Goodbye to Waldensianism?

The noun in the title, ‘Waldensianism’, denotes one of the two great heretical sects of the high Middle Ages, the other being Catharism. It was founded by a Lyon merchant called Valdes, who was converted to the religious life in the early 1170s and formed a movement which was excommunicated in 1184. The movement bifurcated into the full Waldensians, men and women who took religious vows, and their followers, people who lived within the Catholic Church while receiving some Waldensian instruction in secrecy. So constituted, the movement achieved an extraordinary geographical spread, from the Baltic to the south of Italy. Unlike Catharism it was not destroyed, and eventually what survived into the sixteenth century joined the Protestant reform, retaining its name and sense of history while losing most of its earlier character and identity.