Chapter II: Part 2

Regard for truth, however, obliges us to mention one or two instances of flagellations, which are to be found in the history of the ancient eastern Anchorites, written by Theodoret, who has been above mentioned; but those instances are such, that certainly no argument can be derived from them, to prove that voluntary flagellations were in use in the times in which those Anchorites lived.

One of those instances is to be found in the life of Abrahames. It is related in it, that the Christian populace having attempted to seize the sheets in which the body of that saint was wrapped, the lictors drove them back with whips. Now it is obvious to everyone, that the lashes which these lictors bestowed, to and fro and at random, upon those men who beset them, were not willingly received by the latter. And the same may certainly with equal truth be observed of the flagellations inflicted upon the people (which is the second instance mentioned by Theodoret) by the collectors of the public tributes, who, he says, used to collect them with scourges and whips.

The rules of the first religious orders founded in the west, have been likewise silent as to the voluntary use of thongs and whips. The first rule, for instance, prescribed to the Benedictines, that ancient western order, does not mention a word about self-flagellation; and the same silence is to be observed in the rules framed by Ovisiesius, Abbot of Tabennæ; by St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles; by St. Isidorus, Bishop of Sevil; by St. Tetradius; and a number of others, whose rules Holstenius has likewise collected. From thence we may therefore conclude, that Christians in those times, had no notion of beatings and scourgings which are now so prevalent, and that the upper and lower disciplines were alike unknown among them.

The only author of weight, in the days we speak of, who seems to have made any mention of voluntary flagellations being practised in the ancient monasteries is St. John Climax, who according to some accounts, lived in the middle of the fourth, and according to others, only in the sixth century. This author relates, that, in a certain monastery, “some, among the monks, watered the pavement with their tears; while others, who could not shed any, beat themselves.”

FLAGELLATION BESTOWED BY THE DEVIL.

To those instances of involuntary flagellations, during the times of the eastern Anchorites and the first monks, we may, I think, safely add those which the devil, jealous of their merit, has inflicted upon them; a case which has frequently happened, if we are to credit the writers of those times.

In the lives of the saints remarkable virtues are recited; whether it was that those saints, after having dreamed of such flagellations, fancied they had in reality received them, and spoke accordingly, or that they had some scheme in view when they made complaints of that kind. St. Francis of Assisi, for instance, as is related in the Golden Legend, received a dreadful flagellation from the devil the very first night he was in Rome, which caused him to leave that place without delay. And, to say the truth, it is not at all unlikely that, having met there with a colder reception than he judged his sanctity entitled him to, he thought proper to decamp immediately, and when he returned to his convent, told the above story to his monks.

Among those saints who received flagellations, or visits in general, from the devil, St. Anthony is however the most celebrated. As some times the devil, as is mentioned above, flagellated him vigorously; and at others, employed temptations of quite a different kind, in order to seduce him: thus, he assumed in one instance the shape of a beautiful young woman, who made all imaginable advances to the saint; but, happily, all was to no purpose. The celebrated engraver, Callot, has made one of those visits of the devil to St. Anthony, the subject of one of his prints, which is inscribed the “Temptation of St. Anthony;” and he has represented in it such a numerous swarm of devils of all sizes, pouring at once into the saint’s cavern, and exhibiting so surprising a variety of faces, postures, and ludicrous weapons, such as squirts, bellows, and the like, that this print, may very well be mentioned as an instance, among others, of the great fertility of the imagination of that engraver.

Besides the persecutions which St. Anthony suffered from the devil, he has the farther merit of having been the first institutor of the monastic life, several other hermits having in his time chosen to assemble together, and lived under his direction; and though he has not expressly been the founder of any particular order, yet it is glory enough for him to have been the father of the whole family of friars and nuns. In more modern times, however, his relics having been brought from Egypt to Constantinople, and thence transferred to Dauphine, in France, a church was built on the spot where they were deposited, and a new order of friars was a little after established, who go by the name of Monks of St. Anthony. These monks form a kind of order distinct from all others; but yet they have no less ingenuity than the other monks for procuring the good of their convent, as may be judged from the following story, which, I think, I may venture to relate as a conclusion of the chapter.

The story I mean, is contained in the book of the _Apologie pour Herodote_, which was written about the year 1500 by Henry Etienne, on purpose to show that those who entirely reject the facts related by Herodotus, on account of their incredibility, treat them with too much severity, since a number of facts daily happen which are altogether as surprising as those that are found in that author.

