the Waldenses. As the history of the Waldenses is still obscure, we
cannot say for certain what views they held when they first came
from Italy some fifty or sixty years before. At first they seem to
have been almost Catholics, but as the Hussite Wars went on they
fell, it is said, under the influence of the Taborites, and adopted
many radical Taborite opinions. They held that prayer should be
addressed, not to the Virgin Mary and the Saints, but to God alone,
and spoke with scorn of the popular doctrine that the Virgin in
heaven showed her breast when interceding for sinners. As they did
not wish to create a disturbance, they attended the public services
of the Church of Rome; but they did not believe in those services
themselves, and are said to have employed their time at Church in
picking holes in the logic of the speaker. They believed neither in
building churches, nor in saying masses, nor in the adoration of
pictures, nor in the singing of hymns at public worship. For all
practical intents and purposes they rejected entirely the orthodox
Catholic distinction between things secular and things sacred, and
held that a man could worship God just as well in a field as in a
church, and that it did not matter in the least whether a man's body
was buried in consecrated or unconsecrated ground. What use, they
asked, were holy water, holy oil, holy palms, roots, crosses, holy
splinters from the Cross of Christ? They rejected the doctrine of
purgatory, and said that all men must go either to heaven or to
hell. They rejected the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and said
that the wine and bread remained wine and bread. For us, however,
the chief point of interest lies in the attitude they adopted
towards the priests of the Church of Rome. At that time there was
spread all over Europe a legend that the Emperor, Constantine the
Great, had made a so-called "Donation" to Pope Sylvester; and the
Waldenses held that the Church of Rome, by thus consenting to be