ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emotional rhetoric permeating competing narratives of Waldensian martyrdom and marginalization. It concentrates on the little-known vicissitudes and deeply touching letters from prison of Sebastian Bazan, an adoptive son of the Waldensian valleys. Bazan’s letters are revealing of the emotional tactics employed by the Inquisition. Conversely, the second part of the chapter shows how in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England these narratives of Waldensian exclusion were used as part of a political top-down strategy to fan anti-Catholic intolerance among the “mobs”, by playing on their deep-rooted fears and inherent xenophobia.