Before relating the story in question, the reader ought to be informed, that St. Anthony is commonly thought to have a great command over fire, and a power of destroying, by flashes of that element, those who incur his displeasure. The common people have been led into this belief, by constantly seeing a fire placed by the side of that saint in the representations that are made of him; though this fire is placed there for no other reason than because the saint is thought to have the power of curing the erysipelas, which is also called the sacred fire (_ignis facer_,) in the same manner as St. Hubert cures the hydrophobia; St. John, the epilepsy; and other saints, other disorders. A certain monk of St. Anthony (to come to our point) who was well acquainted with the above prepossession of the vulgar concerning his saint, used on Sundays to preach in public, in different villages within a certain distance from his convent. One day he assembled his congregation under a tree on which a magpie had built her nest, into which he had previously found means to convey a small box filled with gunpowder, which he had well secured therein; and out of the box hung a long thin match, that was to burn slowly, and was hidden among the leaves of the tree. As soon as the monk, or his assistant, had touched the match with a lighted coal, he began his sermon. In the meanwhile the magpie returned to her nest; and finding in it a strange body which she could not remove, she fell into a passion, and began to scratch with her feet, and chatter unmercifully. The friar affected to hear her without emotion and continued his sermon with great composure; only he would now and then lift up his eyes towards the top of the tree, as if he wanted to see what was the matter. At last, when he judged the fire was very near reaching the gunpowder, he pretended to be quite out of patience, he cursed the magpie, and wished St. Anthony’s fire might consume her, and went on again with his sermon; but he had scarcely pronounced a few periods, when the match on a sudden produced its effect, and blew up the magpie with her nest; which miracle wonderfully raised the character of the friar, and proved afterwards very beneficial both to him and his convent.

CHAP. IV.—_Corrections of a flagellatory kind, inflicted by force; the
common method of correcting offences of a religious nature; and the
power of inflicting them possessed alike by Bishops and the heads of
Monasteries._

It must be confessed, however, that though self-flagellation made no part of the rules or statutes belonging to the different monastic orders, founded in those early stages of Christianity, the same cannot be said of that method of correction, when imposed by force upon such monks as had been guilty of offences, either against the discipline of the order, or against piety: an extensive power of inflicting such salutary corrections, having, from the earliest times, been lodged in the hands of abbots and the superiors of convents.

Nay more, we find that bishops during the very first times of Christianity, assumed the paternal power we mention, even with regard to persons who were bound to them by no vow whatever, when they happened to have been guilty either of breaches of piety or of heresy. Of this, a remarkable proof may be deduced from the 59th Epistle of St. Augustin, which he wrote to the Tribune Marcellinus, concerning the Donatists. St. Augustin expresses himself in the following words: “Do not recede from that parental diligence you have manifested in your researches after offenders; in which you have succeeded to procure confessions of such great crimes, not by using racks, red-hot blades of iron, or flames, but only by the application of rods. This is a method of coercion which is frequently practised by teachers of the fine arts upon their pupils, by parents upon their children, and often also by bishops upon those whom they find to have been guilty of offences.”

Another proof of this power of flagellation, assumed by bishops in very early times, may be derived from the account which Cyprianus has given of Cesarius, Bishop of Arles; who says, that that bishop endeavoured as much as possible, in the exercise of his power, to keep within the bounds of moderation prescribed by the law of Moses. The following are Cyprianus’s words: “This holy man took constant care that those who were subjected to his authority, whether they were of a free or servile condition, when they were to be flagellated for some offence they had committed, should not receive more than thirty-nine stripes. If any of them, however, had been guilty of a previous fault, then indeed he permitted them to be again lashed a few days afterwards, though with a smaller number of stripes.”

CRIMINALS BEATEN TO PRISON.

—_Harleian MS._ 4374
]

From the two passages above, we are informed that the power of whipping, possessed by bishops, extended to persons of every vocation, indiscriminately; and with much more reason may we think that those persons who made profession of the ecclesiastical life, were subjected to it. In fact we see that even the different dignities which they might possess in the church, did not exempt them from having a flagellation inflicted upon them by their bishops, when they had been guilty of offences of rather a serious kind; and Pope St. Gregory the Great, moreover, recommended to the bishops of his time, to make a proper use of their authority. In his sixty-sixth Epistle, he himself prescribes to Bishop Paschasius, the manner in which he ought to chastise Deacon Hilary who had calumniated Deacon John. “Whereas,” he says, “guilt ought not to pass without adequate satisfaction, we recommend to Bishop Paschasius to deprive the same Deacon Hilary of his office, and after having caused him to be publicly lashed, to confine him to some distant place; that the punishment inflicted upon one, may thus serve to the correction of many.”

WASHING AND SCOURGING.

Exercising the rods upon a Saxon slave. From the Harleian MS., No.
603. It was not unusual in those days for servants to be scourged to
death by (or by order of) their mistresses. The aptness with which
the Saxon ladies made use of the scourge is illustrated by one of
William of Malmesbury’s anecdotes, who tells us that when King
Ethelred was a child he once so irritated his mother that, not
having a whip, she beat him with some candles, which were the first
thing that fell under her hand, until he was almost insensible. “On
this account he dreaded candles during the rest of his life, to such
a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be
introduced in his presence.”
]

This power of inflicting the brotherly correction of whipping was also possessed by the abbots and priors in all the ancient monasteries; though, at the same time, it was expressly provided by the rules of the different orders, that the same should be assumed by no other persons. “Let no man, except the abbot or him to whom he has entrusted his authority, presume to excommunicate, or flog a brother.”

When the faults committed by monks were of a grievous kind, the abbot was not only charged to correct them by means of his discretionary power of flagellation, but he was moreover expressly directed to exert that power with rigour. In the rule framed by St. Fructuosus, Bishop of Braga, it is ordained with respect to a monk who is convicted of being a liar, a thief, or a striker, “That if, after being warned by the elder monks he neglects to mend his manners, he shall, on the third time, be exhorted in the presence of all the brethren, to leave off his bad practices. If he still neglects to reform, let him be flagellated with the utmost severity.” The above rule of St. Fructuosus is mentioned by Ecbert, in his Collection of Canons, which together with his Councils of England, has been published by Spelman.

