But it has not been so in small communities of men, tenants of some rugged land, that has remained unfrequented from situation or climate; and incapable, from sterility, coldness, or inaccessibility, of attaining to the abundance and inequality of wealth. Some of the poems of the Sæmundar Edda are of the ninth and tenth centuries, when Old England was giving forth a sound now long and long forgotten. But the dialect in which they are composed (although it has perished out of Norway) continues to be the living tongue of Iceland, enriched in its vocabulary, and slightly modernized, but not impaired in its essentials. "Modò paulisper immutata, imprimis in parte insulæ interiore adhucdum viget." The learned Mr. Charles O'Connor, when desirous to prove that the Erse poem ascribed to Fiech (certainly very old) goes back to the sixth century, could not found that argument, so far as diction was concerned, upon anything more than the occurrence of a few obsolete words; grammar, syntax, style, and (with such few exceptions) language, having confessedly undergone no serious alteration in twelve hundred years. The same truth is nowhere better shewn than in the British tongue, still spoken and written in Wales. It has poetical relics dated of the sixth century; and the authenticity of a portion, at any rate, seems to be daily less controverted. Those bear the most cogent internal proofs of it, which exhibit scraps of the Latin language in a form totally distinct from the medieval or church Latin, and being the vernacular Latin which the western mountaineers had partially acquired while they were Roman subjects. If this poetry has been found obscure by Mr. Sharon Turner and others, it is from treating of mysterious and obsolete superstitions, or from difficulty in establishing the text; but not from being composed in a different language or dialect, or even a seriously different style or diction, from those of modern times.

If such has been the persistency of human language in secluded nooks of the earth, remote from the great thoroughfares of life, and where the more active principles of innovation could not penetrate, there can be no people more likely to have transmitted faithfully an old and simple dialect than the inhabitants of these deep gullies of the Piemontese and Dauphin Alps. Their occasions of intercourse with mankind were naturally few, and those restricted by their religious peculiarities. The traveller and the merchant seldom climbed into their nest. And their placid existence would almost have escaped observation, had it not been for the aggressions of "the bloody Piemontese that roll'd

In this view of the case, no argument would seem to have less weight against the antiquity of any of the classes of Waldensian remains, than that which is founded upon the great and general similarity of their diction to the modern.

But, nevertheless, a perfect identity can scarcely be preserved for

* P. E. Müller Præfat. ad Haldorson Lex. Islandicum.

ages. And even where language and dialect have held their ground, accurate criticism will usually detect, in the most ancient specimens, some phrases of a fashion by which their earlier date may be recognised. Upon a slight comparison of the religious poems with those Protestant-Vaudois tractates to which false dates have been ascribed, we may detect variations nearly sufficing to indicate that they were composed at different periods. More careful and complete comparison of them, whenever they are all published, will no doubt add to the number.

Upon fuller research, more instances would appear; and possibly (at the same time) some of these might disappear. They are evidently of unequal moment. But every one will feel the great importance of Saragin for heathen.

The prose essays of the sect have not been included in this comparison with those of the Protestants, because it is probable that they are by no means so ancient as the verses. We have seen that the sect retained many of its characteristics, quite down to what is known as The Reformation. No formal change of discipline or doctrine appears to have taken place anterior to the synod of Angrogna, in September, 1532. Those tracts might have been composed, even in the days of the Legate De' Capitanei, by a Morel or a Masson, while still in Waldism, and not yet in Bucerism or Calvinism; which scarce anybody

* Vide P. Gilles Hist. Eccles. des Eglises Réformées, c. v. p. 31. Geneva, 1644.

will surmise, concerning the rhythmical form of conveying instruction. But the truth seems to be, that those tracts (the Glosa Pater, &c.) were of an intermediate and respectable antiquity; and they exhibit some difference from the Vaudois-Protestant writings, chiefly in the mode of quoting.

Waldensian Tracts.
Sant Augustinus

Sant Johan Boca d'Or*
Sant Peyre
Apocalis

Protestant Tracts.
Augustin
Chrysostome
Sanct Peire
Apocalyps

Any remaining scruples with respect to the language of the Waldensian poems may be removed by the fact (attested by Monsieur Raynouard, and otherwise apparent to any one) that it bears a close affinity to that of the Troubadours of Provence. And the antiquity of their productions never has been, or can be, disputed.

