Exercising the rods upon a Saxon slave. From the Harleian MS., No.
603. It was not unusual in those days for servants to be scourged to
death by (or by order of) their mistresses. The aptness with which
the Saxon ladies made use of the scourge is illustrated by one of
William of Malmesbury’s anecdotes, who tells us that when King
Ethelred was a child he once so irritated his mother that, not
having a whip, she beat him with some candles, which were the first
thing that fell under her hand, until he was almost insensible. “On
this account he dreaded candles during the rest of his life, to such
a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be
introduced in his presence.”
]
This power of inflicting the brotherly correction of whipping was also
possessed by the abbots and priors in all the ancient monasteries;
though, at the same time, it was expressly provided by the rules of the
different orders, that the same should be assumed by no other persons.
“Let no man, except the abbot or him to whom he has entrusted his
authority, presume to excommunicate, or flog a brother.”
When the faults committed by monks were of a grievous kind, the abbot
was not only charged to correct them by means of his discretionary power
of flagellation, but he was moreover expressly directed to exert that
power with rigour. In the rule framed by St. Fructuosus, Bishop of
Braga, it is ordained with respect to a monk who is convicted of being a
liar, a thief, or a striker, “That if, after being warned by the elder
monks he neglects to mend his manners, he shall, on the third time, be
exhorted in the presence of all the brethren, to leave off his bad
practices. If he still neglects to reform, let him be flagellated with
the utmost severity.” The above rule of St. Fructuosus is mentioned by
Ecbert, in his Collection of Canons, which together with his Councils of
England, has been published by Spelman.
St. Ferreol, Bishop of Usez, framed a rule for monks, which like that
above, makes severe provisions against such monks as are addicted to the
practice of thieving. “With regard to the monk who stands convicted of
theft, if we may still call him a monk, he shall be treated like him who
is guilty of adultery for the second time; let him therefore be
chastised with the whip, and with great rigour too. The same punishment
ought to be inflicted upon him as upon a fornicator, since it may be
justly suspected that his lewdness has induced him to commit theft.”
Committing indecencies with other monks, or with boys, were offences
which the Statutes of Convents likewise directed to be punished by
severe flagellations; and the above St. Fructuosus, Bishop of Braga,
ordered that the punishment should, in the above case, be inflicted
publicly. “If a monk” it is said in his rule, “is used to tease boys and
young men, or is caught in attempting to give them kisses, or in any
other indecent action, and the fact be proved by competent witnesses,
let him be publicly whipped.”
Refusing to make proper satisfaction to the abbot for offences
committed, or in general persevering in denying them, were also grievous
faults in the eye of the first founders, or reformers, of monastic
orders. In the rule framed fifty years after that of St. Benedict, in
order to improve it, the following direction was contained: “If the
brothers who have been excommunicated for their faults, persevere so far
in their pride, as to continue, on the ninth hour of the next day, to
refuse to make proper satisfaction to the abbot, let them be confined,
even till their death, and lashed with rods.” Nor is the rule of the
above-mentioned Bishop of Braga less severe against those monks whose
pride prevents them from making a proper confession of the offences they
may have committed. “To him” it is said in that rule, “who, through
pride and inclination to argue, continues to deny his fault, let an
additional and severer flagellation be imparted.”
The habit of holding wanton discourses, or soliciting the brethren to
wickedness, was also deemed by the founders of religious orders to
deserve severe flagellations; and St. Pacom ordered in his rule, which
it was said had been dictated to him by an angel, that such as had been
guilty of the above faults, and had been thrice admonished, should be
publicly lashed before the gate of the convent.
Attempts to escape from monasteries, were, even in very early times,
punished by flagellation. We read in Sozomenius, that St. Macarius of
Alexandria, Abbot of Nitria in Thebaid, who had five thousand monks
under his direction, ordered that chastisement to be inflicted upon
those who should attempt to climb over the walls of the monasteries. “If
anyone continues in his wickedness, and says, I can no longer bear to
stay here, but I will pack up my things and go where God will direct me;
let any one of the brothers inform the prior, and the prior the abbot,
of the fact; let then the abbot assemble the brothers, and order the
offender to be brought before them and chastised with rods.”
