FLAGELLATION
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FLAGELLATION
were revived again and again as a means of quite
orthodox public penance. In France, during the six-
teenth century, we hear of White, Black, Grey, and
Blue Brotherhoods. At Avignon, in 1574, Catherine
de' Medici herself led a procession of Black Penitents.
In Paris, in 1583, King Henry III became patron of
the " Blancs Battus de I'Annonciation ". On Holy
Thursday of that year he organized a great procession
from the Augustinians to Notre-Dame, in which all the
great dignitaries of the realm were obliged to take part
in company with himself. The laughter of the Paris-
ians, however, who treated the whole thing as a jest,
obliged the king to withdraw his patronage. Early in
the seventeenth century, the scandals arising among
these brotherhoods caused the Parliament of Paris to
suppress them, and under the combined assaults of the
law, the Gallicans, and the sceptics, the practice soon
died out. Througliout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Flagellant processions and self-flagellation
were encouraged Ijy the Jesuits in Austria and the
Netherlands, as well as in the far countries which they
evangelized. India, Persia, Japan, the Philippines,
Mexico, and the States of South America, all had their
Flagellant processions; in Central and South America
they continue even to the present day, and were regu-
lated and restrained by Pope Leo XIII. In Italy gen-
erally and in the Tyrol similar processions survived
until the early years of the nineteenth century; in
Rome itself they took place in the Jesuit churches as
late as 1870, while even later they occurred in parts of
Tuscany and Sicily. Always, however, these later
Flagellant processions have taken place under the con-
trol of ecclesiastical authority, and must by no means
be connected with the heretical epidemic of the later
Middle Ages.
One of the best modern accounts of flagellation and the Fla- gellants is an article by Haupt, Geisselung, kirchliche, und (reisslerbruderschaften, in Realencykl. fiir prol. Theol. It contains full and excellent bibliographies. Some of the original authori- ties for the outbreak in 1260 will be found in Pertz, Man. Germ. Hist., XVII, 102-3, 105, 191, 402, 531, 714; XIX, 179. For the heresy of 1348 may be consulted: Chroniken der deutschen SIddte, VII, 204 sqq.; IX, 105 sqq.; Fqrschungen zur deulachcn Geschichie, XXI (1881), 21 sqq.; Recueil des chroniques de Flan- dre, II (Bruges, 1841), 111 sqq.; Fredericq, Corpus doeumcn- torum. inquisilionis hcereticm pravitaiis neerlandicGE, I (Ghent, 1889), 190 sqq.; Berlierg, Trois traites inedils sur les Flagel- lants de 1S49, m Revue Benedictine, July, 1908. Good accounts are to be found in Muratori, Antiquitt. Ifal. med. wvi, VI (Milan, 1738-42), diss. Ixxv; Gretser, Opera, IV (Ratisbon, 1734), 43-5; Zockler, Askcse und Munchtum, II (Frankfort, 1897), 518, 530-7.
Leslie A. St. L. Toke.
Flagellation. — The history of the whip, rod, and stick, as instruments of punishment and of voluntary penance, is a long and interesting one. The Heb. Dif, "whip", and t33L, "rod", are in etymology closely related (Gesenius). Horace (Sat., I, iii) tells us not to use the horrihile flagcllum, made of thongs of ox-hide, when the offender deserves only the scutica of twisted parchment; the schoolmaster's ferula — Eng. ferule (Juvenal, Sat., I, i, 15) — was a strap or rod for the hand (see ferule in Skeat). The earliest Scrijitural mention of the whip is in Ex., v, 14, 16 (flaydhili .s■»«^• flnijcllis cadimur), where the Heb. word meaning "to strike" is interpreted in the Greek and the Latin texts, "were scourged" — "beaten with whips". Roboam said (III Kings, xii, 11, 14; 11 Par., x, 11, 14): "My father beat you with whips, but I will beat you with scorpions", i. e. with scourges armed with knots, points, etc. Even in Latin scorpio is so interpreted by St. Isidore (Etym., v, 27), "virga nodosa vel acu- leata". Old-Testament references to the rod might be multiplied indefinit<?ly (Deut., xxv, 2, 3; II Kings, vii, 14; Job, Lx, 34; Prov., xxvi, 3, etc.). In the New Testa- ment we are told that Clirist used the scourge on the money-changers (John, ii, 15); He predicted that He and His disciples would be scourged (Mat., x, 17; XX, 19); and St. Paul .says: "Five times did I receive forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with
rods" (II Cor., xi, 24, 25; Deut., xxv, 3; Acts, xvi, 22).
