In one of the Arabian Tales, called “The one thousand and one Nights:”
an original book, and which contains true pictures of the manners of
that nation, is a story which is well worth reminding the reader of,
that of a certain Cobler, whose name, if I mistake not, was Shak-Abak.
This Cobler having fallen in love with a beautiful lady belonging to
some wealthy man, or man of power, of whom he had had a glance through
the window of her house, would afterwards keep for whole hours every
day, staring at the window. The lady, who proposed to make game of him,
one day sent one of her female slaves to introduce him to her, and then
gave him to understand, that if he could overtake her by running after
her through the apartments of her house he would have the pleasure of
her company; he was besides told, that in order to run more nimbly, he
must strip to the shirt. To all this Shak-Abak agreed: and after a
number of turns up and down the house, he was at last enticed into a
long, dark, and narrow passage, at the farthest extremity of which an
open door was to be perceived; he made to it as fast as he could, and
when he had reached it, rushed headlong through it; when, to his no
small astonishment, the door instantly shut upon him, and he found
himself in the middle of a public street of Bagdat, which was chiefly
inhabited by shoemakers. A number of these latter, struck at the sudden
and strange appearance of the unfortunate Shak-Abak, who, besides
stripping to his shirt, had suffered his eye-brows to be shaved, laid
hold of him, and, as the Arabian Author relates, soundly lashed him with
their straps.
* * * * *
Various stories were given out by the monks of the chastisement received
by persons who had persecuted them. This misfortune happened to a
certain servant of the Emperor Nicephorus, who, not satisfied with
exacting unjust tributes from the common people with great rigour,
offered afterwards to use the monasteries in the same manner. “The
Emperor,” says the author from whom this fact is extracted, “sent one of
the grooms of his bedchamber to receive the usual tribute. As he was a
man exceedingly eager after money and unlawful gain, he committed great
oppressions both on the common citizens and the inhabitants of the
monastery of St. Nicon; for the government of cities and the care of
levying duties are usually entrusted, not to the just and mild, but to
hard-hearted and inhuman persons. The monks, who were possessed of no
money, endeavoured to soothe the above unmerciful man by their
discourses; but he, thirsty after gold, was as deaf to their prayers as
the asp to conjurgations, and made no more account of their
remonstrances, than, to use the words of Scripture, of ‘the crackling of
thorns under a pot.’ On the contrary, his wrath and insolence increased
farther, he caused several of them to be thrown into a jail, and
prepared to plunder the monastery. The remaining monks then applied to
their Saint for assistance, who presently made them experience the happy
effects of it; for during the following night he appeared to the groom
with a threatening indignant aspect, and lashed him severely; then
speaking to him, told him, for his words ought to be recorded: ‘Thou
hast thrown the heads of the monastery into chains, if thou dost not
release them instantly, thy death shall be the consequence.’”
* * * * *
It was politely adopted in Denmark, and even in the Court of that
country, towards the latter end of the last century, as we are informed
by Lord Molesworth, in his “Account of Denmark.” It was the custom, his
Lordship says, at the end of every hunting-match at Court, that, in
order to conclude the entertainment with as much festivity as it had
begun, a proclamation was made,—if any could inform against any person
who had infringed the known laws of hunting, let him stand forth and
accuse. As soon as the contravention was ascertained, the culprit was
made to kneel down between the horns of the stag that had been hunted;
two of the gentlemen removed the skirts of his coat; when the King,
taking a small long wand in his hand, laid a certain number of blows,
which was proportioned to the greatness of the offence, on the culprit;
whilst, in the meantime (the noble author adds) the huntsmen with their
brass horns, and the dogs with their loud openings, proclaimed the
King’s justice and the criminal’s punishment.
* * * * *
In Spain, when gentlemen proposed to discipline themselves in honour of
their mistresses, and were of considerable rank, the ceremony was
performed with great state and magnificence. Madame D’Aunoy relates that
the day the Duke of Vejar disciplined himself, an hundred white wax
candles were carried before the procession: the Duke was preceded by
sixty of his friends (vassals perhaps, or dependents) and followed by an
hundred, all attended by their own pages and footmen; and besides them
there were no doubt abundance of priests and crucifixes.