There is an observation worth making before we quit the topic, which Raynouard has left unmade. The modern dialects from the Latin were distinguished by their mode of affirming or assenting, by their yes. One class assented in ouil or oui, which is the participle passive of ouir, to hear; oui, auditum. This is the French and Walloon class. Another assented in sí, the Latin sic; it is so. This is the Italian class on one side, and the Spanish on the other. Between these dialects in si, and to the south of those in oui, lay the Occitanic dialects, or those of the people who affirmed in oc; which is the Latin hoc, this thing. Langue-d'oc, thence named, Provence, and the south of France in general, were of that affirmation. A passage on this subject, in the poet Dante's treatise De Vulgari Eloquentià, is so interesting, as to deserve quotation; coming, as it does, from him, in whom the Vulgar Eloquence (that is to say, the modern languages) fixes the epoch of its first illustration. After mentioning the Teutonic nations, Saxons, English, &c., whose affirmation is in jo, (meaning ja, yea, and similars,) and another class of nations, Hungarians, &c., more to the east, he proceeds in the following† manner:-"Totum, aut quod in Europâ restat, ab ististertium tenuit idioma, licet [nunc ‡] trifariam videatur. Nam alii Oc, alii Oil, alii Si, affirmando loquuntur; ut puta Hispanii, Franci, et Latini. Signum autem quod ab uno eodemque idiomate istarum trium gentium progrediantur Vulgaria in promptu est, quia multa per eadem vocabula nominare videntur, ut Deum, cœlum, amorem, mare, terram, et vivit, moritur, amat, alia feré omnia. Istorum verò proferentes Oc meridionalis Europe tenent partem Occidentalem, a Januensium§ finibus incipientes. Qui autem si dicunt, a prædictis finibus Orientalem tenent; videlicet, usque ad promontorium

* This appellation of the saint was used proverbially in Italy, to signify another sort of golden eloquence and persuasion than his. A simili genti non si parla, se non si va in compagnia di San Giovan Boccadoro."-La Monaca di Monza, tom. i. p. 73, 9th edit.

t De Vulg. Eloquentiâ in Opere di Dante, 2, p. 107, ed. Venice, 1741. Printed nec. But the sense requires nunc. And Trissino's translation has al

presente.

§ The Genoese; so called in reference to the origins of Genoa, written by Jacobus de Voragine, and deduced from Janus.

illud Italiæ quá sinus Adriatici maris incipit, et Siciliam. Sed loquentes Oil* quodammodo Septemtrionales sunt respectu istorum, nam ab Oriente Alamannos habent et a Septemtrione, ab Occidente Anglico mari vallati sunt et montibus Aragoniæ terminati, a Meridie quoque Provincialibus et Apennini devexione clauduntur." It becomes a natural question to ask whether the Waldensian poems are, or are not, Occitanic. So far as the most famous of them is concerned, the Noble Lesson, a memorable line (v. 246) gives explicit answer that it is

not:

E plus di si, o di no, non sia en ton parllar.

It is singular enough that Monsieur Raynouard, while examining in detail the affinities and differences between the Vaudois and Provençal, should have entirely pretermitted this striking discrepancy on that particular point, which the Provençal has for more than five centuries regarded as its type or characteristic.

Hence we may conclude, that the poem was not Ultramontane, or composed in Gaul, but upon Italian ground. But we do not find in it those marks which distinguish the sub-sect of Citramontanes,† or Pauperes de Lombardiâ, from the main sect of Ultramontanes, or Pauperes de Lugduno. Those marks seem chiefly to be, an increased bitterness against the church of Rome, and an application to it (but still in the qualified sense in which the Beguines applied the Revelations) of the terms Beast and Whore of Babylon, and a diminished strictness on the score of spiritual poverty. But the Noble Lesson, and the other poems, so far as published, clearly proceed from those genuine Poor of Lyons who held the church to be still Christian, and who had not slackened in their zeal for poverty.

In respect of sacramentals, the sect of Pauperes was tripartite; and we have no tradition of any more numerous subdivision than that. 1. The sub-sect called Siscidenses alone received the sacraments, or, in other words, remained in communion with the church. 2. That called Pauperes de Lombardiâ thought that any person, not in mortal sin, could consecrate and administer. 3. But the genuine and original sect, being at variance with both, must have entrusted the sacraments to Barbes, or some§ appointed persons, else there would remain no

Menage (Dict. Etymol. 2, p. 102, ed. 1750) quotes from a letter written by Charles VI., in 1394, these words, "En nostre dit royaume, tant en Languedoc, comme en Languedoil."

