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 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 school boy 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, as well as any other of the
kind that may be named, and cannot fail for ever to secure him a place
among the 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 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.
CHAP. VII.—_The Church at large claims the 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 came at last to be established that
receiving this kind of correction was not only a 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 came 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.”
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 á 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.”
Another instance of Sovereigns who have been publicly flagellated, may
also be reckoned that of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, whose Sovereignty
extended over a very considerable part of the South of France. Having
given protection in his dominions to the sect called the Albigenses,
Innocent III., the most haughty pope that ever filled the Papal Chair,
published a Croisade against him; his dominions were in consequence
seized, nor could he succeed in having them restored to him before he
had submitted to receive discipline from the hands of the Legate of the
Pope, who stripped him naked to the waist, at the door of the church,
and drove him up to the altar in that situation, all the while beating
him with rods.
The last instance of a Sovereign who received a correction from the
Church, was that of Henry IV. of France, when he was absolved of his
excommunication and heresy; and the discipline undergone by that Prince
supplies the solution for an interesting question, that may be added to
those above discussed, viz., Which is the most comfortable manner of
receiving a flagellation?—It is by proxy. This was the manner in which
the King we speak of suffered the discipline which the Church inflicted
upon him. His proxies were Messrs. D’Offat and Du Perron, who were
afterwards made Cardinals. During the performing of the ceremony of the
King’s absolution, and while the Choristers were singing the Psalm,
_Miserere mei Deus_, the Pope, at every verse, beat with a rod on the
shoulders of each of the two proxies; which shows how essential a part
of the ceremony of an absolution flagellations have been thought to be;
and also, how strictly the Church of Rome adheres to such forms as are
prescribed by its ritual, or by the _Pontifical_, as it is called.
Express mention was moreover made of the above beating, in the written
process that was drawn of the transaction. _Dominus Papa verberabat et
percutiebat humeros Procuratorum, et cujuslibet ipsorum, virga quam in
manibus habebat._
As a further indulgence to the King who was thus disciplined by proxy,
and very likely also out of regard for the age in which the ceremony was
performed, the two gentlemen who represented him, were suffered to keep
their coats on, during the operation; and the lashes seem, moreover, not
to have been laid upon them with any great degree of vigour. However,
some persons at the Court of France, either out of envy against the two
above gentlemen, on account of the commission with which the King had
honoured them, or with a view to divert themselves, had, it seems,
circulated a report that on the day of the ceremony, the 17th of
September, 1595, they had been made actually to strip in the Church, and
undergo a dreadful flagellation. This report M. D’Offat contradicts in
one of his letters, the collection of which has been printed; and he
says, that the discipline in question was performed to comply with the
rules set down in the _Pontifical_, but that “they felt it no more than
if it had been a fly that had passed over them, being so well coated as
they were.”
Very express mention of the above discipline was nevertheless made, as
hath been above observed, in the written process drawn on the occasion;
though the French Ministers would not suffer it to be joined with the
Bull of Absolution, which was sent to the King for his acceptation, and
in which no such account was contained. This, another French author
observes, did not prevent the Italians from deriving triumph from the
event, and saying that the King of France had been disciplined at Rome.
[Illustration:
SCHOOL IN THE LAST CENTURY. “_TAKE DOWN HIS BREECHES!_”
_Thackeray_
]
From the above two instances of Henry II. of England and Henry IV. of
France (the authenticity of which is beyond any doubt) we find that two
crowned heads, Kings of the two most powerful States in Europe, both of
the name of Henry, have publicly submitted to the discipline of
flagellation, either in their own person or by proxy: the one to
preserve his crown, and the other to qualify himself for taking
possession of it.
It may be added that an instance of a Sovereign submitting to a
flagellation may be seen in our days at every vacancy of the See of
Wurtzburgh, a sovereign bishopric in Germany. It is an ancient custom in
the Chapter of that Church that the person who has been elected to fill
the place of the late Bishop, must, before he can obtain his
installation, run the gauntlet, naked to the waist, between the Canons,
who are formed in two rows and supplied with rods. Some say this custom
was established in order to discourage the German Princes from being
candidates for the above bishopric; but perhaps also the Canons who
established the same had no other design than procuring the pleasure to
themselves and successors, when they should afterwards see their equal
become their Sovereign, of remembering that they had cudgelled him.
Other facts, besides that of Henry II., show that the power of the
clergy was carried as far, at least, in England as in any other country.
Bishop Goodwin relates that in the reign of Edward I., Sir Osborn
Gifford, of Wiltshire, having assisted in the escape of two nuns from
the convent of Wilton, John Peckham, who was then Archbishop of
Canterbury, made him submit, before he absolved him of his
excommunication, to be publicly whipped, on three successive Sundays, in
the Parish Church of Wilton, and also in the market and church of
Shaftesbury.
[Illustration: