William Tyndale is perhaps the most famous Bible translator in the English-speaking world, but the francosphere (encompassing France, Belgium, Switzerland, and much of Africa) has its own pioneer translator. Pierre Robert Olivétan brought the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament and Erasmus’ Greek New Testament to French—the first from the original languages. La Bible d’Olivétan shaped French-speaking Protestant identity and laid the groundwork for the Reformation’s spread in France and beyond.

Before Olivétan, the Holy Scriptures were restricted to the clergy and academia. In the Occitan-speaking south of France, the Waldensian barbes (itinerant pastors) had been preaching from their Occitan translation for over three hundred years, but in the langue d’oïl north, hearing the Bible in the people’s tongue was nearly impossible. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (alias Jacob Faber) was the first to produce a French Bible, but it was not accepted by the early Reformers due to its source text being Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.

Chance meetings can be the best ones. Last summer, my wife and I attended the CHAP (Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania) Convention. While browsing the exhibitor boots, a map of southern France caught my eye. Intrigued, I stepped closer to his publisher’s booth, where Andrew Lambdin was representing his books.

Among the Christian books on display, I noticed two novels by Mr. Lambdin himself: Hills of Zion and Fields of Zion. As a Christian author writing in a similar historical setting, I had to ask him who his books were about. When he told me his books take place in the thirteenth century, during the Albigensian Crusade, I was stunned.

What did Waldensians believe about election and predestination? Were they Calvinist or Arminian? I could answer this question in a variety of ways, but I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible while still providing the key details derived from historical evidence.

Who Were the Waldensians?

The term Waldensian (also Waldense in English, Vaudois in French, Valdesi in Italian, et al.) first appeared around the 12th century, though some^{1 2} trace the movement back to as early as Pope Sylvester, the 4th-century Bishop of Rome under Emperor Constantine. In the Middle Ages, the Waldensians were a group of Christians who, to varying degrees, dissented from the Roman Catholic Church. In the early Modern era, their movement merged with the broader Protestant Reformation.