# Guardia Piemontese

Guardia Piemontese (Occitan: La Gàrdia) is a town and comune in the province of Cosenza and the region of Calabria in southern Italy.

## Location and language

Guardia Piemontese is located about 55 km northwest of Cosenza on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its neighbouring municipalities are Acquappesa, Cetraro, Fuscaldo and Mongrassano. Guardia is an Occitan linguistic and ethnic enclave.

## History

The date of Guardia's foundation is unknown, and the name of the place has changed several times in history. "Guardia" means watch or lookout, and this name is probably related to a lookout tower built in the 11th century. Such lookout towers (Italian: torri costiere) were built to warn against Arab pirates, then called Saracens, ravaging the coast. Guardia used to be called Guardia Fiscaldi, after the powerful local feudal lords Fiscaldo/Fuscaldo, originating from Fuscaldo. After the settlement of Waldensian refugees who spoke the Occitan language, the place gained the name of Guardia dei Valdi. After their suppression, the name became Guardia Lombarda, which was changed to Guardia Piemontese in 1863. The Waldensians, also known as Waldenses (/wɔːlˈdɛnsiːz, wɒl-/), Vallenses, Valdesi, or Vaudois, are adherents of a church tradition that began as an ascetic movement within Western Christianity before the Reformation. Originally known as the Poor of Lyon in the late twelfth century, the movement spread to the Cottian Alps in what is today France and Italy. The founding of the Waldensians is attributed to Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant who gave away his property around 1173, preaching apostolic poverty as the way to perfection.
Waldensian teachings came into conflict with the Catholic Church and by 1215 the Waldensians were declared heretical, not because they preached apostolic poverty, which the Franciscans also preached, but because they were not willing to recognize the prerogatives of local bishops over the content of their preaching, nor to recognize standards about who was fit to preach. Pope Innocent III offered the Waldensians the chance to return to the Church, and many did, taking the name "Poor Catholics". However, many did not, and were subjected to intense persecution and were confronted with organised and general discrimination in the following centuries. In the sixteenth century, the Waldensians were absorbed into the Protestant movement, under the influence of early Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger.
In some aspects the Waldensians of the Middle Ages could be seen as proto-Protestants, but they mostly did not raise the doctrinal objections characteristic of sixteenth-century Protestant leaders. They came to align themselves with Protestantism: with the Resolutions of Chanforan [fr] on 12 September 1532, they formally became a part of the Calvinist tradition. They are members of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe and its affiliates worldwide. They were nearly annihilated in the seventeenth century.
The main denomination within the movement was the Waldensian Evangelical Church, the original church in Italy. In 1975, it merged with the Methodist Evangelical Church to form the Union of Methodist and Waldensian Churches—a majority Waldensian church, with a minority of Methodists. Another large congregation is the Evangelical Waldensian Church of Río de la Plata in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Congregations continue to be active in Europe (particularly in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy), South America, and North America. Organizations, such as the American Waldensian Society, maintain the history of the movement and declare their mission as "proclaiming the Christian Gospel, serving the marginalized, promoting social justice, fostering inter-religious work, and advocating respect for religious diversity and freedom of conscience."

## Historical sources

Most modern knowledge of the medieval history of the Waldensians originates almost exclusively from the records and writings of the Roman Catholic Church, the same body that was condemning them as heretics.$^{:66}$ Because of "the documentary scarcity and unconnectedness from which we must draw the description of Waldensian beliefs",$^{:87}$ much of what is known about the early Waldensians comes from reports like the Profession of faith of Valdo of Lyon (1180); Liber antiheresis by Durando d'Osca (c. 1187–1200); and the Rescriptum of Bergamo Conference (1218).
Earlier documents that provide information about early Waldensian history include the Will of Stefano d'Anse (1187); the Manifestatio haeresis Albigensium et Lugdunensium (c. 1206–1208); and the Anonymous chronicle of Lyon (c. 1220). There are also the two reports written for the Inquisition by Reinerius Saccho (died 1259), a former Cathar who converted to Catholicism, published together in 1254 as Summa de Catharis et Pauperibus de Lugduno (On the Cathars and the Poor of Lyon).