St. Ferreol, Bishop of Usez, framed a rule for monks, which like that above, makes severe provisions against such monks as are addicted to the practice of thieving. “With regard to the monk who stands convicted of theft, if we may still call him a monk, he shall be treated like him who is guilty of adultery for the second time; let him therefore be chastised with the whip, and with great rigour too. The same punishment ought to be inflicted upon him as upon a fornicator, since it may be justly suspected that his lewdness has induced him to commit theft.”

Committing indecencies with other monks, or with boys, were offences which the Statutes of Convents likewise directed to be punished by severe flagellations; and the above St. Fructuosus, Bishop of Braga, ordered that the punishment should, in the above case, be inflicted publicly. “If a monk” it is said in his rule, “is used to tease boys and young men, or is caught in attempting to give them kisses, or in any other indecent action, and the fact be proved by competent witnesses, let him be publicly whipped.”

Refusing to make proper satisfaction to the abbot for offences committed, or in general persevering in denying them, were also grievous faults in the eye of the first founders, or reformers, of monastic orders. In the rule framed fifty years after that of St. Benedict, in order to improve it, the following direction was contained: “If the brothers who have been excommunicated for their faults, persevere so far in their pride, as to continue, on the ninth hour of the next day, to refuse to make proper satisfaction to the abbot, let them be confined, even till their death, and lashed with rods.” Nor is the rule of the above-mentioned Bishop of Braga less severe against those monks whose pride prevents them from making a proper confession of the offences they may have committed. “To him” it is said in that rule, “who, through pride and inclination to argue, continues to deny his fault, let an additional and severer flagellation be imparted.”

The habit of holding wanton discourses, or soliciting the brethren to wickedness, was also deemed by the founders of religious orders to deserve severe flagellations; and St. Pacom ordered in his rule, which it was said had been dictated to him by an angel, that such as had been guilty of the above faults, and had been thrice admonished, should be publicly lashed before the gate of the convent.

Attempts to escape from monasteries, were, even in very early times, punished by flagellation. We read in Sozomenius, that St. Macarius of Alexandria, Abbot of Nitria in Thebaid, who had five thousand monks under his direction, ordered that chastisement to be inflicted upon those who should attempt to climb over the walls of the monasteries. “If anyone continues in his wickedness, and says, I can no longer bear to stay here, but I will pack up my things and go where God will direct me; let any one of the brothers inform the prior, and the prior the abbot, of the fact; let then the abbot assemble the brothers, and order the offender to be brought before them and chastised with rods.”

The holy founders of religious orders have also been very severe in their provisions against such monks as seek for familiarities with the other sex. In the rule of the Monastery of Agaunus, it was ordained, that, “If any monk had contracted the bad habit of looking on women with concupiscence, the abbot ought to be informed of the fact, and bestow upon the monk a corrective discipline; and that, if he did not mend his manners in consequence thereof, he ought to be expelled from the society as a scabby sheep, lest he should ruin others by his example.” The above monastery had been built by Sigismond, King of Burgundy, to the honour of one hundred and twenty Martyrs of the Theban Region, of which St. Maurice was the commander, under the reign of the Emperor Maximinus.

The above-quoted rule of St. Fructuosus, is no less severe against those monks who seek for the company of women. In the fifteenth chapter, which treats of the lewd and quarrelsome, it is ordered, that, “if after having received proper reprehensions they persist in their wicked courses, they shall be corrected by repeated lashings.” And St. Columbanus, who is the first who instituted the monastic life in France, and has written a rule as a supplement to that of St. Benedict, also expresses himself with great severity against such monks as are convicted of having barely conversed with a woman in the absence of witnesses; for though there are faults for which he orders only six lashes to be given, yet, in the case here mentioned he prescribes two hundred. “Let the man who has been alone with a woman, and talked familiarly to her, either be kept on bread and water for two days, or receive two hundred lashes.”

CHAP. V.—_Discretionary power of employing disciplines, established in
the convents of Nuns, and lodged in the hands of the Abbesses and
Prioresses._

The holy founders of religious orders considered flagellations as being less useful in the convents of women than in those of men; and in the rules they have framed for them, they have accordingly ordered that kind of correction to be inflicted upon those whose bad conduct made it necessary.

This chastisement of flagellation, upon women who make a profession of a religious life, is no new thing in the world. It was the chastisement appropriated to the vestals, in ancient Rome; and we find in the historians, that when faults had been committed by them in the discharge of their functions, it was commonly inflicted upon them by the hands of the priests, or sometimes of the great priest himself.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus relates, that the virgin Urbinia was lashed by the priests, and led in procession through the town.

The high priest, Publius Licinius, ordered, as we read in Valerius Maximus, “that a certain vestal who had suffered the sacred fire to be extinguished, should be lashed and dismissed.”

Julius likewise relates, “that the fire in the Temple of Vesta having happened to be extinguished, the virgin was whipped by the high priest, M. Æmilus, and promised never to offend again in the same manner.” And Festus says in his book, that “whenever the fire of Vesta came to be extinguished, the virgins were lashed by the great priest.”

