FLAGELLANTS, in religion, the name given to those who scourge themselves, or are scourged, by way of discipline or pen ance (Lat. flagellare, to whip). Voluntary flagellation, as a form of exalted devotion, occurs in almost all religions. According to Herodotus, it was the custom of the ancient Egyptians to beat themselves during the annual festival in honour of Isis. In Sparta children were flogged before the altar of Artemis Orthia till the blood flowed. At Alea, in the Peloponnese, women were flogged in the temple of Dionysus. In the Christian church flagellation was originally a punishment, and was practised not only by parents and schoolmasters, but also by bishops, who thus corrected offending priests and monks. Gradually, how ever, voluntary flagellation appeared in the libri poenitentiales as a very efficacious means of penance. In the z I th century this new form of devotion was extolled by some of the most ardent re formers in the monastic houses of the west. The early Franciscans flagellated themselves with characteristic rigour, and it is no matter of surprise to find the Franciscan, St. Anthony of Padua, preaching the praises of this means of penance. But the flagellant fraternities were the result of spontaneous popular movements, the real sources of which are not easily analysed. About 1259 these fraternities were distributed over the greater part of northern Italy. The contagion spread very rapidly, extending as far as the Rhine provinces, and, across Germany, into Bohemia. Day and night, long processions of all classes and ages, headed by priests carrying crosses and banners, perambulated the streets in double file, reciting prayers and drawing the blood from their bodies with leathern thongs. The magistrates in some of the Italian towns expelled the flagellants with threats, and for a time the sect disappeared. The disorders of the 14th century, how ever, the numerous earthquakes, and the Black Death, which had spread over the greater part of Europe, produced a condition of ferment and mystic fever which was very favourable to a recru descence of morbid forms of devotion. The flagellants reappeared from eastern Europe, and, in spite of discouragement, spread to the Rhine, and penetrated as far as Holland and Flanders. A band of i oo marched from Basle to Avignon to the court of Pope Clement VI. who saw in the movement a menace to the priest hood, and in October published a bull commanding the bishops and inquisitors to stamp out the growing heresy. In pursuance of the pope's orders numbers of the sectaries perished at the stake or in the cells of the inquisitors and the episcopal justices. In 1389 the leader of a flagellant band in Italy called the bianchi was burned by order of the pope, and his following dis persed. John Gerson insisted that the flagellants were creating a cultus and ritual of their own in antagonism to those of the church. This view was borne out by the facts, in Germany in 1414, when there was a recrudescence of the epidemic of flagellation which was preached as the only way to salvation. It was suppressed by the Inquisition, but held its ground among the lower ranks of Catholic piety. In the 16th century it subsisted in Italy, Spain and southern France. Henry III. of France met with it in Pro vence, and attempted to acclimatize it at Paris. Flagellation was occasionally practised as a means of salvation by certain Jansen ist convulsionaries in the 18th century. In 1820 a band of flagel lants appeared during a procession at Lisbon; and in the Latin countries, at the season of great festivals, one may still see brotherhoods of penitents flagellating themselves before the assembled faithful.