## Teachings

The Waldensians were associated by councils and papal decrees with the Cathars; however they differed radically from them: the Waldensians never espoused gnostic or dualist views or mysticism, and they did not reject the sacraments in total. The Waldensians initially saw themselves as a "church within the Church".
The Waldensians taught certain doctrines also held by the Catholic Church: they accepted the Trinity, and the earliest Waldensians staunchly defended the Eucharist. However, at least some of them later began to develop a more symbolic view of the bread and wine.
The earliest Waldensians taught the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and affirmed the necessity of priests for the offering of the Mass. However they denied the right of sinful priests to give the Eucharist.
Early forms of the Waldensian Mass sought to recover the early Christian liturgy and contained a sevenfold repetition of the Lord's Prayer, with the Eucharistic elements being consecrated through the sign of the cross. The Waldensians observed the forty-day fast of Lent and practiced Friday abstinence.
Both Waldensian and Catholic sources, however, imply that the Waldensians rejected infant baptism, at least to some extent. This is seen from The Noble Lesson, which refers to Christ specifically calling to baptize those who believed, and Reinerius Saccho mentioning how the Waldensians believed that the "ablution which is given to infants profits nothing". Thus there seems to have been an understanding among the Waldensians that infants could be saved without baptism. They rejected confession to priests, the practice of venerating the saints, the use of oaths, secular courts and prayers for the dead.
Waldensians held and preached a number of doctrines as they read from the Bible. These included:
* The atoning death and justifying righteousness of Christ;
* The Godhead;
* The fall of man;
* The incarnation of the Son;
* A denial of purgatory;
* The value of voluntary poverty;
* Perhaps, the universal priesthood of believers, as according to de Bourbon they claimed that all good men are priests.
They also rejected a number of concepts that were widely held in Christian Europe of the era. For example, the Waldensians held that temporal offices and dignities were not meant for preachers of the Gospel; that relics were no different from any other bones and should not be regarded as special or holy; that pilgrimage served only to spend one's money; that meat might be eaten any day if one's appetite served one; that holy water was no more efficacious than rain water; and that prayer was just as effectual if offered in a church or a barn. They were accused, moreover, of speaking blasphemously of the Catholic Church as the harlot of the Apocalypse. They rejected what they perceived as the idolatry of the Catholic Church and considered the papacy as the Antichrist of Rome.
La nobla leyczon (The Noble Lesson), written in the Occitan language, gives a sample of the medieval Waldensian belief. Once it was believed that this poem dated between 1190 and 1240, but there is evidence that it was written in the first part of the fifteenth century. The poem exists in four manuscripts: two are housed at the University of Cambridge, one at Trinity College in Dublin, and another in Geneva.
Reinerius Saccho gave the following charges against the Waldensians:
* The Pope is the head of all errors
* The Monks are Pharisees
* Christians should obey God instead of the Prelates
* That no one is above one another in the church
* No one should kneel before a priest
* Tithes should not be given
* Bishops should not have royal rights
* They condemn the Catholic sacraments
* The Church has erred by prohibiting the marriage of the clergy
The Waldensians would, later in their history, adopt a number of doctrines from the Reformed churches due to the French Reformer Guillaume Farel, who introduced Reformation theology to Waldensian leaders. They officially adopted Reformed theology at a conference at Cianforan 1532. As a result of the conference, the Waldensians officially modified some of their previous positions such as their rejection of secular courts.

## History
### Origins

According to legend, Peter Waldo renounced his wealth as an encumbrance to preaching, which led other members of the Catholic clergy to follow his example. Because of this shunning of wealth, the movement was early known as The Poor of Lyon and The Poor of Lombardy.
Although they rose to prominence in the twelfth century, some evidence suggests that the Waldenses may have existed even before the time of Peter Waldo, perhaps as early as 1100. In 1179, at the Third Council of the Lateran, Pope Alexander III lamented that the Waldenses were a "pest of long existence". For a long period, the Waldensians pretended to live as Roman Catholics, attending the Holy Mass and having their children baptised in Catholic churches. However, privately they stuck to their beliefs and received travelling Waldensian preachers for few days in intervals of about two years.
With the successes of the Reformation, many secret Waldensians decided not to hide their true religious beliefs any longer. In 1532, they decided at their Synod of Chanforan (in Piedmont) to confess their beliefs openly. Thereupon, Calabrian Waldensians sent Marco Uscegli as an envoy to Geneva, with the request for preachers to be dispatched. In this way the preacher Gian Luigi Pascale came to Calabria, and he established Waldensian churches in Guardia Piemontese and San Sosti. The Waldensians in their traditional areas in Piedmont did the same, and in 1560 the locally powerful Bishop of Mondovì, Cardinal Michele Ghislieri (later to become Pope Pius V), initiated a crusade against the Waldensians.
The Calabrian Roman Catholic Abbot Giovan Antonio Anania informed Ghislieri that the Waldensians in Calabria had meanwhile also adopted preachers of their own, so Ghislieri ordered the abbot to eradicate the Waldensian heresy, in coordination with his local Archbishop of Cosenza, Taddeo Gaddi. First, Anania tried to coerce the Waldensians into converting by way of threats, but they refused. With a sense of foreboding, many Waldensians from neighbouring places fled to Guardia, which was fortified. Guardia's lord Salvatore Spinelli (c. 1506–1565) tried to make the Waldensians relent and advised Pascale and Uscegli to flee, but in vain.
Spinelli, who did not wish to be accused of favouring heretics, finally resorted to a trick. In June 1561, he requested entry to the town for himself and fifty of his men, claiming that they would come unarmed. Loyal to their lord, the men of Guardia let them in. In the night of 4 to 5 June, Spinelli and his henchmen took out their hidden weapons and took the town by force. In doing so, and by further pogroms in the following two weeks, Spinelli and his henchmen murdered about 2,000 Waldensians in Guardia Piemontese and other places. This bloodshed is commemorated by the name of the town's main gate, the Porta del Sangue, or Gate of Blood, because it was said that the blood of the murdered flowed all the way down to it. Next to the town gate there is now the Centro di Cultura Giovan Luigi Pascale which contains a permanent exhibition on the history of the Waldensians of Guardia.
The survivors of the massacre had to convert to Roman Catholicism, and marriages between a man and a woman both of Waldensian descent were forbidden. Spioncini, spyholes to be opened from the outside, were to be built into the town's front doors, in order to allow inquisitors to spy into the houses and check whether the compulsory converts really abstain from Waldensian traditions. Some spioncini can still be found in frontdoors. The Waldensian church was demolished. On its site, today's Piazza Chiesa Valdese, a piece of rock from Piedmont was put in 1975, donated by Guardia's twin city Torre Pellice in memory of the descent of many Guardioti from the Piedmontese rocky Alps. The names of 118 known victims of the 1561 massacre are listed in a plaque at the rock.
In memory of the eradication of the Waldensian heresy, Salvatore Spinelli donated the Dominican church Chiesa del SS. Rosario in Guardia. In April 1565 he was created Marchese of Fuscaldo in honour of his deed.

## Twin towns

* Torre Pellice, Italy