ABSTRACT
From the first edition of the Livre des Martyrs, Jean Crespin paid particular attention to the situation of the Vaudois, first in France and in later editions also in the Alps and parts of Italy. The Vaudois people presented a real challenge to Crespin's conception of his project, yet he persisted in including them in his martyrology. The Reformed orthodoxy of the Vaudois was an important issue in Crespin's coverage of them, essential not only to how he wrote about them, but to whether he wrote about them at all, and their 'conversion' was still a work in progress during the years that Crespin was active. Crespin collected a mass of documents for the Histoire memorable, most of which were later used to expand the martyrology. From the 1555 Histoire memorable onwards, Crespin included in his notices of the Provencal massacres a document which purports to be a record of a meeting of Vaudois elders who survived the assault.
