The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2680 page)

see
FAR
.

 
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see
HAIKU
.

 
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Waldenses
/Waldensians or Vaudois
.

Adherents of a reforming movement which began in the 12th cent., in the
Roman Catholic
Church and became a
Protestant
Church. It originated with a Frenchman, Pierre Valdès (Peter Waldo), when he obeyed the command of Christ to sell all that he had and give it to the poor (Matthew 19. 21), and set out (much as, in different ways, did
Francis
and
Dominic
) to recover the Church as Christ intended. When the small group who gathered around him (
‘the poor men of Lyons’
) were banned by Pope Lucius III (at the Council of Verona) from unauthorized preaching in 1184, they organized an alternative Church. They continued to be victims of persecution (including the massacre in 1655 which evoked Milton's Sonnet,
‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont’
), but survived long enough to be granted religious freedom in 1848. They number now about 20,000.

 
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WALDENSES
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(Arab.,
waliya
, ‘protect’). A benefactor or protector in Islam. In the
Qur’
n
it is used especially of God (
‘God is the wal
of those who believe’
, 2. 257), and it is a title of
Mu
ammad
. Conversely, a wal
is a friend of God, and is the title of one particularly devoted to God. The veneration of wal
s became a highly popular part of Islam, particularly focused on their tombs. Thus Baghd
d has been called
‘the city of the wal
s’
, because so many are venerated there—e.g.
al-Junaid
, S
d
‘Abd al-Q
dir al-Jili, Shih
b al-D
n al-Suhraward
. Among the
S
f
s