Shewing the various Instruments selected for Self-punishment.
]
“In fine, they dissect their own arms with two-edged knives, which they
use constantly to carry about them. In the meanwhile, one of them begins
to rave and sigh, and seems to draw his breath from his very bowels. He
at last feigns to fall into a kind of phrenetic fit, pretending that he
is replete with the spirit of the goddess; as if the presence of the
gods ought not to make man better, instead of rendering them disordered
and weak. But now, behold what kind of favour the Divine Will is going
to bestow upon him. He begins to vociferate, and, by purposely contrived
lies, to upbraid and accuse himself in the same manner as if he had been
guilty of having entertained bad designs against the mysteries of the
holy religion. He then proceeds to award a sentence of punishment
against himself; and at the same time grasping his scourge, an
instrument which those priests constantly wear about them, and which is
made of twisted woolen cords armed with small bones, he lashes himself
with repeated blows; all the while manifesting a wonderful, though
affected firmness, notwithstanding the violence and number of the
stripes.” From all that is above related, it is pretty evident that
those Syrian priests used (or seemed to use) themselves in this cruel
manner, only with a view to raise admiration in the minds of weak and
superstitious persons by this extraordinary affectation of superior
sanctity, and thereby to cheat them out of their money. At least this is
the conjecture made by Philippus Beroaldus, in his commentaries on the
Metamorphoses of the Golden Ass, who says, that those priests were no
better than jugglers, or rather cheats, who only aimed at catching the
money of the fools who gazed at them.
Nay, the opinion of the merit of voluntary or religious flagellations,
was in ancient times grown so universal, that we find them to have also
been practised among the Romans, who had adopted notions on that subject
of the same kind with those of the Syrians and the Egyptians, and
thought that the gods were, upon particular occasions, to be appeased by
using scourges and whips. An instance of this notion or practice is to
be met with in the Satyricon of Petronius, in which Encolpus relates,
that, being upon the sea, the people of the ship flagellated him, in
order as they thought to prevent a storm. “It was resolved (he says)
among the mariners, to give us each forty stripes, in order to appease
the tutelar deity of the ship. No time accordingly is lost, the furious
mariners set upon us with cords in their hands, and endeavour to appease
the deity by the effusion of the meanest blood: as for me, I received
three lashes, which I endured with Spartan magnanimity.”
But the most curious instance of religious flagellations among the
Romans, and indeed among all other nations, is that of the ceremony
which the Romans called Lupercalia; a ceremony which was performed in
honour of the god Pan, and had been contrived in Arcadia, where it was
in use so early as the times of king Evander, and whence it was
afterwards brought over to Italy. In this festival, a number of men used
to dance naked, as Virgil informs us. “Here (says he) the dancing Salii,
and naked Luperci.” And Servius, in his commentary on this verse of
Virgil, explains to us who these Luperci were. “They were (he says) men,
who upon particular solemnities, used to strip themselves stark naked;
in this situation they ran about the streets, carrying straps of leather
in their hands, with which they struck the women they met in their way.
Nor did those women run away from them; on the contrary, they willingly
presented the palms of their hands to them, in order to receive their
blows, imagining, through a superstitious notion received among the
Romans, that these blows, whether applied to their hands or to their
belly, had the power of rendering them fruitful, or procuring them an
easy delivery.”
The same facts are also alluded to, by Juvenal, who says in his second
satire, “Nor is it of any service to her, to offer the palms of her
hands to a nimble Lupercus.” And the ancient scholiast on Juvenal
observes on this verse, that barren women, in Rome, used to throw
themselves into the way of the Luperci when become furious, and were
beaten by them with straps.
Other authors, besides those above, have mentioned this festival of the
Lupercalia.
Among others, Festus, in his book on the Signification of Words, informs
us, that the Luperci were also called Crepi, on account of the kind of
noise (_crepitus_) which they made with their straps, when they struck
the women with them; “For it is a custom among the Romans (continues the
same author) for men to run about naked during the festival of the
Lupercalia, and to strike all the women they met with straps.”
Prudentius, I find, has also mentioned the same festival in his Roman
Martyr: “what is the meaning (says he) of this shameful ceremony? By
thus running about the streets, under the shape of Luperci, you show
that you are persons of low condition. Would you not deem a man to be
the meanest of slaves, who would run naked about the public streets, and
amuse himself with striking the young women?”
All the flagellations we have above mentioned were performed in public
solemnities, or with religious views of some kind or other; but there
were other instances of voluntary flagellations (as we learn from the
ancient authors) in which those who performed them were actuated by no
such laudable motives; or at least, had no precise intention that has
been made known to us. Such were the flagellations mentioned by St.
Jerom, in his observations on the epitaph of the widow Marcella. In
these observations, St. Jerom informs us, that there were men in Rome
silly enough to lay their posteriors bare in the public markets, or open
streets, and to suffer themselves to be lashed by a pretended conjuror.
“It is no wonder (says he) that a false diviner lashes the buttocks of
those blockheads in the middle of the streets, and in the market-place.”
And these conjurors not only lashed the persons who desired them to do
so, but they, at other times, would also lash themselves, as we learn
from Plautus, though an early writer; for those flagellations we mention
were, it seems, an old practice among the vulgar in Rome. “Pray, is it
not (says an actor in one of this author’s plays), is it not the
conjuror who lashes himself?”