The holy founders of religious orders have also been very severe in
their provisions against such monks as seek for familiarities with the
other sex. In the rule of the Monastery of Agaunus, it was ordained,
that, “If any monk had contracted the bad habit of looking on women with
concupiscence, the abbot ought to be informed of the fact, and bestow
upon the monk a corrective discipline; and that, if he did not mend his
manners in consequence thereof, he ought to be expelled from the society
as a scabby sheep, lest he should ruin others by his example.” The above
monastery had been built by Sigismond, King of Burgundy, to the honour
of one hundred and twenty Martyrs of the Theban Region, of which St.
Maurice was the commander, under the reign of the Emperor Maximinus.
The above-quoted rule of St. Fructuosus, is no less severe against those
monks who seek for the company of women. In the fifteenth chapter, which
treats of the lewd and quarrelsome, it is ordered, that, “if after
having received proper reprehensions they persist in their wicked
courses, they shall be corrected by repeated lashings.” And St.
Columbanus, who is the first who instituted the monastic life in France,
and has written a rule as a supplement to that of St. Benedict, also
expresses himself with great severity against such monks as are
convicted of having barely conversed with a woman in the absence of
witnesses; for though there are faults for which he orders only six
lashes to be given, yet, in the case here mentioned he prescribes two
hundred. “Let the man who has been alone with a woman, and talked
familiarly to her, either be kept on bread and water for two days, or
receive two hundred lashes.”
CHAP. V.—_Discretionary power of employing disciplines, established in
the convents of Nuns, and lodged in the hands of the Abbesses and
Prioresses._
The holy founders of religious orders considered flagellations as being
less useful in the convents of women than in those of men; and in the
rules they have framed for them, they have accordingly ordered that kind
of correction to be inflicted upon those whose bad conduct made it
necessary.
This chastisement of flagellation, upon women who make a profession of a
religious life, is no new thing in the world. It was the chastisement
appropriated to the vestals, in ancient Rome; and we find in the
historians, that when faults had been committed by them in the discharge
of their functions, it was commonly inflicted upon them by the hands of
the priests, or sometimes of the great priest himself.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus relates, that the virgin Urbinia was lashed
by the priests, and led in procession through the town.
The high priest, Publius Licinius, ordered, as we read in Valerius
Maximus, “that a certain vestal who had suffered the sacred fire to be
extinguished, should be lashed and dismissed.”
Julius likewise relates, “that the fire in the Temple of Vesta having
happened to be extinguished, the virgin was whipped by the high priest,
M. Æmilus, and promised never to offend again in the same manner.” And
Festus says in his book, that “whenever the fire of Vesta came to be
extinguished, the virgins were lashed by the great priest.”
Severities of the like kind have been deemed necessary to be introduced
into the convents of modern nuns, by the holy fathers who have framed
religious rules for them.
In that very ancient rule for the conduct of nuns, which is contained in
epistle cix. of St. Augustin, the mortification of discipline is
prescribed to the prioress herself. “Let her,” it is said in the above
rule, “be ever ready to receive discipline, but never impose it but with
fear.”[2]
Footnote 2:
NUM. xii. “Disciplinam lubens habeat, metuens imporat.”
Cesarius, Archbishop of Arles, in the rule framed by him which is
mentioned with praise by several ancient authors, such as Genadius and
Gregory of Tours, prescribes the discipline of flagellation to be
inflicted upon nuns who have been guilty of faults; and enters, besides,
into several particulars about the propriety as well as usefulness of
this method of correction. “It is just,” he says, “that such as have
violated the institutions contained in the rule should receive an
adequate discipline; it is fit that in them should be accomplished what
the Holy Ghost has in former times prescribed through Solomon: He who
loves his child, frequently applies the rod to it.”