† See Stephan. de Borbone sive Bellavilla ap. Quetif Bibl. Ordinis Prædicatorum, tom. i., p. 191. Moneta cit, Mosheim Inst. Hist. Eccl., p. 488. And the same and other writers cited in Todd's Lectures, p. 446–51.

+ Stephen de Bourbon says the P. de Lugduno condemned all persons terrena possidentes, while the P. de Lombardiâ possessiones recipiebant.-Bibl. Ord. Præd., i. 191. But as the latter were also Pauperes, the difference could not have been very great. It was an anticipation of the Franciscan controversy between the Spirituales and the Fratres de Communitate.

Though we collect from Sacconi that the permission to consecrate was not promiscuous, he was in doubt, from their mode of expressing themselves, whether women were esteemed incompetent. What was doubtful to him remains so to us. In the Anonymi Refutatio Errorum Waldensium (Bibl. Max. Patr., tom. 25, p. 302) we read, that they had certain leaders whom in private intercourse (apud se) they called Fratres, but whom in confession they called Dominos. These Domini, no doubt, were usually not only their confessors, but the persons who consecrated and administered.

force in Sacconi's distinction between the " simplex laicus" of the Lugdunenses and the "quilibet homo sine peccato" of the Lombardi. But the language of this poem clearly contemplates the existence and necessity of a ministry.

It is true that the limits of the Ultramontane and Citramontane subdivisions of the Pauperism may not have coincided with the limits of the languages of oc and sí.

But, upon the whole, it is probable that the Noble Lesson was composed before any such divisions had broken out among the Pauperes. An anonymous writer,* On the Fourteen Errours of the Poor Men of Lombardy and Lyons, speaks of the uniformity that existed in their mode of consecrating the eucharist," ante divisionem quæ fuit inter eos." This attests that the sect had existed for some notable space of time in unity and concord. Rainero Sacconi composed his Summa contra Catharos in 1230, without mentioning the Waldenses, and added+ his postscript concerning them in 1250; and he republished the whole together in 1258. Moneta of Cremona is said to have written‡ anno circiter 1250; and Stephen, called de Bourbon by his family name, and de Belleville from his place of birth, is said by Echard and Quetif to have composed§ his work in A.D. 1262. It does not seem as if any author, anterior to A.D. 1250, has been found to speak of the division into Lugdunensian and Lombard Poor. There may, therefore, have been towards half a century between these authors and the Noble Lesson, during which time the divisio fuit inter eos. When that poem was composed, we may conjecture that they were not as yet disunited, but of one model; as they seem to have been when Alanus de Insulis (who died in 1202) described them as one body, having some sort of ministers or pastors.

The Nobla Leyczon makes use of one expression calculated to raise our estimate of its antiquity. The 372nd line, already cited, appears to speak of the appellation Vaudés, or Waldensis, as one fastened upon them by their enemies and persecutors, and not as a regular name adopted by themselves. In process of time they adopted it, and do not disclaim it in any of the Inquests of Thoulouse. But in the beginning they called themselves Pauperes, with or without the addition of de Lugduno, and were so described in the first Bull of condemnation. This poetry was composed when their heretic-sounding title (as all titles from a man's name were) was still a term of reproach, unwillingly received by themselves, and not yet an expression of course.

Apud Todd's Lectures, p. 451.

† See Duplessis d'Argentré, Coll. Jud., i., p. 47.

D'Argent., ibid. p. 84.

Bishop Duplessis d'Argentré has not shewn his usual accuracy in stating that Stephanus de Borbone wrote his book, De vii. donis Spiritûs, in A. D. 1225. In 1223 Stephen was thirty years old, and had lately entered the Dominican convent at Lyons. He lived forty years longer, and performed the functions of inquisitor at Clermont in Auvergne, and Lyons. His book gives an account of the acts of twenty-five years of his inquisitorship, quædam a se per 25 annos acta commemorat. If so, it must have been composed subsequently to 1248, by as many years as intervened between 1223 and his becoming inquisitor. The year fixed by Echard and Quetif is that which preceded his death. They do not assign their reasons.See Bibl. Ord. Prædic., i., p. 184.