Labelling the Waldenses: othering a medieval religious movement
Authors: VALODZINA Aliaksandra 
Published: August 2024

Over the past 850 years, the Waldensian religious movement has often been
presented in the heretical narrative. The Waldenses were often seen as the
embodiment of the very idea of heresy. Their image was othered in all possible
ways to create the most terrifying impression: they were false saints, guilty of
the sin of vainglory, Lucifer worshipers, and witches. They were spreading a
heretical contagion around them, and they always turned back to their errors.
The Waldensian magisters were imagined as cunning false prophets, scribes,
and Pharisees, seducing silly weak peasants. The former were said to attract
the latter with the “appearance of piety”, but in reality, they organize sexual
orgies during their secret night gatherings. In the case of the Waldenses, shift
of the image from modesty to promiscuity was especially necessary. The real
Waldensian doctrine did not include any scandalous matters, such as human
sacrifice that could automatically prevent most of the population from joining
this sect. These modes of othering equate to the Waldenses becoming the
pattern of heresy. In the XIV century, “heretics” and “The Waldenses” were
near-synonyms. This amalgamation had very important consequences. First,
they accumulate in themselves all the possible accusations of the heretics, and it
hides their uniqueness beyond Catholic fantasies. Second, their name could be
attributed to other dissident groups, which exaggerated the number of sectarians
and imported foreign features to the Waldensian doctrine. Third, they could be
used as a universal opponent in the inner Church polemic, replacing prelates –
the real target of the accusations – with the aim of bringing attention to the
problem.
At the same time, in their own narratives, the Waldenses were presented as
martyrs for the true Church of Christ. This line was supported by the Protestants
in the Modern Era.
As a typical religious dissident movement, the Waldenses occupy an
important “place in memory” of modern scholars. Most large schools in
historiography, including socio-economic history and gender studies, have the
Waldensian movement in their sphere of interest, sometimes exaggerating their
significance. All this “omnipresence” of medieval Waldensianism “seduces”
scholars to dramatize the significance and dispersion of the movement, and, what is less obvious but much more dangerous, to be less critical of works of
their predecessors.
Modern historiography moved away from an interpretation of the Catholic
medieval sources “from the contrary”, omitting all the insults and non-true
statements. This paper proposes that the Waldensian women were more
engaged in broad devout reading and teaching at home than in preaching to the
mass audience. In parallel with early Christians, secret night gatherings could
be understood as clandestine preaching meetings in situations of inquisitorial
persecution. The Waldensians were forced to be tricky under interrogation, and
their opponents exaggerated their educational level and homiletic abilities to
shame contemptuous prelates.
The Waldensian movement is a throughline of the European religious dissident
history through the centuries. Thanks to their presence on large territories and
in different social strata, the Waldensian sources could provide data not only on
the history of religion, but also on social history or microhistory, or the history
of mentality. Cultural history could take into account their role as picture-perfect
Other.