In 1321 the inquisitor Bernard Gui was not satisfied with the answers he got from Raimonda about her contacts with the Waldensians. The record shows that he regarded her as not having confessed fully. However, Gui let her go, because she was breast-feeding her little baby. He got a lot further with Raimonda's sister Aignès, whose sharp observation and willingness to confess bequeathed to the inquisitorial record the name of one of the most interesting if enigmatic of all the Waldensian Brothers named by these witnesses, a certain old man called Peter: ‘quendam hominem senem … Petrum’. During his examination in 1316, another Waldensian follower, Géraut the son of Formont the Burgundian, told the inquisitor how on one occasion someone introduced him to a large and fat man called Christian: ‘ostendit sibi quendam hominem magnum et pinguem … et vocabatur Cristinus’. Fat Christian was another Waldensian Brother, but less in the shadows than Old Peter, for he was one of the leaders, a major, and one with whom many of the Waldensian followers questioned by Bernard Gui had had contacts.

Fat Christian and Old Peter–to whom I shall return–plunge us into the vivid detail provided by inquisition records, and they also introduce two contrasts between the earliest period of the Waldensian movement and later Waldensianism. One is a contrast in the evidence extant from different periods.