n the
Romance or Provencal--the earliest of the modern classical languages,
the language of the troubadours--though now only spoken as a _patois_
in Dauphiny, Piedmont, Sardinia, the north of Spain, and the Balearic
Isles.[93]

[Footnote 93: Sismondi, "Litterature du Midi de l'Europe," i.
159.]

If the age counts for anything, the Vaudois are justified in their
claim to be considered one of the oldest churches in Europe. Long
before the conquest of England by the Normans, before the time of
Wallace and Bruce in Scotland, before England had planted its foot in
Ireland, the Vaudois Church existed. Their remoteness, their poverty,
and their comparative unimportance as a people, for a long time
protected them from interference; and for centuries they remained
unnoticed by Rome. But as the Western Church extended its power, it
became insatiable for uniformity. It would not tolerate the
independence which characterized the early churches, but aimed at
subjecting them to the exclusive authority of Rome.

The Vaudois, however, persisted in repudiating the doctrines and
formularies of the Pope. When argument failed, the Church called the
secular arm to its aid, and then began a series of persecutions,
extending over several centuries, which, for brutality and ferocity,
are probably unexampled in history. To crush this unoffending but
faithful people, Rome employed her most irrefragable arguments--the
curses of Lucius and the horrible cruelties of Innocent--and the
"Vicar of Christ" bathed the banner of the Cross in a carnage from
which the wolves of Romulus and the eagles of Caesar would have turned
with loathing.

Long before the period of the Reformation, the Vaudois valleys were
ravaged by fire and sword because of the alleged heresy of the people.
Luther was not born until 1483; whereas nearly four centuries before,
the Vaudois were stigmatized as heretics by Rome. As early as 1096, we
find Pope Urban II. describing Val Louise, one of the Dauphiny
valleys--then called Vallis Gyrontana, from the torrent of Gyr, which
flows through it--as "infested with heresy." In 1179, hot persecution
raged all over Dauphiny, extending to the Albigeois of the South of
France, as far as Lyons and Toulouse; one of the first martyrs being
Pierre Waldo, or Waldensis,[94] of Lyons, who was executed for heresy
by the Archbishop of Lyons in 1180.

[Footnote 94: It has been surmised by some writers that the