Valdes the Merchant
The man later called Peter Waldo was known in his own day simply as Valdes. The name Peter appears only in sources of the fourteenth century, long after his death, and may be a later addition. He was a wealthy citizen of Lyon, a river city where trade flourished under the rule of its archbishop. A chronicle written at Laon early in the next century says he had grown rich by lending at interest. He was married and had two daughters. Of his birth and early years nothing is known.
Around 1173 he heard a street singer tell the legend of Saint Alexis, a rich man's son who left his bride and his wealth to live as a beggar for God. The story would not let him go. He went to a master of theology and asked how he might most surely be saved, and the master answered him with the words of Jesus to the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:21).
Valdes did what the text said. He let his wife choose whether to keep his lands or his goods, placed his daughters in a convent, repaid those he had wronged in business, and gave the rest away, some of it in the streets of Lyon during a famine. When people thought him mad, the Laon chronicler says, he told them he was taking revenge on the money that had made him its slave.
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