The offender was to be beaten in the presence of the
judges (Deut., xxv, 2, 3), but was never to receive
more than forty stripes. To keep within the law, it
was the practice to give only thirtv-nine. The culprit
was so attached to a low pillar that he had to lean for-
ward — "they shall lay liira down", says the law, to
receive the strolces. Verses of thirteen words in
Hebrew were recited, the last alwa}'s being: "But he
is merciful, and will forgive their sins: and will not
destroy them" [Ps. bcxvii (Heb. Lxxviii) 38]; but the
words served merely to count the blows. Moses al-
lowed masters to use the rod on slaves; not, however,
so as to cause death (E.x., xxi, 20). The flagellation of
Christ was not a Jewish, but a Roman punishment,
and was therefore administered all the more cruelly.
It was suggested by Pilate's desire to save Him from
crucifixion, and this was inflicted only when the
scourging had failed to satisfy the Jews. In Pilate's
plan flagellation wa,s not a preparation, but rather a
substitute, for crucilLxion.
As the earliest monuments of Egypt make the scourge or whip very conspicuous, the children of Israel cannot have been the first on whom the Egyp- tians used it. In Assyria the slaves dragged their bur- dens under the taskmaster's lash. In Sparta even youths of high social standing were proud of their stoical indifference to the scourge; while at Rome the various names for slaves (flagriones, verherones, etc.) and the significant term lorarii, used by Plautus, give us ample assurance that the scourge was not spared. However, from passages in Cicero and texts in the New Testa- ment, we gather that Roman citizens were exempt from this punishment. The bamboo is used on all classes in China, but in Japan heavier penalties, and frequently death itself, are imposed upon offenders. The European country most conspicuous at the pres- ent day for the whipping of culprits is Russia, where the knout is more than a matcli for the worst scourge of the Romans. Even in what may be called our own times, the use of the whip on soldiers under the English flag was not unknown; and the State of Delaware yet believes in it as a corrective and deterrent for the criminal class. If we refer to the past, by Statute 39 Eliz., ch. iv, evil-doers were whipped and sent back to the place of their nativity; moreover, Star-chamber whippings were frequent. "In Partridge's Almanack for 1692, it is stated that Oates was whipt with a whip of sue thongs, and received 2256 lashes, amounting to 13536 stripes" (A Hist, of the Rod, p. 158). He sur- vived, however, and lived for years. The pedagogue made free use of the birch. OrbiUus, who flogged Horace, was only one of the learned line who did not believe in moral suasion, while Juvenal's words: "Et nos ergo manuni ferula; subdiixiraus" (Sat., I, i, 15) sliow clearly the system of school discipline existing in his day. The priests of Cybele scourged themselves and others, and such stripes were considered sacred. Although tliese and similar acts of penance, to propi- tiate heaven, were practised even before the coming of Christ, it was only in the religion establislied bj' Him that they found wise direction and real merit. It is held by some interpreters that St. Paul in the words: "I cha.stise my body" refers to self-inflicted bodily scourging (I Cor., Lx, 27). The Greek word iirunndt^(a (see Liddell and Scott) means "to strike under the eye", and metaphorically "to mortify"; conse- quently, it can scarcely mean "to scourge", and indeed in Luke, xviii, 5, such an interpretation is quite inadmissible. Furthermore, where St. Paul certainly refers to scourging, he uses a different word. We may therefore safely conclude that he speaks liere of mortification in general, as Piconio holds (Trijilex Expositio).
Scourging was soon adopted as a sanction in the monastic di.sciplinc of the fift h and following centuries. Early in the fifth century it is mentioned by Palladius