Severities of the like kind have been deemed necessary to be introduced into the convents of modern nuns, by the holy fathers who have framed religious rules for them.

In that very ancient rule for the conduct of nuns, which is contained in epistle cix. of St. Augustin, the mortification of discipline is prescribed to the prioress herself. “Let her,” it is said in the above rule, “be ever ready to receive discipline, but never impose it but with fear.”[2]

Footnote 2:

NUM. xii. “Disciplinam lubens habeat, metuens imporat.”

Cesarius, Archbishop of Arles, in the rule framed by him which is mentioned with praise by several ancient authors, such as Genadius and Gregory of Tours, prescribes the discipline of flagellation to be inflicted upon nuns who have been guilty of faults; and enters, besides, into several particulars about the propriety as well as usefulness of this method of correction. “It is just,” he says, “that such as have violated the institutions contained in the rule should receive an adequate discipline; it is fit that in them should be accomplished what the Holy Ghost has in former times prescribed through Solomon: He who loves his child, frequently applies the rod to it.”

St. Donat, Archbishop of Bezancon, in the rule he has framed for nuns, has expressed the same paternal disposition towards them as Archbishop Cesarius has done: he recommends flagellations as excellent methods of mending the morals of such of them as are wickedly inclined, or careless in performing their religious duties; and he determines the different kinds of faults for which the above correction ought to be bestowed upon them, as well as the number of the blows that are to be inflicted. The above rule of St. Donat has been mentioned with much praise by the Monk Jonas, in his account of the life of St. Columbanus, which the venerable Beda has inserted in the third volume of his works.

In that rule, commonly called the rule of a father, which St. Benedict, Bishop of Aniana, in his book on the concordance of rules, and Smaragdus in his commentaries on the rule of St. Benedict, have both mentioned, provisions of the same kind as those are made for the correction of nuns. “If a sister,” it is said in that rule, “that has been several times admonished, will not mend her conduct, let her be excommunicated for a while in proportion to the degree of her fault; if this kind of correction proves useless, let her then be chastised by stripes.”

Striking a sister has likewise been looked upon as an offence of a grievous kind; and St. Aurelian, in the rule he has framed for nuns, orders a discipline to be inflicted on such as have been guilty of it.

To the above regulations, Archbishop Cesarius has added another, which is, that the corrections ought for the sake of example to be inflicted in the presence of all the sisters. “Let also the discipline be bestowed upon them in the presence of the congregation, conformable to the precepts of the apostle. Confute sinners in the presence of all.”

THE METHODS OF SELF MORTIFICATION AS APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN PRACTISED IN
EARLY TIMES.

It is expressly said of St. Pardulph, a Benedictine Monk and Abbot, who lived during the time of Charles Martel, about the year 737, that he used in Lent-time to strip himself stark naked, and order one of his disciples to lash him. The fact is related in the life of that saint, formerly written by an author who lived about the same time; and it was, two hundred years afterwards, put into more elegant language by Yvus, Prior of Clugny, at the desire of monks of St. Martial, in the town of Limoges. Hugh Menard a Benedictine Father, and a very learned man in all that relates to ecclesiastical antiquities, has inserted part of it in his book, entitled, “Observations on the Benedictine Martyrology.” The following is the passage in St. Pardulph’s Life, which is here alluded to. “St. Pardulph seldom went out of his cell; whenever sickness obliged him to bathe, he would previously make incisions in his own skin. During Lent he used to strip himself entirely naked, and ordered one of his disciples to lash him with rods.”

St. William, Duke of Aquitain, who lived in the time of Charlemagne, that is about the year 800, and many years before Cardinal Damian; is said to have also used flagellations, as a means of voluntary penance. Arduinus, the writer of the holy duke’s life, and a contemporary writer, says, that “it was commonly reported that the duke did frequently, for the love of Christ, cause himself to be whipped, and that he then was alone with the person who assisted him.” Haeftenus, Superior of the Monastery of Affigen, relates the same fact, and says that the Duke of Aquitain “took a great delight in sleeping upon a hard bed, and that he moreover lashed himself with a scourge.” Hugh Menard, the learned Benedictine just now mentioned, has adopted the testimony of Arduinus, and upon that writer’s authority inserted the above fact in his “Observations on the Benedictine Martyrology.”

Other persons, who lived before the times of Cardinal Damian, are also mentioned by different writers as having practised voluntary flagellations. Gaulbertus, Abbot of Pontoise, who lived about the year 900, upon a certain occasion, “severely flagellated himself (as M. Du Cange relates in his glossary) with a scourge made of knotted thongs.” And the above-mentioned Haeftenus, Prior of Affigen, has advanced that the same practice was followed by St. Romuald, who lived about the same time as Gualbertus, and by the monks of the Camaldolian order, who were settled in Sitria.

Another early instance of voluntary flagellations occurs in the life of Guy, Abbot of Pomposa. Heribert, it is said, Archbishop of Ravenna, formed the design of pulling down the Monastery of Pomposa; and this piece of news caused both Abbot Guy and his monks “to lock themselves up in the capitular house, and to lash themselves every day, for several days, with rods.” Abbot Guy was born in the year 956; and he was made Abbot of Pomposa in the year 998, in which capacity he continued forty-eight years.

