FOOTNOTES:
[83] The abovementioned Anthelm, I think I have read, lived to a very great age. The famous self-flagellator Dominic the Cuirassed, lived eighty-four years; St. Romuald, notwithstanding the flagellations he received from himself and his Monks, attained, it is said, the age of an hundred and twenty years; and Leon of Preza, another illustrious self-flagellator, lived, according to some accounts, to the age of an hundred and forty. If so, it would thence result, that self-flagellations, besides the other great advantages they possess, are also attended with that of being conducive to health.
[84] ... Jocando ridendo hoc alteri Confessori suo humiliter recognovit.
[85] ... Après, prist discipline d’eux; moult doucement la reçut. Imprimé à Paris, par A. Gerard, le 1. Juillet, 1494. This must have been one of the first books that were printed.
[86] ... ubi sancta & secreta orationum aromata Deo assiduè accenderent; frequentibus metanœis vel genufluxionibus pio conditori supplicarent; à tribus sæpè flagellis, vel ad pœnitentiam, vel ad augendum meritum, corpus attererent.
I will take this occasion to inform the Reader, that Monks, or persons of religious dispositions, do not always mean, in the penances they impose on themselves, to atone for their sins, which they do not by any means consider as being in proportion to the number of their flagellations. They practise mortifications of this kind, either for the good of other persons, or for delivering souls from Purgatory, or in order (as the Reader may see from the words above quoted) to increase their own merit, and, like the Fakir mentioned in a former place, go of course to the thirty-fifth Heaven.
[87] Tit. 16. Cap. VIII. fol. 102.—Ut non solùm viri sed & mulieres nobiles hoc purgatorii genus inhianter acciperent; relictamque Cechaledi, mulierem magni generis & magnæ dignitatis, retulisse se, per præfixam hujus regulæ disciplinam, pœnitentiam centum annorum peregisse, tribus disciplinarum millibus pro uno computatis anno.
The Widow Cechald, in her account of the wonderful penance she performed after the example of Dominic the Cuirassed, has neglected to inform us in what manner she performed it, and whether she imitated that holy Man in every respect, and used, for instance, both her hands at once in the operation. Be it as it may; three hundred thousand lashes, the total amount of the hundred years penance she went through, were certainly a very hard penance. However, as we are not to doubt either the account which the above Widow gave in that respect, or the declaration Cardinal Damian made after her, the wonder is to be explained another way, and perhaps by the nature of the instruments she made use of: they possibly were of much the same kind as those used by a certain Lady, who was likewise much celebrated on account of the frequent disciplines she bestowed upon herself, and who was at last found out to use no other weapons for performing them, than a bunch of feathers, or, as others have said, a fox’s tail.