Le Valli valdesi del secondo ‘500 alla luce di alcuni documenti inediti

The article presents, and edits in the appendix, two documents conserved in the State Archives in Freiburg. One of them is a letter from the notary Giovanni Reinieri to Scipione Lentolo and his wife Maria (1578) presumably written after a lapse of five years to inform them both of the condition of their relations and friends who still lived in the valleys. The other consists of manuscript annotations made between 1576 and 1584 on the protective sheets in his own personal Bible, which contain various data on the birth, baptism and often death of the couple’s children. Often supplemented with what is stated in the, still unpublished, eighth volume of the celebrated Historia delle crudeli persecuzioni [History of Cruel Persecutions] by Lentolo, the documents provide several hints for studying various aspects of life in Waldensian communities in the second half of the 16th century. After describing the documents and illustrating the ties of friendship and esteem between Lentolo and Reinieri, the Author focuses first on the socio-economic and then on the strictly religious aspects. Regarding the latter, among several other new elements, it is worth underlining the information provided by the documents as to baptism practices (in particular the role of godparents) among the reformed communities in the valleys. In the last part of the article, instead, an analysis is made of the data on the relatives of the pair, the reformed communities that had been under the direct supervision of Scipione from 1560 to 1565 and, lastly, the other ministers with whom the Neapolitan had collaborated before being removed from the valleys.

Keywords: Waldensian valleys, sixteenth century, Scipione Lentolo, Reformation (adhesion to), baptism, Geneva (relations with), literacy, mixed families, notaries, Giovanni Reinieri.