[107] The discipline or scourge was classed with fasting as a method of
mastering the flesh and of penance. See, e.g., Lea, _History of Auricular
Confession_, vol. ii, p. 122. For many centuries bishops and priests used
themselves to apply the discipline to their penitents. At first it was
applied to the back; later, especially in the case of female penitents, it
was frequently applied to the nates. Moreover, partial or complete nudity
came to be frequently demanded, the humiliation thereby caused being
pleasant in the sight of God.
[108] Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, ch. xv; Lea, _History of
Sacerdotal Celibacy_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 278; Kiernan, "Asceticism as an
Auto-erotism," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Aug., 1911.
[109] This is the opinion of Löwenfeld, _Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution_,
p. 43.
[110] Thus, Dühren (Iwan Bloch) remarks (_Der Marquis de Sade und Seine
Zeit_, 1901, p. 211): "It is well known that England is today the classic
land of sexual flagellation." See the same author's _Geschlechtsleben in
England_, vol. ii, ch. vi. In America it appears also to be common, and
Kiernan mentions that in advertisements of Chicago "massage shops" there
often appears the announcement: "Flagellation a Specialty." The reports of
police inspectors in eighteenth century France show how common
flagellation then was in Paris. It may be added that various men of
distinguished intellectual ability of recent times and earlier are
reported as addicted to passive flagellation; this was the case with
Helvétius.
[111] A full bibliography of flagellation would include many hundred
items. The more important works on this subject, in connection with the
sexual impulse, are enumerated by Eulenburg, in his _Sadismus und
Masochismus_. An elaborate history of flagellation generally is now being
written by Georg Collas, _Geschichte des Flagellantismus_, vol. i, 1912.
[112] Löwenfeld, _Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution_, p. 43.
[113] _Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1909, p. 361. He brings forward
the evidence of a reliable and cultured man who at one time sought to
obtain the pleasures of passive sexual flagellation. But in spite of his
expectation and good will the only result was to disperse every trace of
sexual desire.
[114] E.g., Kiefer, _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Aug., 1908.
[115] Féré, _Revue de Médecine_, August, 1900. In this paper Féré brings
together many interesting facts concerning flagellation in ancient times.
[116] Schmidt-Heuert (_Monatschrift für Harnkrankheiten_, 1906, ht. 7)
argues that it is not so much the actual use of the rod as playful,
threatening and mysterious suggestions playing around it which nowadays
gives it sexual fascination.
[117] Moll (_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, Bd. 1, p. 18)
points out that these emotions frequently suffice to cause sexual
emissions in schoolboys.
[118] As Eulenburg truly points out, the circumstances attending the
whipping of a woman may be sexually attractive, even in the absence of any
morbid impulse. Such circumstances are "the sight of naked feminine charms
and especially--in the usual mode of flagellation--of those parts which
possess for the sexual epicure a peculiar esthetic attraction; the idea of
treating a loved, or at all events desired, person as a child, of having
her in complete subjection and being able to dispose of her despotically;
and finally the immediate results of whipping: the changes in skin-color,
the to and fro movements which simulate or anticipate the initial
phenomena of coitus." (Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 121.)
[119] See the article on Udall in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.