About Eighty Persons Called Waldenses, in the Year 1215

Now, when the throne of antichrist began to suffer great damage through the doctrine of the Waldenses, and infant baptism, the swearing of oaths, the secular power and dominion, the authority of the Pope of Rome, the mass, purgatory, absolution or forgiveness of sins by the so-called clergy, pilgrimages, visitations of the holy sepulchres, prayers, or sacrifices for the dead, and other things belonging to popery, were opposed by them, for they said that these things ought to have no place in the true church of Christ; it came about, in the year 1215, that this cruel man, Conrad of Marpurg, of whom it was stated, for the year 1214, that he had been sent into Germany as grand inquisitor by Pope Innocent the Third, arrested more than eighty people, both men and women, who were called Waldenses and made the same confession. They were also examined concerning their faith in that horrible manner of which we have already spoken, namely, by taking a red hot iron into their bare hands. All of them endured it patiently and remained steadfast, and they were finally condemned to be burned alive as heretics, which was done to them all on the same day, at Strasburg, in that same year of their arrest, 1215.

The papist writer Trithemius gives the following account of this: "At this time, namely in the year 1215, there were very many who were secretly heretics, men as well as women, who spread various strange errors throughout all Germany, France, and Italy; and great numbers of them were arrested and burned alive. For in that year more than eighty were arrested in Strasburg at the same time, among whom very few were found innocent; for if any of them denied the heresy,* Conrad of Marpurg, the pope's inquisitor, would test them by putting a red hot iron into their hands, and hand over all those who were burned by it to the secular judge, as heretics, to be sentenced to the fire." [n440-3] Trith. Chron. Hirsaug. Also A. Mell., second book, folio 459. C. Mellinus calls these martyrs Waldenses, folio 457, column 3; and he has shown their confession at folio 446, columns 1 and 2. [n440-2]