LEGER, ANTONIO AND GIOVANNI. - Waldensian pastors of the 17th century. ANTONIO, after studying in Geneva and having been a pastor from 1626 to 1628, moved to Constantinople with the Calvinist ambassador of Holland. He was among those who collaborated on the publication of the confession of faith of the patriarch Cyril Lukaris, which produced so much scandal among the Eastern Churches. Having returned to the valleys in 1637, he was pastor of S. Giovanni until 1643, when, condemned to death for serious violations of the laws on Protestant propaganda, he took refuge in Geneva, where he died in 1662.
His nephew, GIOVANNI, born at Villasecca, in the Waldensian valleys, in 1615, died at Leiden in 1670, also completed his studies in Geneva, which was then the city hostile to the house and duchy of Savoy.
There, along with Calvinist doctrines, he assimilated that anti-Catholic spirit hostile to every non-Calvinist confession which was the origin of so many civil-religious wars. In 1639 he was pastor of certain Waldensian villages, and in 1643 he succeeded his uncle Antonio as pastor of S. Giovanni. In that office he undertook to stir up the people against the recent ducal decrees that prohibited the building of chapels outside the tolerated places and against preaching outside the permitted territory. Hence broke out the struggles that culminated in the famous Piedmontese Easters (24 Apr. 1655). Giovanni L. fled to France on 27 Apr., where, working with activity and audacity, he not only provoked, by his exaggerations, the indignation of the Protestant world, but also brought it about that Cromwell, the executioner of the Irish Catholics, sent to Turin as his extraordinary commissioner Samuel Moreland, to dispose the Duke in favor of the rebellious Waldensians. Giovanni L. was then able to return to the valleys, and on 31 July 1655 he took part in the agreement of Pinerolo, which was fairly favorable to the Waldensians. Despite that agreement, L. resumed in S. Giovanni the preparation of a new insurrection, which indeed broke out in 1663-64.
Accused of very serious misdeeds and condemned to death, Giovanni repaired abroad in 1661.
His work is the famous Histoire générale des Eglises évangéliques des vallées de Piémont ou vaudoises. (Leiden 1669). Of this history, at least as regards the Piedmontese Easters, Protestant and especially Waldensian writers have an extremely high opinion, holding everything narrated in it to be indisputable truth. But Botta calls it a "most lying narrative," Claretta calls it "crammed full of fables and lies"; and the famous and voluminous Turin manuscript Histoire véritable des vallées du Piémont, cited by Claretta, Melia, Perrone, etc., notes that "Giovanni L. has filled his thick volume with calumnies and false things and cunningly invented fables." The history of Giovanni L. must therefore be considered as an apology of the Waldensians, poorly made, scandalously exaggerated and so one-sided as to cast doubt even on the few true things it may contain.
Bibliography8 works
Camillo Crivelli