§ 12. THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL
Alexander III, having composed his differences with Frederick Barbarossa and the Anti-pope, summoned, in A.D. 1179, the third Lateran Council. It was described as "A magnificent Diet of the Christian world." Over one thousand Bishops and Abbots (amongst them English[38], Irish[39] and Scotch), were present, besides many of the inferior clergy and representatives of Emperor and Kings. By its twenty-seventh Canon it condemned the heretics of Gascony, Albi and the parts about Toulouse, going under several names. If they died in sin no masses were to be said for their souls, nor were they to receive Christian burial.[40] One incident, however, at this Council, which received but scant notice at the time, has an important bearing upon our subject. This was a deputation of two Waldenses who begged official recognition of their movement from the Pope. We are concerned here only with their doctrines, which they professed to draw entirely from the Bible and the authoritative utterances of the Saints (auctoritates sanctorum). Had Alexander III been a Pope of statesmanlike prescience, the Preaching Orders which eventually saved the Church might have been anticipated by some thirty years. These Waldenses had no certain dwelling-place, travelled barefoot, wore woollen clothes only, had no private property, but "had all things in common," they followed naked the naked Christ. The Pope, to whom they gave a book containing the text of the Psalter with notes and several other books of "either Law," approved of their vow of voluntary poverty, but refused them permission to preach, unless the clergy (sacerdotes) asked them. Walter Mapes, an Englishman, afterwards a Franciscan, tells us ("De Nugis" i. 31) that he met the Waldenses in Rome. He calls them ignorant and unlearned, and by command of the Pope entered into conversation with them, asking them at first the easiest questions, e.g. "Did they believe in God the Father? and in the Son? and in the Holy Ghost?" To each they answered, "We believe." "And in the Mother of Christ?" But when they answered again, "We believe," they were greeted with a general shout of laughter, and retired in confusion, "et merito, quia a nullo regebantur et rectores appetebant fieri, Phaetonis instar, qui nec nomina novit equorum." The Abbot of Urspegensis, in his Chronicle (A.D. 1212), also mentions this petition of the Waldenses for Papal recognition, adding that they wore capes, like the "religious," and had long hair, unless they were "laymen." Men and women travelled together, which caused considerable scandal. Yet they asserted all these things came down from the Apostles.