mong medieval descriptions of the Waldensians, the short tract De vita et conversacione is among the few that attempt to give a relatively coherent picture of Waldensian practices. It is particularly important with regards to the lay confessors and spiritual leaders of the movement, the Brethren. It describes their ascetic way of life, from strict fasting practices to vile or humble clothing. The text also explains how a new Brother was ordained in a meeting of Brethren, and their commitment to seven articles of faith and obedience to senior Brethren. Rather than providing outright condemnation of the Brethren, the tract hovers between a description of holy men and defamation of dangerous heresiarchs. The probable reason for this is that the text itself comes from multiple sources, parts of it being information that converted Brethren passed on, with other parts arising from inquisitors’ intervention in the text. From the perspective of a modern scholar, it is an elusive and unstable work: besides two redactions that have a relatively wide circulation with other A anti-heretical texts and inquisitorial formularies, there is an early version of the work with considerable variation between different manuscripts.

The De vita et conversacione belongs to the significant body of anti-heretical literature written during the persecution of German Waldensians in the last years of the fourteenth century. Some of these texts were careful polemical compositions, such as Petrus Zwicker's Cum dormirent homines, others were rudimentary lists of heretics’ errors, and yet others formularies and guidelines for the interrogation of these heretics. A vast majority of these works relate to the Celestine inquisitor Petrus Zwicker, quite likely the most active prosecutor of Waldensians at the time and certainly the writer most eager to warn his fellow Catholics about the danger they posed. The De vita et conversacione's most likely date of composition is immediately after the conversion of several Waldensian brethren in 1391, and the text reached its most common form by 1393. It thus represents an intellectual engagement of inquisitors and other repressors of heresy with new knowledge on the Waldensians, gained from the recent converts.

In this article, I begin by briefly presenting the known manuscript tradition and versions of the De vita et conversacione, with some remarks on its probable dating. I then discuss the image the tract gives of the Waldensian Brethren, as well as the specific differences between different versions pointing towards inquisitors’ intervention in the text.