Foxe - The Book of Martyrs

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
spare any troops at present to act in Piedmont. The members of the parliament were greatly
vexed at this disappointment, and the persecution gradually ceased, for as they could only
put to death such of the reformed as they caught by chance, and as the Waldenses daily grew
more cautious, their cruelty was obliged to subside, for want of objects on whom to exercise
it.
After the Waldenses had enjoyed a few years tranquillity, they were again disturbed by
the following means: the pope's nuncio coming to Turin to the duke of Savoy upon business,
told that prince he was astonished he had not yet either rooted out the Waldenses from the
valleys of Piedmont entirely, or compelled them to enter into the bosom of the Church of
Rome. That he could not help looking upon such conduct with a suspicious eye, and that he
really thought him a favourer of those heretics, and should report the affair accordingly to
his holiness the pope.
Stung by this reflection, and unwilling to be misrepresented to the pope, the duke
determined to act with the greatest severity, in order to show his zeal, and to make amends
for former neglect by future cruelty. He, accordingly, issued express orders for all the
Waldenses to attend Mass regularly on pain of death. This they absolutely refused to do, on
which he entered the Piedmontese valleys, with a formidable body of troops, and began a
most furious persecution, in which great numbers were hanged, drowned, ripped open, tied
to trees, and pierced with prongs, thrown from precipices, burnt, stabbed, racked to death,
crucified with their heads downwards, worried by dogs, etc.
Those who fled had their goods plundered, and their houses burnt to the ground: they
were particularly cruel when they caught a minister or a schoolmaster, whom they put to
such exquisite tortures, as are almost incredible to conceive. If any whom they took seemed
wavering in their faith, they did not put them to death, but sent them to the galleys, to be
made converts by dint of hardships.
The most cruel persecutors, upon this occasion, that attended the duke, were three in
number, viz. 1. Thomas Incomel, an apostate, for he was brought up in the reformed religion,
but renounced his faith, embraced the errors of popery, and turned monk. He was a great
libertine, given to unnatural crimes, and sordidly solicitous for plunder of the Waldenses. 2.
Corbis, a man of a very ferocious and cruel nature, whose business was to examine the
prisoners. 3. The provost of justice, who was very anxious for the execution of the
Waldenses, as every execution put money in his pocket.
These three persons were unmerciful to the last degree; and wherever they came, the
blood of the innocent was sure to flow. Exclusive of the cruelties exercised by the duke, by
these three persons, and the army, in their different marches, many local barbarities were
committed. At Pignerol, a town in the valleys, was a monastery, the monks of which, finding
they might injure the reformed with impunity, began to plunder the houses and pull down
the churches of the Waldenses. Not meeting with any opposition, they seized upon the
persons of those unhappy people, murdering the men, confining the women, and putting the
children to Roman Catholic nurses.
The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the valley of St. Martin, likewise, did all they could
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