The first piece of evidence was an extract from a letter written by Simon Fiorello ('Simon Florellus'), an evangelical preacher at Chiavegna ('Citie Clauenna') to Guilelmus Gratalorus, an Italian professor of medicine at the University of Basel. Fiorello was a native of Caserte who had gained a doctorate in 1553. Taking up exile in Geneva for his protestant views, he became the first catéchiste of the Italian Genevan church in 1556 before becoming a minister at Chiavegna (or possibly Tirano). See J.-B. G. Galiffe, Le refuge italien de Genève aux XVI et XVIIe siècles (Geneva and Paris: H. Georg and G. Fischbacher, 1881), p. 162. Pantaleon had presumably had the letter from Gratalorus, his colleague in Basel, and printed the extract (fol. 337A). The letter mentions the publication of an account of the Calabrian repression in Rome and Venice. This was the pamphlet, written by the Genevan pastor from Naples, Scipio Lentulo, who was preaching in the Grisons and Vaudois valleys in 1559-60 and in active contact with protestant elements in the Italian peninsula at that time. For an edition of the pamphlet, see T. Gay (ed.), Scipio Lentolo. Historia delle grandi e crudeli persecutioni fatte ai tempi nostri (Torre Pellice, 1906).

Consentia - Cosenza.

Sainte Sixte - 'San-Sisto'

'Montalte' - Montalto

'Ascanius Caracciolus' - Galeas Caracciolo, marquis de Vico, the pre-eminent figure and patron of the Italian church in Geneva.

The second piece of evidence is a copy and translation of a letter sent from Montalto to Rome containing news of the persecutions in Calabria. Like Pantaleon, where he found the source text, he did not know to whom it was addressed, or from whom it had come, but he followed him in dating it to 11 June 1560. In reality, the letter was from Acanio Caraccioli, the nephew of the marquis di Buccianico, signor di Montaltro (mentioned by Foxe in his text as 'Buccianus'), one of the agents of the viceroy of Naples, writing to the duke of Urbino. Pantaleon had mistranscribed the date (it was in fact a year later - 1561) and had been printed in Rome, where the progress of the repression in Naples was followed with intense interest by those close to the new pontiff, Pope Pius IV. The letter is reproduced in Giovanni Pietro Vieusseux (ed.), Archivio Storico Italiano vol 9 ('Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del regno di Napoli dall'anno 1522 al 1667, raccolti e ordinati... da Francesco Palermo') (Florence, 1846), p. 193.

From the first edition of his martyrology in 1563, Foxe had included an extensive account of the Mérindol and Cabrières affair (1563, pp. 632-652). He had foreshadowed it much earlier in the book (p.46), providing a graphic preview of the affair. It would be his first attempt to deal with mass martyrdom. In that preview, he spoke of 800 people slain in the elimination of these two communities, 40 of them women. He reported that 25 people had died smoke inhalation and fire, locked in a barn that was set alight. He briefly alluded to the young man who was tied to an olive tree and tortured to death. When he returned to deal with the affair properly, it was to juxtapose the evidence for the 'cruelty' of the individual persecutors (on the one hand) with the determination and constancy of the persecuted. His insertion of this piece of text (more or less unchanged) after the narrative of the Calabrian Vaudois was undertaken for a specific purpose. He did not want to interrupt the formal table of French martyrs with too extensive a narrative excursion. Equally, he relished the opportunity to highlight material which demonstrated (as he saw it) 'the furious crueltie' of the French king in an incident which had reverberated widely around western Europe. By placing the narrative adjacent to that of the Waldensians in Calabria he intimated that there was continuity and an underlying pattern to the persecution of the (largely rural) Vaudois. By juxtaposing these two narratives, Foxe was also able somewhat to obscure the more difficult questions about Waldensian beliefs prior to the reformation, and the extent to which they accorded with magisterial Protestantism, as Foxe would have understood it.

Foxe was all too aware that there was a considerable literature available on the massacres of the Waldensians of Provence in 1545 and 1546. He explicitly notes that he cannot present all the primary material, or even recount the history at full length because of its bulk. That said, however, he devotes over 25 pages to it, treating it in a major and exemplary fashion. There were already other narratives available of the persecution of the Waldensians in Provence. Jean Crespin had included an abbreviated account of the affair in the initial edition of his martyrology in 1554 (Crespin [1554], pp. 656-666). Elements from this had been incorporated into Sleidan's Commentaries, first published in 1555, and translated into English in 1560 as A famouse cronicle of oure time… As Foxe said, much earlier in the 1563 edition (p.46) this was the account that he would rely on for his primary narrative of this affair. But Crespin already knew in 1554 that there was more to be said about the affair - as he said his account had been inserted then 'pour en toucher comme en passant ce qui est à present le plus necessaire pour l'instruction des fideles, jusqu'à ce que plus amplement toute l'histoire en soit redigee par escrit, comme elle en soit rédigée par escrit, comme elle est tres digne'. Geneva's contacts with the Vaudois communities in Provence had been somewhat strengthened in the aftermath of the persecution by exiles from the region, especially after 1550 - see G. Audisio, 'The first Provençal Refugees in Geneva (1545-1571)' French History 19 (2005), 385-400. It was no doubt on the basis of their information that Crespin was able to publish his extensively documented Histoire memorable de la persecution & saccagement du people de Mérindol et Cabrières in 1556. This was the account that became integrated into later editions of Crespin in extenso (Crespin [1560], fols 88A-117A; Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 381-419), and also into Pantaleon, lib. 5 (fols 111-145). It concentrates our attention on the persecution which began with the legal decision of 18 November 1540 pronouncing the destruction of the village of Mérindol, which reached its claim in 1545-6. In reality, however, the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to eliminate the Provençal Vaudois had begun at least a decade earlier. For background accounts to the Vaudois in Provence, see G. Audisio, Les Vaudois du Luberon. Une minorité en Provence (1460-1560) (Mérindol, 1984) ; G. Audisio, Procès-verbal d'un massacre. Les vaudois du Luberon (avril 1545) (Aix-en-Provence, 1992); G. Audisio, Les 'Vaudois': naissance, vie et mort d'une dissidence (xiie-xvie siècle) 2 vols (Turin: Albert Meynier Editore, 1989). Marc Venard, Réforme protestante, Réforme catholique dans la province d'Avignon au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1993). On the massacre itself, see P. Gaffarel, 'Les massacres de Cabrières et de Mérindol en 1545' Revue Historique 101 (1911), 241-64.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield