From that day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church.

They multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans.
By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the latter country.

Other countries were at first satisfied with treating them as excommunicated persons.
Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year, and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.[19] Hence that multiplicity of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost hourly.
A common persecution brought them nearer to the Cathari and favored the fusion of their ideas.

Their activity was inconceivable.

Under pretext of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and insinuating.