20
October 1349 A.D. Errors
of the Flagellants
Does God want our blood? People who do not properly
understand the full pardon offered by Christ's atonement may try to appease God
by their own sufferings. Some attempt desperate remedies. This was the case
with the flagellants, bands of men who flogged themselves publicly.
With the tide of monasticism came monks who whipped
themselves or each other for their errors. One who was especially noted for
this practice was Peter Damien, who hoped to suppress his lusts by scourging
himself.
During a dreadful plague in 1259, common folk of
Europe took up the idea. God was angry at the world. Something had to be done
to turn away his wrath. Gangs of men gathered to flog themselves for their own
sins and the sins of the world. Stripped to the waist they marched in
processions, sometimes numbering ten thousand penitents, whipping themselves
until they bled. When religious authorities opposed the movement, it died out
in 1261, only to rear its head in uglier forms later.
When the black plague swept Europe, killing a
quarter or more of the population, it brought terror. Bands of hysterical
flagellants sprang up again. Among the errors taught by flagellants was that
Christ was about to destroy the world but that the Virgin Mary had interceded
and won a reprieve for any man who would join them for 33 days. As their blood
flowed, they claimed it was mingling with Christ's blood to save the world and
that their penitence would preserve the world from perishing. Many other manias
also emerged during this period, such as uncontrollable dancing and Jew hunts.
The flagellants flourished into the fourteenth
century. Following an outbreak of the whippings in France, the University of
Paris appealed to the pope to suppress the heresy. On this day, October 20, 1349, after careful
inquiry, Pope Clement VI sent letters to the bishops in Western Europe
condemning the practice and teachings of the flagellants. Even this measure did
not fully succeed. Groups of flagellants appeared again and again over the next
century and a half. Public flagellation occurred in Italy until the nineteenth
century and in Mexico, South America, the Philippines and other countries into
the twentieth century.
Bibliography:
1. "Flagellants." The
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
2. "Flagellation,
Flagellants." New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1954.
3. Montor, Chevalier Artaud de.
Lives and Times of the Popes. New York: Catholic Publication Society of
America, 1911.
4. Toke, Leslie A. St. L.
"Flagellants." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton,
1914.
Last updated April, 2007.
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