ABSTRACT
The geographical coincidence of Protestant strongholds in the French Wars of Religion and former bastions of Albigensianism has given some historians food for thought, although few suggest that it was more than accidental. The adoption by the Protestant Church of the Vaudois, who were thought to descend from the twelfth-century Waldensians, was motivated in part by the need to find historical evidence for the doctrine. The Albigensians, on the other hand, although they presented strong resistance to the rise of the papal monarchy in the thirteenth century, were ignored by the French martyrologists until much later, when they could be considered as indistinguishable from the Waldensians. The thought process that led to the inclusion of the Albigensians in the Acts and Monuments preceded the Continental movement. The identification of Antichrist as the Pope rested on an apocalyptic interpretation of Revelation. Throughout the Wars of Religion, the French Calvinists remained extremely reluctant to commit themselves on the question of the Antichrist.
