_The Church at large also claims a 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 became at last to be established,
that, receiving this kind of correction, was not only an 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, became
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[95].’
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 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[96].’
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