All the facts above related were anterior in the year 1056, the time at which Peter Damian de Honestis was raised to the Cardinalship by Pope Stephen IX; and it is evident from them, that the practice of voluntarily flagellating oneself as a penance for committed sins, had been adopted before the period in question, though it cannot be said to have been then universally prevalent; at least only a few instances of it have been left us by the writers of those times. But at the era we mention, this pious mode of self correction, owing to the public and zealous patronage with which the above Cardinal favoured it, acquired a vast degree of credit and grew into universal esteem; and then it was that persons of religious dispositions were everywhere seen to arm themselves with whips, rods, thongs, and besoms, and lacerate their own hides, in order to draw upon themselves the favour of heaven.

We are informed of this fact by the learned Cardinal Baronius, in his Ecclesiastical Annals. “At that time” he says, “the laudable usage of the faithful of beating themselves with whips made for that purpose, though Peter Damian may not be said to have been the author of it, was much promoted by him in the christian church; in which he followed the example of the blessed Dominic the Cuirassed, a holy hermit, who had subjected himself to his authority.”

The same Cardinal Damian has moreover left numerous accounts of voluntary flagellations practised by certain holy men of his times; but these are surely more apt to create our admiration, than to excite us to imitate them. Indeed the flagellations he mentions cannot be proposed to the faithful as examples they ought to follow; and they were executed with such dreadful severity, as makes it impossible for the most vigorous men to go through the like, without a kind of miracle.

In the Life of the Monk St. Rodolph, who was afterwards made Bishop Eugubio, the Cardinal relates, “That this holy man would often impose upon himself a penance of an hundred years, and that he performed it in twenty days, by the strenuous application of a broom, without neglecting the other common methods used in doing penance. Every day, being shut up in his cell, he recited the whole psalter (or book of psalms) at least one time when he could not two, being all the while armed with a besom in each hand, with which he incessantly lashed himself.”

The account which the Cardinal has left of Dominic, surnamed the Cuirassed, is not less wonderful. “His constant practice” he says, “is, after stripping himself naked, to fill both his hands with rods and then vigorously flagellate himself; this he does in his times of relaxation. But during Lent-time, or when he really means to mortify himself, he frequently undertakes the hundred years’ penance; and then he every day recites the psalter at least three times over, all the while flogging himself with besoms.”

Cardinal Damian then proceeds to relate the manner in which the same Dominic informed him he performed the hundred years’ penance. “A man” said he, “may depend he has accomplished it, when he has flagellated himself during the whole time the psalter was sung twenty times over.” The same author adds several circumstances which make the penances performed by the holy man appear in a still more admirable light. He, in the first place, was so dexterous as to be able to use both his hands at once, and thus laid on twice the number of lashes others could do who only used their right hand. In one instance he fustigated himself during the time the whole book of psalms was sung twice over; on another occasion he did the same while it was sung eight times; and on another, while it was repeated twelve times over; “which filled me with terror” the Cardinal adds, “when I heard the fact.”

Cardinal Damian also relates of the same Dominic, the Cuirassed, that he at last changed his discipline of rods into that of leather thongs, which was still harsher; and that he had been able to accustom himself to that laborious exercise. Nay, so punctual was he in performing the duties he had imposed upon himself, that, “when he happened to go abroad (being an hermit) he carried his scourge in his bosom, to the end that wherever he happened to spend the night, he might lose no time, and flog himself with the same regularity as usual. If the place in which he had taken his refuge for the night did not allow him to strip entirely, and fustigate himself from head to foot, he at least would severely beat his legs and head.”

FLAGELLATION OF SOVEREIGNS AND GREAT MEN.

Even sovereigns and great men, in the times we speak of, adopted for themselves the practice of voluntary flagellation.

The Emperor Henry, who lived about the year 1070, “never ventured (if we may credit Reginard’s account) to put on his imperial robes, before he had obtained the permission of a priest for that purpose, and had deserved it by confession and discipline.”

William of Nangis, in the life of St. Lewis, King of France, which he has written, relates that that prince, after he had made his confession, constantly received discipline from his confessor. To this the same author adds the following curious account: “I ought not to omit to say, concerning the confessor the king had before Geoffrey de Belloloco, and who belonged to the order of the Predicant Friars, that used to inflict upon him hard and immoderate disciplines; which the king, whose skin was rather tender, had much ado to endure. This hardship, however, he never would speak of to this confessor; but after his death, he mentioned the fact somewhat jocularly, though not without humility, to the new confessor.”

An instance of much the same nature with the facts above recited, is to be found in one of Osbertus’s books. A certain English count having contracted an unlawful marriage with one of his near relations, not only parted afterwards with her, but requested besides to be disciplined in the presence of St. Dunstan, and of the general assembly of the clergy. “Terrified” says Osbertus, “by the greatness of his offence, his obstinacy ceased; and after having renounced his unlawful wedlock, he imposed upon himself the task of penitence. As Dunstan was then presiding over a meeting of the clergy of the kingdom, which was holden according to custom, the count came into the middle of the assembly, barefooted, clothed with wool, and carrying rods in his hands; and threw himself, groaning and weeping, at the feet of St. Dunstan. This instance of piety moved the whole assembly, and Dunstan more than the rest. However, as his wish was thoroughly to reconcile the man with God, he preserved an appearance of severity in his looks, suitable to the occasion, and for a whole hour persevered in denying his request: when, at last, all the prelates having joined in the entreaties of the count, St. Dunstan granted him the indulgence he was suing for.” From the above fact, we might conclude that flagellations voluntarily submitted to, had become, even before the era of Cardinal Damian, a settled method of atoning for past sins, since St. Dunstan lived about an hundred years before the Cardinal; that is about the year 950.

