Light in the Dark Ages

The history of Third Stream Christian groups from Constantine to the Reformation is one that has attracted renewed interest in recent years.

There is increasing evidence that Europe during these centuries contained many such churches and that it is only the difficulty in accessing the original archive material that has contributed towards the view that there was little evangelical witness in the centuries before Luther.

The following samples give a hint of the depth of evangelical spiritual life that existed, not only among individuals but among whole congregations in the centuries traditionally known as the Dark Ages:

• In his Sermons Against Heretics, Eckbert of Schonau condemns those "weavers...who say that the true service of Christ and the true faith are to be found nowhere but in their conventicles, which they hold in cellers and weaving establishments and similar subterranean places."

• Pope Innocent III addressed a gathering of bishops in the city of Metz in 1199 when he related the following:

"Our brother the bishop of Metz tells us that in his diocese and in your city a great many lay-folk, both men and women,...have had French translations made of the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, the Psalms...which they read together and preach from in their clandestine conventicles....resisting to their face the priests who would instruct them, arguing that they find in their books much better instruction."

• Before and during the Reformation, the "Christian Brethren" held regular meetings to celebrate the Lord's Supper with a full meal in the weavers' guild house in Saint Gall, Switzerland.

• In Brugge, in 1349, "a sect came up called the Cross-brothers....they did not adore the holy sacrament as it was raised aloft at the mass, nor did they show reverence to the priesthood....many were in the ban of the pope because of the Cross-brothers and the Lollards, persons who had fed them or had conversed with them."

• In 1145, reports of what appears to be a fully functioning evangelical church emerge from the city of Liege:

"In this heresy...they say that in baptism sins are not remitted; they consider the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ to be foolishness; that by the imposition of the pontiff's hand nothing is conferred; that no-one receives the Holy Spirit unless good works are in evidence."

• A century before the Reformation, the Dean of Notre Dame in Arras claimed that, "one third of Christendom if not more has attended illicit Waldensian conventicles and is at heart Waldensian."

All of the above are referenced in Leornard Verduin's illuminating work, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Dissent and Nonconformity)

Sticks not Swords

When the third stream Christian groups of the late medieval period were emerging alongside the Reformers, one issue that divided them was on the use of force or coercion in religious matters.

Many of the groups described as heretics by the Catholics and, later, by the Reformers themselves, were distinguished by their insistence that the church was a voluntary body and that the state had no role in forcing people to attend or join.

As a mark of this belief - which was fiercely denounced by many of the main Protestant Reformers - some of these "heretical" groups carried a badge or symbol - namely a simple wooden staff similar to that used by shepherds, in distinction to the sword carried by the magistrate.

So common was this practice that some of these Bible-believing groups of Christians became labelled as Stabler - literally "staff carriers".

At a hearing in 1590 held to investigate whether Anabaptist groups were meeting in a particular area, a witness gave evidence of such groups by recounting that "he had met them often enough when with their little staff they were on their way to their preachings or whatever it is they do."

The practice of staff-carrying was reported among the Waldensians and the Bohemian Brethren as a mark of the conviction that the sword is not a proper weapon in the hands of a follower of Christ. The practice is also recorded among Celtic Christians in Ireland whose gambutta was carried to differentiate them from the Catholic priests.

As early as the fourth century, the Donatists were known for carrying their Azael (meaning strength of God) to consciously contrast themselves with those who were embracing the policy of an official state church on the back of the Constantinian reforms.

The staff or stick symbolised one of the distinguishing features of third stream Christian groups. While some were pacifists, many were not. What they shared, however, was a common vision of the church comprising believers, rather than the church consisting of everyone in a geographical area - the Constantinian idea of the official state church.

The Waldensians Come to Rome

Having completed my post on the Waldenses, I stumbled upon an illuminating quotation a few days later. The quote is an aside in Rodney Stark's fascinating book The Rise of Christianity.

The year is 1179 and Walter Map (a Catholic writer) is in Rome. He witnesses the arrival in the City of a group of itinerant Waldensians, who for some reason had traveled from their Alpine homes to Rome. His observation was as follows:

"They go about two by two, barefoot, clad in woolen garments, owning nothing, holding all things in common like the Apostles ... If we admit them, we shall be driven out."

Reformed Before Calvin - an Overview of the Waldenses

Also known as the Waldensians and, confused by some writers with the medieval Albigenses (more on them elsewhere), the Waldenses have traditionally claimed to owe their origins to an unbroken line of apostolic Christianity without coming under the influence of Roman Catholicism. Members and churches survived in the remote Alpine regions of Switzerland and northern Italy throughout the Dark Ages and Medieval period.

Acknowledging the influence of leaders such as Peter Waldo and Arnold of Bresci, core values of these groups included an emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount, the necessity of Christ-like character in church leaders and a broadly evangelical doctrine of salvation/justification. In this sense, they were "reformed" before the Reformers, though as stated, their view was that their churches were not in need of doctrinal reform as they had not deviated from the apostolic tradition over the centuries. Having said that, they did make contact with the Reformed Church in Geneva in the C16 and adopted the Geneva Confession of faith in 1532.

With largely itinerant leaders, the Waldenses exerted an influence out of proportion to their numbers. Rejecting Catholic practices that they could not see clearly in the Bible, the groups were anti-hierarchal and rejected the use of images of the saints and the veneration of Mary.

Suffering repeated waves of persecution - the earliest recorded being the Crusade of 1210 - Waldenses regularly moved around within the countries to the south and east of the Alps, often retreating into more inaccessible valleys at times of intense persecution.

As an aside, a friend currently planting a church on the French-Italian boarder relates the local history of Waldensians fleeing persecution on the French side of the Alps (around current day Briancon) and coming up the valley where he now lives to what is now the resort and boarder town of Montgenevre. From there, they descended to the valley on the Italian side where they exercised an evangelistic ministry in the surrounding areas.

Only granted legal recognition in Italy in 1848, the Waldenses began the process of spreading into mainstream Italian culture where they remain one of the larger Protestant groupings. Waldensians were responsible for translating the Bible into modern Italian and provided moral and theological resistance to Mussolini's fascist government during the 1930s and 40s. Waves of Italian migration to Argentina in the early C20 included numbers of Waldensians. A theological college in that country is one evidence of their continued presence, as well as several schools, hospitals and orphanages in Italy, where the Waldensian Church maintains close links with the Italian Methodist movement.