How the Waldenses were Unjustly Accused by their Inquisitors, and Accusers

In the second book of the first part of the History of the Waldenses, by Jean Paul Perrin, translated by J. M. V., 3rd chapter, page 74, column 2, there is an account of one Jan Veileti, a monk and inquisitor over the Waldenses, and of how very unfaithfully and deceitfully he or his clerk acted in the case of these people, from which it can be inferred how it also was with others of their accusers. The words read as follows:

But in the processes which were instituted by this monk Jan Veileti, we have observed an exquisite kind of villainy and low cunning; for, having gotten these proceedings into our hands, we found in them little slips of paper on which this commissary (Jan Veileti) had noted the answers of the accused, simply, and just as they had come from their lips; but these simple answers we afterward found in the proceedings expanded, and frequently given in a form contrary to, and quite different from, what the sumptum, that is, the aforementioned answer as noted in the proceedings, implied and contained; thereby perverting the meaning of the defendant, and making him say what he had never thought.

For example, when he was asked whether he did not believe that, as soon as the sacramental words were pronounced by the priest in the mass, the body of Christ was in the host, just as He was on the tree of the cross, and the Waldenses answered, No, Veileti or his clerk set down as his answer:

That he had confessed that he did not believe in God.

Again, when it was asked whether the saints must not be invoked, and the reply was, No, they wrote:

That they had reviled and spoken evil of the saints.

When it was asked whether the virgin Mary must not be saluted and invoked in our extremity, and the answer was, No, they wrote: That they had reviled the virgin Mary.

"Behold, such was the faithlessness of the monks and inquisitors in such important matters, and it is not without a certain evidence of God's providence," says the writer, "that these villainies have been preserved and have remained to the present time, as a means by which to show what spirit moved those men who, having by many kinds of fraud oppressed and at last killed and burned the believing members of the church of Christ, yet have the audacity to ask us where the church, and the believers whom they themselves put to death, were before our coming."

"Now, if the reader wants to know," says our author, "how these proceedings fell into our hands, we reply that this also happened through the providence of God." He then relates how the archbishops of Embrun, John Rostan, and others had these papers and proceedings under lock and key in their chests and chanceries, until the city where they lived was taken, in the year 1585. When the house of the archbishop caught fire on this occasion, many of these processes held in former times against the Waldenses were thrown in bags into the street. One Calignon, chancellor of Navarre, and a certain councilor of Grenoble, who were present, ordered them to be picked up and delivered into their hands; and so, it is stated, the perfidious slanders against the Waldenses came to light, which otherwise would have gone among the papists as true accusations against them. But it is as the common saying goes: Lies fly swiftly, but truth overtakes them. We will now close our account of the true faith and good practice of the Waldenses, and show how long and in what times they existed.