Another proof of the practice of those both active and passive
flagellations which prevailed among the people in Rome, is also to be
drawn from the above mentioned book of Festus, on the Signification of
Words. Festus, explaining in that book the signification of the word
_Flagratores_, says, that this word signified “those who allowed
themselves to be whipped for money.” And M. Dacier, a person of
consummate learning in all that relates to antiquity, says in his notes
on the above author, that the word _Flagratores_, signified likewise
“those who whipped others,” he adds, that this was the more common
acceptance of the word.
Besides the flagellations just mentioned, which perhaps were also owing
to some superstitious notion or other in those persons who practised
them, we find, in ancient authors, instances of lashings and whippings
performed in a way perfectly jocular, and as a kind of innocent pastime.
None is more remarkable than that which is related by Eucian of the
philosopher Peregrinus. This Peregrinus (Eucian observes) was a cynic
philosopher of a very impudent disposition. He lived in the time of the
Emperor Trajan. After having embraced the Christian religion, he
returned to his former sect, and then used frequently to lash himself in
public in rather an indecent manner. “Surrounded by a crowd of
spectators, he handled his _pudendum_ which he exhibited as a thing, he
said, of no value. He afterwards both gave himself and received from the
bystanders, lashes upon his posteriors, and performed a number of other
juvenile tricks equally surprising as these.”
We also find in Suetonius another instance of sportive lashings or
flappings among the ancients; and these, too, practised upon no less a
person than a Roman emperor. The emperor here alluded to was the Emperor
Claudius. “When he happened” says Suetonius, “to fall asleep after his
dinner, which was a customary thing with him, they threw stones of
olives or of dates at him in order to awaken him; or sometimes the Court
buffoons would rouse him by striking him, in a jocular way, with a strap
or a scourge.”
The following is an instance of voluntary flagellation among the
ancients, which was not only free either from the superstition or
wantonness above mentioned, but was moreover produced by rational, and,
we may say, laudable motives. The instance referred to is that of the
flagellations bestowed upon himself by a certain philosopher mentioned
by Suidas. The philosopher’s name was Superanus: he was a disciple of
Lascaris. Though past the age of thirty years, he had taken a strong
resolution of applying himself to science, and began at that time to
read the works of the most famous orators. So earnest was he in his
design of succeeding in those studies which he had undertaken, that “he
never grudged himself either the rod or sharp lectures, in order to
learn all that schoolmasters and tutors teach their pupils. He even was
more than once seen, in the public baths, to inflict upon himself the
severest corrections.”
[Illustration:
THE ARMY—TIED TO THE TRIANGLES.
]
CHAP. III.—_The practice of scourging one’s self unknown to the early
Christians._
Flagellations of different kinds being universally practised among the
heathens, this circumstance must needs have given but little
encouragement to the first Christians, to imitate such mode of
correction; and we may take it for granted that they had not adopted it.
Indeed, we find that no mention is made of it in the writings of the
first, either Greek or Latin Fathers; for instance, in the Epistles of
St Ignatius, the Apologies of Justinius, the Apostolic Canons, the
Constitutions attributed to Clement the Roman, the works of Origen, the
_Stromats_ of Clement of Alexandria, and all the works in general of
Eusebius of Cæsares, of St. Chrysostom, of St. Basil, and of St. Basil
of Selucia. In all the above authors, no mention, I say, is made of
flagellations; at least, of those of a voluntary kind; unless we are
absolutely to explain in a literal manner, passages in which they
manifestly spoke in a figurative sense. We may therefore safely
conclude, that the first Christians had no notion of those cruel
exercises which prevailed in later days, and that to flay one’s hide
with scourges or rods, as is in these times the practice of numberless
devotees, in or out of religious orders, were practices unknown to them.
Regard for truth, however, obliges us to mention one or two instances of
flagellations, which are to be found in the history of the ancient
eastern Anchorites, written by Theodoret, who has been above mentioned;
but those instances are such, that certainly no argument can be derived
from them, to prove that voluntary flagellations were in use in the
times in which those Anchorites lived.
One of those instances is to be found in the life of Abrahames. It is
related in it, that the Christian populace having attempted to seize the
sheets in which the body of that saint was wrapped, the lictors drove
them back with whips. Now it is obvious to everyone, that the lashes
which these lictors bestowed, to and fro and at random, upon those men
who beset them, were not willingly received by the latter. And the same
may certainly with equal truth be observed of the flagellations
inflicted upon the people (which is the second instance mentioned by
Theodoret) by the collectors of the public tributes, who, he says, used
to collect them with scourges and whips.
The rules of the first religious orders founded in the west, have been
likewise silent as to the voluntary use of thongs and whips. The first
rule, for instance, prescribed to the Benedictines, that ancient western
order, does not mention a word about self-flagellation; and the same
silence is to be observed in the rules framed by Ovisiesius, Abbot of
Tabennæ; by St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles; by St. Isidorus, Bishop of
Sevil; by St. Tetradius; and a number of others, whose rules Holstenius
has likewise collected. From thence we may therefore conclude, that
Christians in those times, had no notion of beatings and scourgings
which are now so prevalent, and that the upper and lower disciplines
were alike unknown among them.
The only author of weight, in the days we speak of, who seems to have
made any mention of voluntary flagellations being practised in the
ancient monasteries is St. John Climax, who according to some accounts,
lived in the middle of the fourth, and according to others, only in the
sixth century. This author relates, that, in a certain monastery, “some,
among the monks, watered the pavement with their tears; while others,
who could not shed any, beat themselves.”