the body which went to make up the ascetic ideal; on the other hand, the fondness for whipping bare flesh and for being whipped has a distinctly pathologic character. The subject is rather too unsavoury to dwell upon, but it has long been established that there is a close connection between the whipping of certain parts of the body and the production of intense sexual pleasure.[183] And it is also clear that the life led by monks and nuns was such as to encourage sexual aberrations of various forms. Moreover, when once the practice of whipping became a public spectacle, and assumed an epidemic form, imitation, combined with intense religious faith, would operate very powerfully.
In the fourteenth century Europe was visited by the Black Plague. In countries utterly devoid of sanitation, where baths were practically unknown and personal habits of the filthiest, the plague found a fruitful soil. Nearly a quarter of the population died, and corpses were so numerous that huge pits were dug and hundreds buried together. It was amid the general terror and demoralisation caused by this visitation that the sect of the Flagellants arose. Calling themselves the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, or the Brethren of the Cross, wearing dark garments with red crosses front and back, they traversed the cities of the Continent carrying whips to which small pieces of iron were fixed. England appears to have been the only country in which they failed to establish themselves. Elsewhere their numbers grew with formidable rapidity. At Spires two hundred boys, under twelve years of age, influenced probably by the example
of the children's crusade, formed themselves into a brotherhood and marched through some of the German cities. In Italy over 20,000 people marched from Florence in one of these processions; from Modena, over 25,000. Some of them professed to work miracles. Everywhere, while the mania lasted, they were warmly welcomed, the inhabitants of towns and cities ringing the bells and flocking in crowds to hear the preaching and witness the whippings.
The proceedings of the Flagellants in all countries were very similar. They marched from town to town, men and women and children stripped to the waist—sometimes entirely naked—praying incessantly and whipping each other. "Not only during the day, but even by night, and in the severest winter, they traversed the cities with torches and banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars." At other times they proceeded to the market-place, arranged themselves on the ground in circles, assuming attitudes in accordance with their real or supposed crimes. After each had been whipped, "one of them, in conclusion, stood up to read a letter, which it was pretended an angel had brought from heaven to St. Peter's Church, at Jerusalem, stating that Christ, who was sore displeased at the sins of man, had granted, at the intercession of the Holy Virgin and of the angels, that all who should wander about for thirty-four days and scourge themselves should be partakers of the Divine grace." In the end the movement became so obnoxious to the Church, and so troublesome to the civil authorities, that both combined to secure its suppression.
Equally significant in the history of religion is the dancing mania, which broke out as the mania for flagellation was subsiding. The function of dancing in primitive religious ceremonial has been pointed out in a previous chapter. It is there a common and obvious method of both creating and expressing a high state of nervous excitability. In later times religious dancing becomes more purely hypnotic in character, and suggestion plays a powerful part. During the medieval period the conditions were peculiarly favourable to the prevalence of psychological epidemics. Plagues, more or less severe, were of frequent occurrence. Between 1119 and 1340, Italy alone had no less than sixteen such visitations. Smallpox and leprosy were also common. The public mind was morbidly sensitive to signs and portents and saturated to an almost incredible degree with superstition. The public processions of the Church, its penances, and practices were all calculated to fire the imagination, and produce a mixed and dangerous condition of fear and expectancy. Moreover, dancing mania, on a small scale, had made its appearance on several previous occasions, and the public mind was thus in a way prepared for a more serious outbreak.
The great dancing mania of 1374 occurred immediately after the revels connected with the semi-Pagan festival of St. John. Bacchanalian dances formed one of the accompaniments of the festival of St. John, and made, so to speak, a natural starting-point for the epidemic. Hecker, who gives a very elaborate account of the dancing mania as it appeared in various countries, thus describes the behaviour of those afflicted:—
"They formed circles, hand in hand, and, appearing
to have lost control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of all bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion.... While dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary."[184]
At Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, and Metz, says the same writer:—
"Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived."[185]