suspected of heresy, was publicly flogged outside the church of St. Gilles, Valencia, by the hand of the pope's legate. Henry II of England was publicly flogged to expiate the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury.
The son and successor of Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, being found guilty of having continued to claim the English crown when the pope had taken it from him (after having freely given it him), was compelled to expiate this rebellion by consenting to pay the pope a tenth of his income for two years, and to present himself barefooted and with a rod at the door of Notre Dame, Paris, there to be flogged by the canons. Report says that he was flogged on the backs of his chaplains.
Henry IV also was whipped, in 1595, but this was on the backs of his ambassadors, Cardinals du Perron and d'Ossat.
This vicarious flagellation was not exceptional. In the last century but one there could always be found, and almost anywhere, some worthy capuchin who was willing to make his buttocks responsible for the sins of the whole parish, and who, proportionate to the payment received, would flog himself—or at least give out that he
