After the Inquisition stamped out the Cathars in southern France, the next target was the Vaudois (Waldenses), radical Bible Christians who denounced the wealth and corruption of the church hierarchy. In the early 1300s, they fled into the mountain communities of the Western Alps to escape persecution; and the Inquisition followed. The hounds of orthodoxy were unable to break the resistance of the mountain people, so they sent in armies to destroy their villages and haul captives back to the regional centers of power, where they subjected them to torture trials and burnings. These invasions went on for more than a century, and during that time the accusations of the inquisitors shifted over to witchcraft. Vaudois came to mean “witch” rather than “heretic.” This discussion is based on a chapter from my unpublished book The Sorcery Charge, Vol XI in the series Secret History of the Witches.