Instances of sovereigns and great men requesting to undergo flagellations, must have been pretty common in the days we mention, frequent allusions being made to it in old books; among others in that old French romance, entitled, The History of the Round Table and the Feats of the Knights, Launcelot du Lac. King Arthur is supposed in it, to have summoned all the bishops who were in his army, to his chapel; and there to have requested of them, a correction of the same kind as that undergone by the count mentioned by Osbertus.

STROUD, THE NOTORIOUS CHEAT, WHIPPED AT THE CART’S-TAIL FROM CHARING
CROSS TO WHITEHALL.
]

From the times we mention, we find numerous proofs of self-flagellation being used in convents: and indeed it would have been a very extraordinary circumstance if, while the persons above-named adopted that practice, monks had rejected it. In the fifty-third article of the statutes of the Abbey of Cluny, which were collected by Peter Maurice, surnamed the Venerable, who was raised to the dignity of Abbot in the year 1122, the following account is given. “It was ordained (it is said in that Article) that that part of the Monastery which is on the left, beyond the left Choir, should remain open to no strange persons, whether Ecclesiastical or Lay, as it was formerly, and nobody admitted into it except the Monks. This was thus settled, because the Brothers had no place, except the old Church of St. Peter, in which they could practice such holy and secret exercises as are usual with religious persons; they therefore claimed the use of the above new part of the Church, both for the night and the day, that they might constantly therein make offerings of the perfumes of their prayers to God, supplicate their Creator by frequent acts of repentance and genuflexions, and mortify their bodies by often inflicting upon themselves three flagellations, either as penances for their sins or as _an increase of their merit_.”

The practice in question gained so much credit, about those times, in Monasteries, that St. Bruno, who, a few years after the death of Cardinal Damian, founded the Carthusian Order, thought it necessary to restrain his Monks in that respect; not unlikely, perhaps, with the view to check the pride which they used to derive from such exercises. In one of the statutes laid by that Saint, which Prior Guiges has collected, the following regulation is contained. “In regard to such disciplines, watchings, and other religious exercises as are not expressly enjoined by our Institution, let nobody among us perform them, except it be by the Prior’s permission.”

LADY FLAGELLANTS.

So much were flagellations grown into fashion in the days we mention, such attractions did they even seem to possess, that ladies of high rank would also enlist among the above-mentioned Whippers, and almost vied with Dominic the Cuirassed, Rodolph de Eugubio, St. Anthelm, and Abbot Poppo, in regard to the regularity with which they performed such meritorious exercises. Among those ladies, particular mention is made of St. Maria of Ognia, of St. Hardwigge, Dutchess of Poland, of St. Hildegarde, and above all of the Widow Cechald, who lived in the very times of Cardinal Damian, and performed wonderful feats in the same career, as we are informed by St. Antonius, upon the authority of Cardinal Damian himself. “Not only Men, but also Women of noble birth eagerly sought after that kind of purgatory; and the Widow of Cechaldus, a woman of great birth and dignity, gave an account, that in consequence of an obligation she had previously imposed upon herself, she had gone through the hundred years’ penance, three thousand lashes being the number allotted for every year.”

The Widow Cechald, in her own account of the wonderful penance she performed after the example of Dominic the _Cuirassed_, has neglected to inform us in what manner she performed it, and whether she imitated that holy Man in every respect, and used, for instance, both her hands at once in the operation. Be it as it may, three hundred thousand lashes, the total amount of the hundred years’ penance she went through, were certainly a very hard penance. However, as we are not to doubt either the account which the above Widow gave in that respect, or the declaration Cardinal Damian made after her, the wonder is to be explained another way, and perhaps by the nature of the instruments she made use of: they possibly were of much the same kind as those used by a certain lady, who was likewise much celebrated on account of the frequent disciplines she bestowed upon herself, and who was at last found out to use no other weapons for performing them than a bunch of feathers, or, as others have said, a fox’s tail.

CHAP. VI.—_Confessors assume to themselves a kind of flagellatory power
over their Penitents._

The submission of sovereigns to receive disciplines from the hands of their confessors, together with the accounts of such disciplines, which, though they might not always be true, were industriously circulated in public, helped much, without doubt, to increase the good opinion which people entertained of the merit of flagellations, as well as to strengthen the power of confessors in general. In fact the latter, from prescribing disciplines, soon passed to inflicting them upon their penitents with their own hands; and without loss of time converted this newly-assumed authority into an express kind privilege, to which it was a most meritorious act, on the part of penitents, readily to submit. On this occasion I shall again quote the old French book previously mentioned, which, though it be only a romance, may serve to show the opinions generally entertained by people during the times in which it was written. “If you are estranged from our Lord’s love, you cannot be reconciled to him, unless by the three following means: first, by confession of mouth; secondly, by a contrition of heart; thirdly, by works of alms and charity. Now go and make a confession in that manner, and receive discipline from the hands of thy confessors; for it is the sign of merit.”