St. Donat, Archbishop of Bezancon, in the rule he has framed for nuns,
has expressed the same paternal disposition towards them as Archbishop
Cesarius has done: he recommends flagellations as excellent methods of
mending the morals of such of them as are wickedly inclined, or careless
in performing their religious duties; and he determines the different
kinds of faults for which the above correction ought to be bestowed upon
them, as well as the number of the blows that are to be inflicted. The
above rule of St. Donat has been mentioned with much praise by the Monk
Jonas, in his account of the life of St. Columbanus, which the venerable
Beda has inserted in the third volume of his works.
In that rule, commonly called the rule of a father, which St. Benedict,
Bishop of Aniana, in his book on the concordance of rules, and Smaragdus
in his commentaries on the rule of St. Benedict, have both mentioned,
provisions of the same kind as those are made for the correction of
nuns. “If a sister,” it is said in that rule, “that has been several
times admonished, will not mend her conduct, let her be excommunicated
for a while in proportion to the degree of her fault; if this kind of
correction proves useless, let her then be chastised by stripes.”
Striking a sister has likewise been looked upon as an offence of a
grievous kind; and St. Aurelian, in the rule he has framed for nuns,
orders a discipline to be inflicted on such as have been guilty of it.
To the above regulations, Archbishop Cesarius has added another, which
is, that the corrections ought for the sake of example to be inflicted
in the presence of all the sisters. “Let also the discipline be bestowed
upon them in the presence of the congregation, conformable to the
precepts of the apostle. Confute sinners in the presence of all.”
THE METHODS OF SELF MORTIFICATION AS APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN PRACTISED IN
EARLY TIMES.
It is expressly said of St. Pardulph, a Benedictine Monk and Abbot, who
lived during the time of Charles Martel, about the year 737, that he
used in Lent-time to strip himself stark naked, and order one of his
disciples to lash him. The fact is related in the life of that saint,
formerly written by an author who lived about the same time; and it was,
two hundred years afterwards, put into more elegant language by Yvus,
Prior of Clugny, at the desire of monks of St. Martial, in the town of
Limoges. Hugh Menard a Benedictine Father, and a very learned man in all
that relates to ecclesiastical antiquities, has inserted part of it in
his book, entitled, “Observations on the Benedictine Martyrology.” The
following is the passage in St. Pardulph’s Life, which is here alluded
to. “St. Pardulph seldom went out of his cell; whenever sickness obliged
him to bathe, he would previously make incisions in his own skin. During
Lent he used to strip himself entirely naked, and ordered one of his
disciples to lash him with rods.”
St. William, Duke of Aquitain, who lived in the time of Charlemagne,
that is about the year 800, and many years before Cardinal Damian; is
said to have also used flagellations, as a means of voluntary penance.
Arduinus, the writer of the holy duke’s life, and a contemporary writer,
says, that “it was commonly reported that the duke did frequently, for
the love of Christ, cause himself to be whipped, and that he then was
alone with the person who assisted him.” Haeftenus, Superior of the
Monastery of Affigen, relates the same fact, and says that the Duke of
Aquitain “took a great delight in sleeping upon a hard bed, and that he
moreover lashed himself with a scourge.” Hugh Menard, the learned
Benedictine just now mentioned, has adopted the testimony of Arduinus,
and upon that writer’s authority inserted the above fact in his
“Observations on the Benedictine Martyrology.”
Other persons, who lived before the times of Cardinal Damian, are also
mentioned by different writers as having practised voluntary
flagellations. Gaulbertus, Abbot of Pontoise, who lived about the year
900, upon a certain occasion, “severely flagellated himself (as M. Du
Cange relates in his glossary) with a scourge made of knotted thongs.”
And the above-mentioned Haeftenus, Prior of Affigen, has advanced that
the same practice was followed by St. Romuald, who lived about the same
time as Gualbertus, and by the monks of the Camaldolian order, who were
settled in Sitria.
