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'They go about two by two, barefoot, clad in woollen garments, owning nothing, holding all things common like the apostles, naked, following a naked Christ. They are making their first moves now in the humblest manner because they cannot launch an attack. If we admit them, we shall be driven out.' So wrote twelfth-century churchman Walter Map in response to the early Waldensians. His words illustrate how eager were the late medieval 'heretics' to experience in their own time the vitality of the earliest Christians. They show too that members of the medieval religious establishment could feel severely threatened by attempts radically to renew the church. In the late Middle Ages there were three major movements which shared that goal: the Waldensians, the Lollards and the Czech Brethren. These movements differed in various ways, but they had significant similarities. Each of them reacted against a church which through wealth, privilege and power had moved far from the teachings of Jesus and the dynamic simplicity of the early Christians. Each of them emphasized preaching from a Bible in the language of the people. Each of them owed its strength to the dedicated involvement of laymen and laywomen. And despite the fact that in every case the church responded by Inquisition and burning, each of these movements survived into the sixteenth century to encounter the Reformation.

The Waldensians were first on the scene. This movement began in the 1170s with the conversion of a prominent merchant from Lyons named Valdes. (His precise dates are unknown but he died before 1218). Valdes was moved by a minstrel's recounting of the story ofSt Alexis, who had left his patrician Roman parents to live a life of apostolic poverty. He went for counsel to a theologian, who shared with him Jesus' words to the rich young man: 'If you want to be perfect, go sell what you have.' Having made provision for his wife and daughters, Valdes- like Zacchaeus, the tax collector in the Gospel story - made restitution to those from whom he had made unjust profits. He commissioned two priests to translate major portions of the Bible and the Church Fathers from Latin into the Provencal dialect, and then proceeded to study and memorize these. Joyfully he gave to the poor all his remaining property, and began to travel on foot. His watchword was, 'No man can serve two masters!'

From the outset people warmed to Valdes' attractive preaching and lifestyle. Soon some of them, both men and women, were leaving their security and joining him. Their commitment was to spread the gospel in their native tongue, to identify with the poor by becoming poor themselves, and to take the teachings of Jesus - which had often been viewed as optional advice for the holy or eccentrics -as the rule of life for all Christians.

Valdes' hope was that the preaching and example of his itinerant followers (the 'Poor in Spirit') would be a spur to the renewal of the whole church. At first some churchmen, including Pope Alexander III, gave them cautious encouragement. But within a decade the bishops had forbidden them to preach. They persisted, quoting Peter and John's words in Acts: 'We must obey God rather than men'. And so they were banished from Lyons. For the next 300 years they were to be on the run, at times persecuted severely. Nevertheless, the movement spread. Inspired by the story of Jesus commissioning the Twelve, Waldensian evangelists preached throughout southern France and established a network of sympathizers extending as far north as Alsace and the Netherlands. They also found a ready audience in northern Italy, where for some time already dissident religious groups had been gaining strength. The Italian Waldensians (the 'Poor Lombards') soon asserted independence of their French brothers (the 'Poor Lyonists'), for they were developing distinctive features of their own. Their concern was not only to travel and preach. They worked to nurture the ordered life of Christian community, based on the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. Their style was more organized and less spontaneous than their French brothers and sisters. But the Italians also evangelized. By 1211 their community in Strasbourg was strong enough spiritually and numerically to produce eighty martyrs And soon there were other Waldensian communities of the Italian connection as far north-east as Moravia and as far south as the heel of Italy.

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