FLAGELLATION, scourging or whipping, either self-inflicted or administered by another person, especially as a religious practice. Orig inally it was usedprimarily as a corrective pen alty for clerics. Its use spread with the grad ual growth of monastic institutions. Its ap plication as a means of religious penance is an old Oriental custom, admitted into Chris tianity partly because self-torment was consid ered salutary as mortifying the flesh, and partly because both Christ and the apostles underwent scourging. It was also practised as a devotional measure toward certain deities in Greece and Rome. From the 1st century of Christianity religious persons sought to atone for their sins by voluntary bodily torture. Like the Abbot Regino, at Prum, in the 10th cen tury, many tried to imitate the sufferings of Christ, in order to make themselves the more certain of forgiveness through him. It be came general in the 11th century, when Peter Damian of Ravenna, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Croce d'Avellano, near Gubbio, in Italy, afterward cardinal bishop of Ostia, zealously recommended scourging as an atonement for sin, to Christians generally, and, in particular, to the monks. His own example and the fame of his sanctity rendered his ex hortations effective. Clergy and laity, men and women, began to torture themselves with rods, and thongs and chains. They fixed certain times for the infliction of this discipline upon themselves. Princes caused themselves to be scourged naked by their father confessors. Louis IX constantly carried with him for this purpose an ivory box, containing five small iron chains, and exhorted his father confessor to scourge him with severity. He likewise gave similar boxes to the princes and princesses of his house, and to other pious friends, as marks of his peculiar favor.
The expectation of being purified from sin by flagellation prevailed throughout Europe in the last half of the 13th century. "About this time," says the monk of Padua in his chronicles of the year 1260, "when all Italy was filled with vice, the Perugians suddenly entered upon a course never before thought of ; after them the Romans, and at length all Italy. Men • of noble and ignoble birth, old and young, traversed the streets of the city naked, yet without shame. Each.carried a scourge in his hand, with which he drew forth blood from his tortured body, amidst sighs and tears, singing at the same time penitential psalms?' The peqitents united into fraternities called the Flagellants (q.v.). After the Council of Constance (1414-18) both clergy and laity gradually abandoned flagellation. The Franciscan monks in France (Cordeliers) ob served the practice longest.
Flagellation was sometimes voluntary and sometimes imposed as a penance. Henry II of England allowed himself to be scourged at the tomb of Thomas a Becket (q.v.). In its theo logical aspect flagellation has no especial merit in itself and is classed merely as a form of penance or self-mortification. It is meritorious only as a means of expiation of sins repented for and absolved, or as a method of mortifica tion of the flesh for the suppression and con trol of the passions. Any excess in it is pro hibited. (See PENANCE). For an exhaustive bibliography on this topic consult Haupt, H., 'Flagellation> (in Schaff-Herzog, 'Encyclo pedia of Religious Knowledge.> Vol. IV, New York 1909).