever since 1. In North America the American Waldensian Society keeps the connection, and congregations descended from the nineteenth-century emigration survive under the name Waldensian Presbyterian Church 3,4.
The church that condemned them has spoken. In 2015, after visiting the Waldensian temple in Turin, Pope Francis asked Waldensian Christians for forgiveness, in the name of the Catholic Church, for their persecution 4,9. It was the first time in more than eight hundred years that the request had been made.
The church remains very small and unusually visible. It runs schools, hospitals and social work far out of proportion to its size, funded by hundreds of thousands of Italians who are not its members, and it has spent its whole existence being the minority in a Catholic country without becoming bitter about it. A body that was condemned in 1184 for preaching without permission has ended up as the church a great many Italians trust with their giving.
Words to know
excommunication
Being formally cut off from a church, so that one may no longer receive its sacraments. Luther was excommunicated in 1521.
Reformation
The movement that began with Martin Luther in 1517 to reform the Western Church, and that produced the Protestant churches.
sacrament
A sacred act Christians believe carries God's grace, such as baptism and communion. Traditions count and understand them differently.
synod
A church assembly that governs or advises; also the name of some Lutheran and Reformed church bodies.
confession
In the Reformation churches, a written statement of what a church believes, such as the Augsburg Confession. In Catholic and Orthodox use, also the sacrament of telling one's sins to a priest.
martyr
Someone killed for refusing to give up their faith. The word means witness. The early Church honoured its martyrs and kept the days of their deaths.
justification
How a person is made right with God. Luther's teaching that this happens by faith alone, as a gift, was the heart of the Reformation.
liturgy
The set form of a service: its prayers, readings and actions in their usual order. The Orthodox call their main service the Divine Liturgy.
Lent
The forty days of fasting and prayer before Easter, modelled on Jesus' forty days in the wilderness, kept from Ash Wednesday in the West and from Clean Monday in the East; it ends in Holy Week.
How can a Protestant church be older than the Reformation?
Because it was not Protestant when it started. The Waldensians began about 1173 as a movement inside the Western church that wanted apostolic poverty and lay preaching, and they were excommunicated in 1184 for preaching without the bishop's licence rather than for a doctrine 4. They survived on their own for three and a half centuries. In 1532, at Chanforan, they formally joined the Reformation and took Reformed theology, which is what makes them Protestant now and also the oldest Protestant church there is 4.
Who was Peter Waldo?
A rich cloth merchant of Lyon, known in his own language as Valdes, who commissioned a translation of the New Testament into the common speech, gave his property away, and began preaching about 1173 5. Historians place the founding somewhere between 1170 and 1177. He was excommunicated in 1184, was never caught, and the place and date of his death are unknown 4,5.
What is a barba?
A travelling Waldensian preacher. The word means uncle. They went in pairs, arrived quietly, met small groups in houses, heard confession, held a service, and were moved on in secret by the families who had sheltered them, at considerable risk to those families 4. For the three centuries between the excommunication and the Reformation, this was how the church existed at all.
Why do so many Italians give the Waldensians their church tax?
Italians can assign eight parts in a thousand of their income tax to a recognised religious body or to a state scheme. The Waldensian church has around 25,000 enrolled members, and more than 600,000 taxpayers direct their share to it, because of what it does with the money: schools, hospitals, refugee work and other charitable projects rather than clergy salaries 4. It is the clearest measure of the standing this very small church has in Italy.
Were the Waldensians secretly around since the apostles?
No, and their own historians say so. Various writers from the seventeenth century onward, and later some Baptist and Adventist authors, argued that the Waldensians were a surviving apostolic church that had never been Catholic, and a confession of faith was dated to 1120 to support that. Current Waldensian historiography holds that the confession was in fact drafted in 1531, and very early origins are no longer accepted by scholars in the field 4. The real story is remarkable enough without it.
Sources
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Waldensians: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/waldensian/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-08; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
Found something wrong? Send it through the contact page. A correction checked against two sources is made within a week and logged in this page's change history.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Written of Christ, and taken personally by a church that spent four hundred years being hunted in the mountains and is still holding services there.
