In 1532 the little Church decided to join in with the movement for reform which had begun in Germany and Switzerland . Given the importance they put on the Bible , the Waldensians also decided to have the Scriptures translated and printed in a language ordinary people could understand . At this stage , with the fluidity of the border in southern France / northwest Italy , the local language was actually French and the early colporteurs probably spoke more French than Italian . One , Barthelemy Hector , was seized in about 1557 for distributing Protestant literature and Bibles , tried in Turin and burnt as a heretic .
Of course , Italy as we know it now did not come into existence until unification in 1861 and it had only been in 1848 that Waldensians , as non-Roman Catholic Christians , had any rights at all – and even then , their services were merely tolerated and all printing and publishing needed the permission of a Bishop .
After the 1848 decree , called ‘ Lettere Patenti ’, a British General , who had served under the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo and who went on to be a major benefactor of the Waldensian Church , challenged them not to remain isolated in their valleys of northwest Italy . This was the moment , General John Charles Beckwith told them , to start the evangelisation of the whole of the peninsula : ‘ From now on , either you will be missionaries or you will be nothing .’ However the initial problem was finding enough men ( and women ) who spoke Italian , not just the French of the northwestern Alpine area .
Another problem , that of printing and publishing the literature , was initially solved by contacting the British and Foreign Bible Society / Scottish Bible Society which had already been involved in the clandestine circulation of Bibles before Unification , especially in Sicily and southern Italy . The diffusion of the evangelical press in Italy was also being encouraged by the Religious Tract Society . The Waldensian Church founded a publishing company and also a mission station in Turin in 1855 to organise distribution ; and interestingly the first type used by their printers came from a foundry in Edinburgh . Rev . R . Stewart , the Church of Scotland Minister in Livorno , was also proactive in the diffusion of Bibles and Protestant literature .
In its annual report for 1870 , the Italian Evangelical Publication Society stated that ‘ The sales of the books of our society must clearly depend on the Colporteurs ’. 1 However it needs to be remembered that not just evangelical Christians , but also the Catholic Church and secular movements , were using similar methods to reach people with their literature .
During the Capture of Rome on 20 September 1870 , the final event in the Unification of Italy ( or Risorgimento ) – the defeat of the Papal States and the end of the temporal power of the Papacy – the colporteurs were the first to enter Rome after the army . T . H . Bruce from the British and Foreign Bible Society organised this and personally chose colporteurs with dogs to pull their book carts . They circulated around the city and set up tables and displays . One did so in the piazza by the Pantheon . The reaction to their presence was mixed ;
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