Did the Waldenses Keep the Seventh-day Sabbath?
Question:
Did the Waldenses keep the Seventh-day Sabbath, or did they keep the first day of the week, which is Sunday?
Answer:
Let us first consider the origin of the Waldenses, which will help to answer the question. Ellen White describes the Waldenses as “. . . this remnant of the early apostolic church” (Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, p. 239). A plaque on the Waldensian timeline wall at the Waldensian Trail of Faith in Valdese, North Carolina, states, “c58-59 A.D. Apostles of Christ plant seeds of Christianity in the Waldensian valleys as they travel across the Cottian Alps into Gaul (France) and other parts of Europe.” This places the Waldensian beginnings just 27 years after Christ returned to heaven (A.D. 31) and some 38 years before the Apostle John wrote the Revelation on the island of Patmos (A.D. 96-97)! The Apostles all kept the seventh-day Sabbath like the Jews, for they were Jews, and Christ never told them that He wanted them to change the day of worship. In the early days of the spread of Christianity, the majority of the converts were Jews, and there is no statement in which the Apostles told them to no longer worship on the seventh-day of the week or to change it to Sunday.
Just before the fall of Jerusalem, the Christians fled to Pella and then many of them made their way to Antioch, which was a principal metropolis of Syria and became the headquarters of the spread of Christianity. From there missionaries spread west all the way up to the British Islands and east all the way to China. “The missionaries from the early churches in Judea and Syria securely stamped upon the region around Milan [northern Italy] the simple and apostolic religion. Milan was the rendezvous of numerous councils of clergy from the East, so that the early liturgies of Antioch, Milan, and Gaul were practically identical.” —Truth Triumphant, by B. W. Wilkinson, p. 67.
Thus the Waldenses’ worship style was basically identical to that of the early Christians, including what day of the week they worshiped on, that is Saturday Sabbath. For centuries the Waldenses continued communication with the Christians in Syria (Ibid., p. 68-69). It was Alexandria that taught a mixture of paganism and Christianity, and from it and Rome came the first advances about A.D. 190 to exalt Sunday as a day of worship (Ibid., p. 47). For a thousand years the diocese of northern Italy wanted no connection with Rome. At the Waldensian Trail of Faith, we are told, “During the Dark Ages, from a remote valley high in the Cottian Alps of northern Italy, early missionaries went forth to carry the light of the Gospel throughout Europe. They were the Waldensians, the oldest known Protestant group still existing in the world today.” They were also known as “The People of the Book.” Surely, the clear teaching of the Bible and the Apostles, and the clear instruction of the Fourth Commandment, would compel anyone who studies and lives what “the Book” instructs to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.
“Socrates, a church historian of the fourth century, wrote thus: ‘For although almost all the churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this.’” Ibid. p. 256. (From even before the time of Christ, Alexandria promoted paganism, liberality, and philosophizing the Bible. Alexandria was consistently opposed to the simplicity of the gospel from Antioch.) Thus Socrates shows that in his time almost all Christians kept the seventh-day Sabbath.
There are also historical records, usually from the enemies of the Waldenses, that let us know that they did indeed keep the seventh-day Sabbath. The Waldenses were known by various names throughout the centuries including Subalpini, Vallenses, Albigenses, Vaudois, the poor of Lyons, as well as Insabbathi as shown from this decree given in the year A.D. 1194: “Alphonse, king of Aragon etc., to all archbishops, bishops, and to all others: . . . ‘We command you in imitation of our ancestors and in obedience to the ordinances of the church, that heretics, to wit, Waldenses, Insabbathi and those who call themselves the poor of Lyons and all other heretics should be expelled away from the face of God and from all Catholics and ordered to depart from our kingdom.” Ibid., p. 260.
“The historian Goldast says of those who were called Insabbatati, ‘They were called Insabbatti, not because they were circumcised, but because they kept the Sabbath according to the Jewish law.’” Ibid., p. 262.
“The learned Jesuit, Jacob Gretzer, about A.D. 1600, recognized that the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and the Insabbatati were different names for the same people.” Ibid., p. 237.
The Inquisition started in 1184, and “the following testimony concerning the Sabbath was given by a Waldensian prisoner before the Inquisition (probably in Freiburg, Germany): Barbara Von Thies testified . . . That on the last Saint Michael’s day concerning confession as it is administered by the priests she has nothing to do with it. As to that which has to do with the Virgin Mary, on that she has nothing to answer. Concerning Sunday and feast days she says: ‘The Lord God commanded us to rest on the seventh day and with that I let it be; with God’s help and His grace, we all would stand by and die in the faith, for it is the right faith and the right way in Christ.’” Ibid., p. 262.
“Reinerius Saccho, an officer of the Inquisition (c. A.D. 1250), wrote a treatise against the Waldenses which explains their early origin. He had formerly been a pastor among them, but had apostatized and afterward had become a papal persecutor. He must have known as much about them as any enemy could. After declaring on his own personal testimony that all the ancient heretical sects, of which there were more than seventy, had been destroyed except four - the Arians, Manichaeans, Runearians, and Leonists [Waldenses] - he wrote, ‘Among all these sects, which still are or have been, there is not any more pernicious to the church than that of the Leonists. . . . First, because it is of longer duration; for some say that it hath endured from the time of Pope Sylvester; others from the time of the apostles; second, because it is more general. For there is scarcely any country wherein this sect is not. Third, because when all other sects beget horror in the hearers by the outrageousness of their blasphemies against God, this of the Leonists hath a great appearance of piety: because they live justly before men and believe all things rightly concerning God and all the articles which are contained in the creed; only they blaspheme the Church of Rome and the clergy.’” — Ibid., p. 218.
“That the Waldenses would be committed to Saturday as the Sabbath can be seen in these words: ‘They hold that none of the ordinances of the church that have been introduced since Christ’s ascension ought to be observed, being of no worth; the feasts, fasts, orders, blessings, offices of the church and the like, they utterly reject.’ This is said of them in Bohemia. Erasmus testifies that even as late as about A.D. 1500 these Bohemians not only kept the seventh day scrupulously, but also were called Sabbatarians.’” Ibid., p. 264.
Finally, the video shown at the Trail of Faith visitor center in Valdese, North Carolina, states, “The Waldenses rejected the mysticism of the communion service, refused to confess sins to priests, as the Bible taught that only God can forgive sins; they practiced baptism of adults instead of infants, and perhaps most surprisingly worshiped on the seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible just as the apostles who evangelized their valleys in the first centur[y] had done.”
Thus there is sufficient evidence that the Waldenses did keep the seventh-day Sabbath. In 1532 they joined the Reformation and began sending their young men to Geneva for pastoral training under Calvin, and this set the stage for their switching to keeping Sunday. In 1630, between persecution and disease, which virtually wiped them out, they sent to France for teachers, who then “regulated all their affairs according to the pattern of the French Reformed Church” (Ibid., p. 265). Unfortunately, today all known factions of the Waldenses keep Sunday.
“The Waldenses rejected the mysticism of the communion service, refused to confess sins to priests, as the Bible taught that only God can forgive sins; they practiced baptism of adults instead of infants, and perhaps most surprisingly worshiped on the seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible just as the apostles who evangelized their valleys in the first centur[y] had done.” — The Waldensian Trail of Faith, Valdese, NC.
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