** Established by Pope Adrian I.; vide Storia dei Pontefeci.
Which condemnation was confirmed by the council convoked by Charlemagne,* at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, in 794. The Bishops of Italy also proclaimed their discontent in a letter which they addressed, by means of Photius, to the patriarchs of the Greek churches. Baronius, who gives this letter, subjoins the following answer of the Patriarchs.** "We have received a synodal epistle from Italy, in which the inhabitants lay to the charge of their bishop an infinity of crimes and perverseness; among other things, the tyranny he wishes to exercise over them, and they call us, with tears, to the defence of the church." Here again let it be remarked, that as long as the superior church retained its purity, the Vaudois did not secede from it. It was the court of Rome that began with innovations, not they. Of this so many proofs press upon me, that I scarcely know which to choose. At the end of the eighth, or beginning of the ninth century, flourished Claude, bishop of Turin, whose diocese embraced not only our valleys, but Dauphiné and Provence.
** It should here be remarked, that the Vaudois recognize for orthodox the decisions of the four first great councils of the Church, Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalce- done, the last of which was held in 451; and that they recommended the reading of the fathers of the first five centuries.
*** Piémont making then part of France, it did not pass under the sway of the house of Savoy till the twelfth century.
He opposed himself so strenuously to the innovations of the court of Rome, that his doctrine has been since called calvinistic by his enemies.* Illyricus makes the following mention of him in his Catalogue Test. Veritatis, lib. 9. "Claude, Bishop of Turin, lived in the time of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, of whom he was the intimate friend, even before he became Bishop; he strenuously opposed, (both by preaching and writing,) the adoration of images, of relicts, and the cross, invocations to the saints, pilgrimages, the precedence of the Pope, &c. He treated the Pope himself with great severity, loudly condemning the profit which he made by the poor superstitious people, whom he drew to Rome on pilgrimages."