As these Spanish gallants have no less honour than devotion, battles
frequently take place between them, for the assertion of their just
prerogatives; and this, for instance, seldom fails to be the case when
two processions happen to meet in the same street: each party think they
are entitled to a most honourable side of the way; and a scuffle is the
consequence. This happened at the time of the procession of the
above-mentioned Duke of Vejar: another procession, conducted by the
Marquis of Villahermosa, entered the same street, at the other end of
it: the light-armed troops, otherwise the servants with their lighted
long wax candles, began the engagement, bedaubing the clothes, and
singeing the whiskers and hair of each other; then the body of infantry,
that is to say the gentlemen with their swords, made their appearance,
and continued the battle; and at last the two noble champions themselves
met, and began a fight with their disciplines. Another instance of
penitents using their disciplines as weapons, is to be found in Don
Quixote (where two noble champions began a smart engagement with each
other); their self-flagellations were for a while changed, with great
rapidity, into mutual ones, and their weapons being demolished, they
were about to begin a closer kind of fight, when their friends
interfered, and parted them: the high, sharp, and stiff cap of one of
the two combatants, which had fallen in the dirt, was taken up, properly
cleansed, and again placed upon his head; and the two processions went
each their own course, dividing as chance determined it. The whole
ceremony was afterwards concluded with splendid entertainments which
each of the noble disciplinants gave in their houses, to the persons who
had formed their respective processions, during which abundance of fine
compliments were paid them on their piety, their gallantry, and their
elegance in giving themselves discipline.
[Illustration:
HENRY II. SCOURGED AT THE ALTAR OF THOMAS A BECKETT.
]
A certain friar, in a convent of the Benedictine Order, found means to
procure, besides plenty of good wine, a certain number of dishes
extremely nice and well seasoned, several of which were expressly
forbidden by the institutes of the Order; and he invited a select party
of brothers to partake of his fare. As they could not, with any degree
of safety, carry on the entertainment in the cell of any of them, they
thought of repairing to one of the cellars of the house, where they hid
themselves in one of those wide and shallow tuns (about eight or nine
feet in diameter, and three or four deep) which serve in the making of
wines. The Abbot, in the meanwhile, missing so many of the monks from
the convent, went in search of them through all the different
apartments; being unable to find them, he at last went down into the
cellars, and soon perceived whereabout they lay: he stepped up to the
place, and, on a sudden, made his appearance over the edge of the tun.
The monks were prodigiously alarmed at this unexpected appearance of the
Abbot; and there was none among them but who would have gladly
compromised the affair, by giving up his remaining share of the
entertainment, and submitting to instant dismission. But the Abbot,
contrary to all hope, put on a mild and cheerful look; he kindly
expostulated with the monks on their having made a secret of the affair
to him; expressed to them the great pleasure it would have been for him
to be one of their party; and added, that he should still be very glad
to be admitted to partake of the entertainment. The monks answered, by
all means: the Abbot thereupon leaped into the tun; sat down among them;
partook of their excellent wine and well-seasoned dishes with the
greatest freedom; and, in short, spent an hour or two with them in the
tun, in the most agreeable and convivial manner.
At last the Abbot thought proper to withdraw, and as soon as he had
taken his leave, some of the monks began to admire his extraordinary
condescension, while the others were not without fears that it foreboded
some misfortune. Indeed, the latter were in the right; for the reader
must not think that the Abbot had acted in the manner above described,
out of any sudden temptation he had felt at the sight of the jollity of
the friars, or of the dainties that composed the entertainment: by no
means; his design had only been, by thus making himself guilty along
with them, to be the better able to show them afterwards the way to
repentance, and thereby derive good from evil. In fact, the next day, a
chapter having been summoned, the Abbot desired the Prior to fill his
place, while himself took his seat among the rest of the monks. Soon
after the chapter was met, he stepped forward into the middle of the
assembly, accused himself of the sin he had committed the day before,
and requested that discipline might be inflicted upon him. The Prior
objected much to a discipline being inflicted on the Abbot; but the
latter having insisted, his request was complied with. The other monks
were at first greatly astonished, but seeing no possibility of keeping
back on that occasion, they stepped into the middle of the chapter, and
likewise confessed their sin; when the Abbot, by means of a proper
person he had selected for the purpose, got a lusty discipline to be
inflicted upon every one of his late fellow-banqueters.
