From History of Flagellation Among Different Nations. New York: Medical Publishing Co., 1930: pp. 68-75.
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 69 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acknowledged, that it obtained even with respect to persons who made profession of the ecclesiastical life, and superseded the laws that had been made against those who should strike an ecclesiastic.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.”
Attemptes 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 70 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 71 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 has 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.’ ”
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, 72 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.
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 73 their looks. Nay, raising such thoughts in them, and in general creating sentiments of love in their confessors, are designs which umbers of female penitents — who at no time entirely cease being actuated by womanish views — expressly entertain, notwithstanding the apparent ingenuity of their confessors, 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 ad 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.
A PRIEST WITH THE FLAGELLARIUM.
From the Original Brass preserved in the Church of Sawbrey, All Saints, Huntingdonshire.
Date, about 1380.
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.
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 74 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 schoolboy 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, a well as any other of the kind that may be named, and cannot fail for ever to secure him a place among he 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 75 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.