The power of confessors of disciplining their penitents, became in process of time so generally acknowledged, that it obtained even with respect to persons who made profession of the ecclesiastical life, and superseded the laws that had been made against those who should strike an ecclesiastic. To this an allusion is made in the lines of that poet of the middle age, who has put the _summula_ of St. Raymund into Latin verses. “You are guilty of sacrilege if you have violated holy things, if you have struck a person in religious orders, or of the clergy; unless it be a holy beating, such as is performed by a teacher with respect to his disciple, or a confessor with respect to a person who confesses his sins.”

Attempts were, however, made to put a stop to these practices of priests and confessors; and so early as under Pope Adrian I. who was raised to the purple in the year 772 (which by the by shows that the power assumed by confessors was pretty ancient) a regulation was made to forbid confessors beating their penitents. “The bishop, (it is said in the Epitome of Maxims and Canons) the priest, and the deacon, must not beat those who have sinned.” But this regulation proved useless: the whole tribe of priests, as well as the first dignitaries of the church, nevertheless continued to preach up the prerogatives of confessors and the merit of flagellations; and Cardinal Pullus, that chancellor of the Roman church who has been mentioned in the foregoing chapter, did not scruple to declare, that the nakedness of the penitent, and his situation at the feet of his confessor, were additional merits in him in the eye of God, as being additional tokens of his humility.

All these different practices of stripping and flagellating devotees and penitents at length gave rise to abuses of a very serious nature, instances of which took place, we may say, every day. Numbers of confessors, in process of time, have made such religious acts as had been introduced with a view to mortification, serve to gratify their own lust and wantonness. They have tried to inculcate the same notions, as to the merit of flagellations, into the minds of their devotees of the other sex, as they had brought even kings and princes to entertain; and at last have made it a practice to inflict such corrections on their female penitents, and under that pretence to take such liberties with them, as the blessed St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Loyola, had not certainly given them the example of.

Among the many instances that might be recited of the abuses here alluded to, it will suffice to produce that of a man who wore a hood, and was girt with a cord (a Cordelier or Franciscan) who lived about the year 1566. This man’s name was Cornelius Adriasem; he was a native of Dort, and belonged to a convent in Bruges, and was a most violent preacher against the heretics, called Gueux. He had found means to persuade a certain number of women, both married and unmarried, to promise him implicit obedience, by certain oaths he made them take for that purpose, and under the specious pretence of greater piety. These women he did not indeed lash with harsh and knotted cords, but he used gently to rub their bare thighs and posteriors with willow or birch rods.

In order to show how common the above practices were become, as well as to entertain the reader, I give the following story, which is to be found in Scot’s book, entitled, “Mensa Philosophica.” “A woman,” says Scot, “who was gone to make her confession, had been secretly followed by her husband, who was jealous of her, and he laid himself in some place in the church, whence he might spy her; but as soon as he saw her led behind the altar by the priest in order to be flagellated, he made his appearance, objected that she was too tender to bear a flagellation, and offered to receive it in her stead. This proposal the wife greatly applauded, and the man had no sooner placed himself upon his knees than she exclaimed, ‘Now, my father, lay on lustily, for I am a great sinner.’”

CADIERE CASE.

A character who made some noise in the world was the celebrated Jesuit, Father Girard, and among the number of his pupils or penitents was Miss Cadiere, who certainly may also be looked upon as an illustrious character. The Cornelian disciplines which the Father used to serve upon her, were one of the subjects of the public complaint she afterwards preferred against him about the year 1730, which gave rise to a criminal lawsuit or prosecution that made a prodigious noise. It was thought to be a kind of stroke levelled at the whole Society of the Jesuits, and was known to have been stirred up by monks belonging to orders who were at open enmity with them. The Demoiselle Cadiere likewise brought against Father Girard a charge of sorcery, and of having bewitched her; in order, no doubt, to apologize for her having peaceably submitted to the licentious actions of which she accused the Father, as well as to those disciplines with which she reproached him, which she circumstantially described in the original complaint, or charge, which she preferred against him; for judges are persons who will not understand things by half words,—one must speak plain to them, and call everything by its proper name. Father Girard, as is evident from the whole tenor of the declaration of Miss Cadiere herself, had as little intention as Abelard to do any injury to his pupil or penitent.

A PRIEST WITH THE FLAGELLARIUM.

From the Original Brass preserved in the Church of Sawbrey, All
Saints, Huntingdonshire. Date, about 1380.
]

It must be observed that after all, confessors are nothing but men, and they are, under such circumstances, frequently agitated by thoughts not very consonant with the apparent gravity and sanctity of their looks. Nay, raising such thoughts in them, and in general creating sentiments of love in their confessors, are designs which numbers of female penitents—who at no time entirely cease being actuated by womanish views—expressly entertain, notwithstanding the apparent ingenuity of their confessions, and in which they but too often succeed, to their own and their frail confessors’ cost. Thus, it appears from Miss Cadiere’s declarations, that she had of herself aimed at making the conquest of Father Girard, though a man past fifty years of age, being induced to it by his great reputation as a preacher and a man of parts; and she expressly confessed that she had for a long while been making efforts to be admitted into the number of his penitents.

