CHAP. XX.
The fondness of people for flagellations, gives rise to a number of incredible stories on that subject.
THE supporters of the practice of flagellation did not confine their endeavours in recommending it, to setting the example of it, like Rodolph of Eugubio, or Dominic the Cuirassed, or to supporting it by arguments and voluminous writings, like Cardinal Damian; but they mixed their accounts with numbers of stories of an extravagant kind; whether their enthusiasm in favour of the practice in question, induced them to believe such stories to be true, or they thought that their very incredibility would be extremely fit to bring into credit with the vulgar, a doctrine in favour of which they were themselves so prepossessed.
Thus, flagellations were given out by some, as having the power of rescuing souls from Hell itself; a thing which even Masses, though constantly used to draw them out of Purgatory, were not thought to be able to perform. As an instance of the stories that were circulated on that account, may be produced the following, related by one Vincent, who lived in the year 1256.
‘Archbishop Umbert (says Vincent) recited, that in the Monastery of St. Sylvester, in the duchy of Urbino, in Italy, a certain Monk died; and the Brothers continued singing Psalms by his body, from the first evening crowing of the Cock, till two o’clock in the morning, and as soon as they began, in the Mass they celebrated for his sake, to sing the Agnus Dei, behold! the dead Man suddenly rose. The Brothers, greatly astonished, came near him, to hear what he had to say; when he began to throw forth abuses and curses against God; he spit on the Cross that was offered him to kiss; he uttered the most opprobrious expressions against the immaculate Mother of God, and said, Of what service to me is your singing psalms, and offering sacrifices? I have been in the flames of Hell, where my Lord and Master Lucifer placed a brass crown, glowing with inextinguishable heat, on my head, and laid a coat of the same metal, with which himself was covered, on my shoulders: this coat was not long enough to reach down to my heels, but it was so violently heated, that drops seemed to fall from it to the ground. The Brothers having then continued to exhort him to repent of his sins, he anathemised them, and denied, in a sacrilegious manner, all the mysteries of our Redeemer. The Monks thereupon prayed for him heartily, and after stripping off their clothes, flagellated themselves, uttering every manner of supplication in his behalf; when behold! that desperate Man recovered the use of his reason; he confessed the omnipotence of our Saviour; he renounced the errors of Satan, adored the Cross, and intreated to be admitted to the Sacrament of Confession and Penitence. Now, the crime of which he accused himself was that of having committed fornication, after he had renounced the world; a thing which he had kept secret to his death. He thus continued to live, praising and blessing God, to the next day, when he again gave up the ghost.’
Besides stories of the same kind with that above, which were contrived to heighten the merit of flagellations, the admirers of that practice have excogitated others, in order to terrify those who declined adopting it, or attempted to confute it by arguments. As a specimen of this, we may quote the report that was circulated concerning Cardinal Stephen, which hath been mentioned in a former place ([p. 214]) that he had died suddenly, for having despised the exercise in question.
Another story, contrived in the same view we speak of, is to be found in Thomas de Chantpré’s Book, in which it is related of a certain Hugh, a Canon of St. Victor, that, having on account of his weak state of health, constantly forbore, during his life-time, the use of flagellations, he paid dearly afterwards for this tender care he had taken of his skin; for at his passage into Purgatory, the whole tribe of Devils lashed him with scourges. ‘Hugh (says Thomas de Chantpré) was one of the Regular Monks in the Monastery of St. Victor, in Paris. He was called the second St. Austin, that is to say, the second Man in point of learning since St. Austin; but though he deserved much praise in that respect, yet, the same cannot be said of his constant refusal to practice flagellations and disciplines, for his quotidian misdeeds, either in private, or in the Chapter, in company with the Brothers: he was, as I have been informed, of a tender frame of body, and had, besides, been too much indulged in his childhood. Now, because he took no pains to overcome by exercise the defect of his nature, or rather his bad habit, very fatal consequences ensued to him, as I am going to relate. Being near his death, a brother Canon, who was his intimate friend, intreated him to shew himself again to him, after he was dead. I will, says he, if the Master of life and death consents to it. As Hugh was making this promise, he died; nor was it long before he returned to his friend, who was still in expectation of him, and said, Here I am; make haste to ask what question you intend to ask, for I cannot stay. The other, who, though he was exceedingly pleased, yet was not a little frighted, said, How is it with you, my dear friend? It is well with me, said Hugh; but because I have refused, while I was alive, to receive discipline, there has hardly been a single Devil in the whole infernal empire, but who gave me a smart lash, as I was in my way to Purgatory.’
Others, in order to bring flagellations into still greater credit, have supposed that the Devils themselves were so sensible of the merit that was in them, that they would occasionally practise them upon each other. Thus, St. Allen relates that the Holy Virgin Mary having resolved to rescue a certain James Hall, an Usurer, from the claws of the Dæmons, these unclean spirits, a great number of whom were present, no sooner saw her make her appearance, than they took to blaspheming, flagellated each other, and ran away.