Another early instance of voluntary flagellations occurs in the life of
Guy, Abbot of Pomposa. Heribert, it is said, Archbishop of Ravenna,
formed the design of pulling down the Monastery of Pomposa; and this
piece of news caused both Abbot Guy and his monks “to lock themselves up
in the capitular house, and to lash themselves every day, for several
days, with rods.” Abbot Guy was born in the year 956; and he was made
Abbot of Pomposa in the year 998, in which capacity he continued
forty-eight years.
All the facts above related were anterior in the year 1056, the time at
which Peter Damian de Honestis was raised to the Cardinalship by Pope
Stephen IX; and it is evident from them, that the practice of
voluntarily flagellating oneself as a penance for committed sins, had
been adopted before the period in question, though it cannot be said to
have been then universally prevalent; at least only a few instances of
it have been left us by the writers of those times. But at the era we
mention, this pious mode of self correction, owing to the public and
zealous patronage with which the above Cardinal favoured it, acquired a
vast degree of credit and grew into universal esteem; and then it was
that persons of religious dispositions were everywhere seen to arm
themselves with whips, rods, thongs, and besoms, and lacerate their own
hides, in order to draw upon themselves the favour of heaven.
We are informed of this fact by the learned Cardinal Baronius, in his
Ecclesiastical Annals. “At that time” he says, “the laudable usage of
the faithful of beating themselves with whips made for that purpose,
though Peter Damian may not be said to have been the author of it, was
much promoted by him in the christian church; in which he followed the
example of the blessed Dominic the Cuirassed, a holy hermit, who had
subjected himself to his authority.”
The same Cardinal Damian has moreover left numerous accounts of
voluntary flagellations practised by certain holy men of his times; but
these are surely more apt to create our admiration, than to excite us to
imitate them. Indeed the flagellations he mentions cannot be proposed to
the faithful as examples they ought to follow; and they were executed
with such dreadful severity, as makes it impossible for the most
vigorous men to go through the like, without a kind of miracle.
In the Life of the Monk St. Rodolph, who was afterwards made Bishop
Eugubio, the Cardinal relates, “That this holy man would often impose
upon himself a penance of an hundred years, and that he performed it in
twenty days, by the strenuous application of a broom, without neglecting
the other common methods used in doing penance. Every day, being shut up
in his cell, he recited the whole psalter (or book of psalms) at least
one time when he could not two, being all the while armed with a besom
in each hand, with which he incessantly lashed himself.”
The account which the Cardinal has left of Dominic, surnamed the
Cuirassed, is not less wonderful. “His constant practice” he says, “is,
after stripping himself naked, to fill both his hands with rods and then
vigorously flagellate himself; this he does in his times of relaxation.
But during Lent-time, or when he really means to mortify himself, he
frequently undertakes the hundred years’ penance; and then he every day
recites the psalter at least three times over, all the while flogging
himself with besoms.”
Cardinal Damian then proceeds to relate the manner in which the same
Dominic informed him he performed the hundred years’ penance. “A man”
said he, “may depend he has accomplished it, when he has flagellated
himself during the whole time the psalter was sung twenty times over.”
The same author adds several circumstances which make the penances
performed by the holy man appear in a still more admirable light. He, in
the first place, was so dexterous as to be able to use both his hands at
once, and thus laid on twice the number of lashes others could do who
only used their right hand. In one instance he fustigated himself during
the time the whole book of psalms was sung twice over; on another
occasion he did the same while it was sung eight times; and on another,
while it was repeated twelve times over; “which filled me with terror”
the Cardinal adds, “when I heard the fact.”
Cardinal Damian also relates of the same Dominic, the Cuirassed, that he
at last changed his discipline of rods into that of leather thongs,
which was still harsher; and that he had been able to accustom himself
to that laborious exercise. Nay, so punctual was he in performing the
duties he had imposed upon himself, that, “when he happened to go abroad
(being an hermit) he carried his scourge in his bosom, to the end that
wherever he happened to spend the night, he might lose no time, and flog
himself with the same regularity as usual. If the place in which he had
taken his refuge for the night did not allow him to strip entirely, and
fustigate himself from head to foot, he at least would severely beat his
legs and head.”