FIVE MEN AND THREE WOMEN BURNT AT TROYES, IN CHAMPAGNE, A. D. 1200; AND SOME EXPELLED FROM METZ.

About two years after Pope Innocent III. had issued those three bloody letters, for the persecution and suppression of the true, defenseless Christians, who were commonly called Waldenses, but by their enemies or persecutors, Publicans and sinners, it came to pass, in the last year of the twelfth century, namely A. D. 1200, that in the city of Troyes, in Champagne, there were apprehended, by order of the Pope and the reigning authorities, eight persons, five men and three women, who made the same confession as was stated above with regard to the Waldenses, contradicting the authority of the Pope, infant baptism, the swearing of oaths, the office of criminal authority, and whom the papistic author of the large Chronicle of the Netherlands calls Popelitatnos.

However, these persons were not accused by the papists of any evil works, but simply on account of their faith; in which faith they desired to remain steadfast unto death, without, in any wise departing from it. Hence they were all sentenced to the fire, in said year, and offered up their bodies unto God as a burnt-sacrifice, having commended their souls into his hands.