The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable to the diffusion of ideas.

While retailing news to those whose hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the Church and the reforms that were needed.

Such conversations were a means of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the book and the newspaper; there is nothing like the _viva vox_[20] for spreading thought.
Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses; calumny is far too facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay.

Thus they have been charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early Christians were accused.

In reality their true strength was in their virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy.
The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari.
Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century.