* * * * *
The celebrated fathers of St. Lazare, in Paris, whose school was
otherwise named the “Seminary of the good Boys” (_des bons enfans_) have
no less recommended themselves by the regularity of the disciplines they
inflicted, than the Reverend Father Jesuits. They were even superior to
the latter, in regard to those recommendatory flagellations mentioned
above, which were administered to such persons as were, by some means or
other, induced to deliver letters to the fathers for that purpose. Being
situated in the metropolis, the seminary carried on a very extensive
business in that way. Fathers or mothers who had undutiful sons, tutors
who had unruly pupils, uncles who were instructed with the education of
ungovernable nephews, masters who had wickedly-inclined apprentices,
whom they durst not themselves undertake to correct, applied to the
fathers of St. Lazare, and by properly feeing them, had their wishes
gratified. Indeed the fathers had found means to secure their doors with
such good bolts, they were so well stocked with the necessary implements
for giving disciplines, and had such a numerous crew of stout Cuiftres
to inflict them, that they never failed to execute any job they had
engaged to perform, and without minding either age, courage, or
strength, were at all times ready to undertake the most difficult
flagellations. So regular was the trade carried on, by the good fathers
in that branch of business, that letters of the above kind directed to
them, were literally notes of hand payable on sight; and provided such
notes did but come to hand, whoever the bearer might be, the fathers
were sure to have them discharged with punctuality.
This kind of business, as it was carried on for a number of years,
frequently gave rise to accidents, or mistakes, of rather a ludicrous
kind. Young men who had letters to carry to the house of St. Lazare, the
contents of which they did not mistrust, would often undesignedly charge
other persons to carry the same for them, either on account of their
going to that part of the town, or for some other reason of a like kind:
and the unfortunate bearer, who suspected no harm, had no sooner
delivered the dangerous letter with which he had suffered himself to be
entrusted, than he was collared, and rewarded for his good-nature by a
severe and unexpected flagellation.
Ladies, it is likewise said, who had been forsaken, or otherwise
ungenteelly used by their admirers, when every other means of revenge
failed, would also recur to the ministry of the fathers of St. Lazare.
Either by making interest with other persons, or using some
artfully-contrived scheme, the provoked fair one endeavoured to have the
gentleman who caused her grief, inveigled into the house of the
seminary: at the same time she took care to have a letter to recommend
him, sent there from some unknown quarter, with proper fees in it; for
that was a point that must not be neglected: and when the gentleman came
afterwards to speak with the fathers, he was no sooner found by them,
either from the nature of the business he said he came upon, or other
marks, to be the person mentioned in the letter they had before
received, than they showed him into an adjoining room, where this
treacherous and deceitful lover was immediately seized, mastered, and
everything in short was performed that was requisite to procure ample
satisfaction to the fair injured lady.
It is also said (for a number of stories are related on that subject,
and the Seminary of St. Lazare was become for a while an object of
terror to all Paris) that schemes of the most abusive kind were in
latter times carried on, through the connivance which the fathers began
to show at the knavery of certain persons; and this indeed seems to be a
well-ascertained part of the story. Abuses of the same kind as those
which once prevailed in mad-houses established in this country, were at
last practised in the seminary. Men possessed of estates which some near
relations wanted to enjoy, or whom it was the interest of other persons
to keep for a while out of the way, were inveigled into the House of
Lazare, where they were detained, and large sums paid monthly for their
board.