The Devil himself has also, on certain occasions, prescribed flagellations, as an atonement for sins; which is certainly wonderful enough. It is related in the Life of St. Virgil, that a Man possessed by the Devil, was fustigated with four rods, by the Devil’s prescription, for having stolen four wax-candles from the Saint’s altar. ‘I am not come (said the possessed Man) of my own accord; but I have been compelled to it: I have carried off the wax-candles and offerings that were on the tomb of the Man of God; and if they are not speedily returned, my Master will come with seven spirits worse than himself, and will for ever continue in me. However, when the candles, of which they had been a long while in search, were found again, by the Devil’s assistance, and brought back, the Devil directed them to fustigate the unhappy Man with as many besoms as there were candles.’
To these instances of flagellations voluntarily practiced among Devils, we ought not to omit to add one, in which the Devil was smartly flagellated in spite of his teeth, by a Saint, and a female Saint too; a fact which cannot fail to give the greatest pleasure to the Reader, who remembers the deplorable accounts that have been given in a former Chapter, of the wanton flagellations he has himself inflicted upon Saints. The name of the female Saint who thus gave the Devil his due, was Cornelia Juliana, as the Reverend Father Jesuit, Bartholomew Fisen, relates, in his book on the Ancient Origin of the Festival of the body of Christ. ‘One day (says he) the other Nuns heard a prodigious noise in the room of Cornelia Juliana, which turned out to be a strife she had with the Devil, whom, after having laid hold of him, she fustigated unmercifully; then, having thrown him upon the ground, she trampled him under her foot, and continued ridiculing him in the most bitter manner[108].’ The above Reverend Father has neglected to inform us, how the Devil came to be in Juliana’s room; but it is most likely he was come upon his usual antic errand of flagellating Saints, and meant to serve Juliana in the same manner: fortunately she was upon the watch, and proved too many for him. As for the dreadful noise that was to be heard in the Saint’s room, it was the natural consequence of the hard struggle that took place between her and the Devil, while they were thus striving who should flog the other.
The Saints who inhabit Paradise have also been supposed to have occasionally recourse to flagellations; not, to be sure, to inflict them any longer upon themselves; but to chastise, at the request of their friends, those who 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 Monasteries in the same manner. ‘The Emperor (says the Author from whom this fact is extracted) sent one of the Grooms of his bed-chamber 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 intrusted, not to the just and mild, but to hard-hearted and inhuman persons. The Monks, who were possessed of no money, endeavoured to sooth the above cruel unmerciful Man by their discourses; but he, thirsty after gold, was as deaf to their prayers, as the asp to conjurations, and made no more account of their remonstrances, than, to use the words of the Scripture, of the crackling of thorns under a pot. On the contrary, his wrath and insolence increasing 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.’
The Virgin Mary herself, has also been said to have applied to corrections of the same kind as those here alluded to, in order to avenge the injustices done to those whom she protected; and she, for instance, caused a certain Bishop to be flagellated in her presence, who had taken his prebend from a Canon, who was indeed, but an indifferent person to fill his office, but who paid much devotion to her, and with his eyes cast down, sung every day before her Altar certain words contained in the Angelic salutation. The illustrious Cardinal Damian informs us of this fact, in his Opusc. xxxiii. Cap. iii. which is entitled, The blessed Virgin directs that his prebend should be returned to a Clergyman who used to pay devotion to her. ‘The same Stephanus (says Cardinal Damian) related to me another fact of much the same kind. I remember, he said, that there was a certain Clergyman, who was a dunce, an idle man, a dullard; to this add that he was endowed with no religious gift, and possessed no canonical gravity. Yet, amidst the dead ashes of his useless life, some small particles of pious fire continued to subsist, so that he would every day approach the altar of the holy Mother, and, inclining his head with reverence, sing the following both angelic and evangelic line, Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among Women. The new Bishop, however, who soon discovered the incapacity of the Man, thought it wrong that an useful office should be left to an useless person, and he took from him the prebend he had obtained from the preceding Bishop. But as the Canon was thereby reduced to great poverty, having no other means of supporting himself, the blessed Virgin interfered in his behalf. During the dead of night she appeared to the Bishop, preceded by a Man who carried a discipline in one of his hands, and a burning torch in the other, and ordered him to chastise the Bishop by some lashes of it; then addressing this latter,—Why, said she, did you take from a Man who used to pay daily homages to me, a clerical advantage it was not you who had conferred on him? The Bishop, filled with terror, and soon awaking from his sleep, presently returned the prebend to the Clergyman, and afterwards greatly honoured as a Man whom God loved, a person who, he thought, was unknown to him.’