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.