The «The blood of our fathers drips from these pages».

This contribution wants to reconsider the massacre of the Waldensians of Calabria in 1561. Therefore, the chronicles following the successive dramatic events (16 th and 17 th centuries) constitute a useful premise to introduce the political use that the historiography of the 19 th century made of a particularly complex argument. Focusing on the different declinations concerning the concept of social, cultural and religious freedom, we decided to select the works of Filippo de Boni and the research of Luigi Amabile.