the members of a small sect founded as a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church by Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons in the late 12th century, which in the 16th century joined the Reformation movement
Also called: Vaudois
Derived forms
Waldensian (wɒlˈdɛnsɪən)
noun, adjective
Waldenses in American English
(wɑlˈdɛnsiz)
plural noun
a sect of dissenters from the Roman Catholic Church which arose about 1170 in S France: excommunicated in 1184, they survive esp. in northwestern Italy
Derived forms
Waldensian (Walˈdensian)
adjective, noun
Word origin
ME waldensis < ML waldenses, after Peter Waldo, 12th-c. Fr merchant and founder of the sect