GAMES IN A SAXON AMPHITHEATRE.

It will be observed from the Illustration that the same Instrument—the
Birch—was used for a performing bear as for the slave represented in
Plate V.
]

ZACHARY CROFTON.

Among those who have distinguished themselves in the same career of flagellation was the Reverend Zachary Crofton, Curate of St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, who, on a certain occasion, served a Cornelian discipline upon his chambermaid, for which she afterwards sued him at Westminster.

The aforesaid Zachary Crofton, as Bishop Kennet relates in his Chronicle from Dr. Calamy’s notes, was formerly a Curate at Wrenbury, in Cheshire (it was a little before the Restoration), and he used to engage with much warmth in the religious and political quarrels of his times. His refusal to take the engagement, and dissuade others from taking it, caused him to be dismissed from his place. He was, however, afterwards provided with the curacy of St. Botolph’s, Aldgate; but as his turn for religious and political quarrels still prevailed, and he had written several pamphlets, both English and Latin, about the affairs of those times, he was sent to the Tower and deprived of his curacy. He was afterwards cast into prison likewise in his own county, and when he procured his liberty set up a grocer’s shop. While he was in the above parish of St. Botolph, “he gave,” as Dr. Calamy relates, “the correction of a school boy to his servant-maid,” for which she prosecuted him in Westminster Hall. This fact the Doctor relates as an instance of the many scrapes into which Zachary Crofton’s warm and zealous temper brought him; and he adds that on the last mentioned occasion, “he was bold to print his defence.” Indeed, this fact of Parson Crofton’s undauntedly appealing to the public in print concerning the lawfulness of the flagellation he had performed, places him, notwithstanding what Dr. Calamy may add as to the mediocrity of his parts, at least upon a level with the geniuses above mentioned, as well as any other of the kind that may be named, and cannot fail for ever to secure him a place among the most illustrious flagellators.

In fine, to this list of the persons who have distinguished themselves by the flagellations they have achieved, I think I cannot avoid adding the lady mentioned by Brantôme, who (perhaps as an exercise conducive to her health) took great delight in performing corrections of this kind with her own hands. This lady, who was moreover a very great lady, would often, as Brantôme relates, cause the ladies of her household to strip themselves, and then amuse herself in giving them slaps pretty lustily laid on. With respect to those ladies who had committed faults, she made use of good rods; and in general, she used less or greater severity, according (Brantôme says) as she proposed to make them either laugh or cry.

CHAP. VII.—_The Church at large claims the power of publicly inflicting the discipline of Flagellation. Instances of Kings and Princes who have submitted to it._

As it was the constant practice of Priests and Confessors to prescribe Flagellation as a part of the _satisfaction_ that was owing for committed sins, the opinion came at last to be established that receiving this kind of correction was not only a useful but even an indispensable act of submission: without it, penitence was thought to be a body without a soul, nor could there be any such thing as true repentance. Hence the Church itself at large came also in time to claim a power of imposing castigations of the kind we mention upon naked sinners; and a flagellation publicly submitted to has been made one of the essential ceremonies to be gone through, for obtaining the inestimable advantage of the repeal of a sentence of excommunication; the Roman Ritual expressly mentioning and requiring this test of the culprit’s contrition.

These flagellatory claims and practices of the Western Christian Church, are, we may observe, one of the objections made against it by the Greek, or Eastern Christians, as the learned M. Cotelier, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, observes in his _Monuments of the Greek Church_: “When they absolve a person from his excommunication (they say) he is stripped down to the waist, and they lash him with a scourge on that part which is bare, and then absolve him, as being forgiven his sin.”

Among the different instances of disciplines publicly inflicted by the Church upon independent Princes, we may mention that which was imposed upon Giles, Count of the Venaissin County, near Avignon. This Count having caused the Curate of a certain parish to be buried alive, who had refused to bury the body of a poor man till the usual fees were paid, drew upon himself the wrath of the Pope, who fulminated against him a sentence of excommunication. And in order to procure the repeal of it, he found it necessary to submit to a flagellation, which was inflicted upon him before the gate of the Cathedral Church of Avignon.

But no fact can be mentioned more striking, and more capable of having gratified the pride of the Clergy, at the time, than that of Henry II., King of England. This Prince having, by a few hasty, angry words he uttered on a certain occasion, been the cause of the assassination of Thomas á Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed afterwards the greatest sorrow for his imprudence: but neither the priests nor the nation would take his word on that account: they only gave credit to the reality of his repentance, when he had submitted to the all-purifying trial of a flagellation; and in order the more completely to remove all doubts in that respect he went through it publicly. The following is the account which Matthew Paris, a writer who lived about those times, has given of the transaction. “But as the slaughterers of this glorious Martyr had taken an opportunity to slay him from a few words the King had uttered rather imprudently, the King asked absolution from the Bishops who were present at the ceremony, and subjecting his bare skin to the discipline of rods, received four or five stripes from every one of the religious persons, a multitude of whom had assembled.”