ed shepherds, who in the
valleys of the Alps had shaken off, or perhaps never learned, the system
of superstition on which the Catholic church depended for its ascendency.
I am not certain whether their existence can be distinctly traced beyond
the preaching of Waldo, but it is well known that the proper seat of the
Waldenses or Vaudois has long continued to be in certain valleys of
Piedmont. These pious and innocent sectaries, of whom the very monkish
historians speak well, appear to have nearly resembled the modern
Moravians. They had ministers of their own appointment, and denied the
lawfulness of oaths and of capital punishment. In other respects their
opinions probably were not far removed from those usually called
Protestant. A simplicity of dress, and especially the use of wooden
sandals, was affected by this people.[747]

I have already had occasion to relate the severe persecution which
nearly exterminated the Albigenses of Languedoc at the close of the
twelfth century, and involved the counts of Toulouse in their ruin. The
Catharists, a fraternity of the same Paulician origin, more dispersed
than the Albigenses, had previously sustained a similar trial. Their
belief was certainly a compound of strange errors with truth; but it was
attended by qualities of a far superior lustre to orthodoxy, by a
sincerity, a piety, and a self-devotion that almost purified the age in
which they lived.[748] It is always important to perceive that these
high moral excellences have no necessary connexion with speculative
truths; and upon this account I have been more disposed to state
explicitly the real Manicheism of the Albigenses; especially as
Protestant writers, considering all the enemies of Rome as their
friends, have been apt to place the opinions of these sectaries in a
very false light. In the course of time, undoubtedly, the system of
their Paulician teachers would have yielded, if the inquisitors had
admitted the experiment, to a more accurate study of the Scriptures, and
to the knowledge which they would have imbibed from the church itself.
And, in fact, we find that the peculiar tenets of Manicheism died away
after the middle of the thirteenth century, although a spirit of dissent
from the established creed broke out in abundant instances during the
two subsequent ages.

We are in general deprived of explicit testimonies in tracing the
revolutions of popular opinion. Much must therefore be left to
conjecture; but I