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B'lsgellation THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

have a rapidly increasing importance after the beginning of the tenth century. Corpora, chastisements in this connection are first mentioned (evidently as something newly in vogue) in the collection of canons of Regmo of Prism (c. 960); they appear as a substitute for public penance, and at first were doubtless always executed by some outside hand, mostly by the priest. The sermons of the well-known crusade-preacher Fulco of Neuilly (q. v.) so intensified ascetic zeal in Paris about 1195 that great throngs of the penitent submitted their bared bodies to Fulco's chastising.

The beginnings of ascetic self-scourging, or flagellation proper, are still obscure. It is supposed to have originated about 1000 among certain Italian hermits, whose glowing penitential fervor became heightened into visionary and ecstatic enthusiasm, and started a religious movement which spread

throughout all Italy. The hermit s. Self- Marinus, who lived on an island of the

Scourging Po, and his pupil Romuald (d. 1027), or Flagel- as well as the latter's disciples on lation. Monte Sitrio, mutually chastised one

another with rods and lashes. Flagellation at their own hands was a customary practise, in the first half of the eleventh century, among the monks of Fontavellana (near Faenza) in Umbria, a foundation of the miracle-working hermit and penitential preacher Dominic of Foligno (d. 1031); likewise among the hermits of Luceoli in Umbria, who styled themselves disciples of St. Romuald. In both places the monk Dominicus Loricatus (d. 1060) distinguished himself by his severe self -caetigations, and they found an enthusiastic admirer and imitator in Peter Damian (q.v.), who entered the cloister of Fontavellana about 1035. To the far-reaching influence of Peter Damian, who also became prominent as the literary

a -'0 t of Ila! tion it" rapid extension then and P Zd is p Ltinen'tly afterw due.

The monastic reform movement which emanated from Cluny with the more acute sense of sin awakened by Bernard of Clairvaux, and especially the ascetic enthusiasm propagated among the people by the mendicant orders and their preaching of Christ's Passion speedily made flagellation a most widely extended and impressive means of penance and expiation. Many of the monastic orders and sisterhoods adopted the provision of systematic self-castigation, or flagellation, in their rules. No doubt, mainly through the influence of the two great mendicant orders, this ascetic practise was then further popularized in the ranks of the laity. With most of the stricter orders (among others the Trappists, Carthusians, Priests of the Oratory, Fathers of Christian Doctrine, Discalced Carmelites, Capuchins, Redemptorists, Brothers of Charity), flagellation has continued in practise down to this day. It is exercised for the most part as a devotional act, usually once or several times in the week, according to a definitely prescribed ritual. The opposition to the practise incited by the monastic reformer Jan Busch (q.v.) is an incident without parallel.

II. Flagellants: The great flagellant pilgrimage of the year 1260 was the first of its kind. A sig-

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nificant prelude thereto was the powerful religious movement called forth in Italy in 1223 by the preaching of repentance and pardon by a num-

ber of mendicant monks, particularly r. The the Dominican Giovanni da Vicenza.

Flagellants Deeper causes of both movements were of :260. the religious excitement and peni-

Venturinus tential disposition of the populace of Bergamo, consequent upon the phenomenal

1334· activity of St. Francis; the extreme i tension of feeling because of the pas- sionate conflicts between papacy and empire; and the general disorder and ruin induced by these factional contests. The situation, again, was aggra vated in 1259 by the outbreak of a violent epi demic; and above all by the expectation that was widely propagated by the adherents to the teach ing of Joachim of Fiore (q.v.), that in the year 1280 there would occur a general revolution of things, especially a purification and renovation of the Church. The direct occasion for the flagellant crusades of that year was furnished by the advent of the venerable hermit Raniero Fasani, who as early as 1258 is alleged to have founded the first flagellant fraternity in Perugia, proclaiming that an impending visitation of judgment had been revealed to him. In the autumn of 1260 the move ment overflowed all of Central and Upper Italy, still in the same year crossed the Alps and spread itself over Upper Germany and the neighboring Slavic domains. In GermanYvhowever, both spiri tual and temporal powers, as they perceived in the movement elements hostile to ecclesiastical and civil order, very decidedly opposed it as early as 1261; and with the exception of Southern France, public flagellationa and flagellant crusades north of the Alps in the period between 1261 and 1349 manifested themselves only in quite isolated in stances. In Upper Italy, however, the peniten tial sermons of the Dominican Venturinue of Ber gamo gave occasion, in 1334, to an extensive new flagellant movement which came to a standstill in the very next year.

The great flagellant movement of the years 13481349 is very closely connected with the apparition of the terrible pestilence known se the black death.

Originating in the East, by 1347 the a. The plague had found entrance into DalFlagellants matia, Upper Italy, and Southern

of r 348-49· France, and from these three centers of

contagion it spread toward Central Europe in 1348. Probably attempts to avert the threatening disaster by organizing flagellant processions were first made in Italy. . From Upper Italy the movement then took its course, as precursor of the plague-, by way of Hungary into Germany, then into Holland; Bohemia, Poland, Denmark, and even England, and reached its climax in the summer of 1349. The populace was already highly stirred up by apocalyptic expectations, and the plague was regarded as the premonitory sign of the great revolution of all things. Flagellation seemed the fitting preparation for the coming kingdom of God, and a substitute for the clergy, grown faithless to their charge. An apocryphal letter of Christ, originating in a much earlier age,