While, however, the evidence regarding sexual flagellation is rare, until recent times whipping as a punishment was extremely common. It is even possible that its very prevalence, and the consequent familiarity with which it was regarded, were unfavorable to the development of any mysterious emotional state likely to act on the sexual sphere, except in markedly neurotic subjects. Thus, the corporal chastisement of wives by husbands was common and permitted. Not only was this so to a proverbial extent in eastern Europe, but also in the extreme west and among a people whose women enjoyed much freedom and honor. Cymric law allowed a husband to chastise his wife for angry speaking, such as calling him a cur; for giving away property she was not entitled to give away; or for being found in hiding with another man. For the first two offenses she had the option of paying him three kine. When she accepted the chastisement she was to receive "three strokes with a rod of the length of her husband's forearm and the thickness of his long finger, and that wheresoever he might will, excepting on the head"; so that she was to suffer pain only, and not injury. (R. B. Holt, "Marriage Laws and Customs of the Cymri," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August-November, 1898, p. 162.)
"The Cymric law," writes a correspondent, "seems to have survived in popular belief in the Eastern and Middle States of the United States. In police-courts in New York, for example, it has been unsuccessfully pleaded that a man is entitled to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. In Pennsylvania actual acquittals have been rendered."
Among all classes children were severely whipped by their parents and others in authority over them. It may be recalled that in the twelfth century when Abelard became tutor to Heloise, then about 18 years of age, her uncle authorized him to beat her, if negligent in her studies. Even in the sixteenth century Jeanne d'Albert, who became the mother of Henry IV of France, at the age of 13½ was married to the Duke of Cleves, and to overcome her resistance to this union the Queen, her mother, had her whipped to such an extent that she thought she would die of it. The whip on this occasion was, however, only partially successful, for the Duke never succeeded in consummating the marriage, which was, in consequence, annulled. (Cabanès brings together numerous facts regarding the prevalence of flagellation as a chastisement in ancient France in the interesting chapter on "La Flagellation a la Cour et à la Ville" in his Indiscretions de l'Histoire, 1903.)
As to the prevalence of whipping in England evidence is furnished by Andrews, in the chapter on "Whipping and Whipping Posts," in his book on ancient punishments. It existed from the earliest times and was administered for a great variety of offenses, to men and women alike, for vagrancy, for theft, to the fathers and mothers of illegitimate children, for drunkenness, for insanity, even sometimes for small-pox. At one time both sexes were whipped naked, but from Queen Elizabeth's time only from the waist upward. In 1791 the whipping of female vagrants ceased by law. (W. Andrews, Bygone Punishments, 1899.)
It must, however, be remarked that law always lags far behind social feeling and custom, and flagellation as a common punishment had fallen into disuse or become very perfunctory long before any change was made in the law, though it is not absolutely extinct, even by law, today. There is even an ignorant and retrograde tendency to revive it. Thus, even in severe Commonwealth days, the alleged whipping with rods of a servant-girl by her master, though with no serious physical injury, produced a great public outcry, as we see by the case of the Rev. Zachary Crofton, a distinguished London clergyman, who was prosecuted in 1657 on the charge of whipping his servant-girl, Mary Cadman, because she lay in bed late in the morning and stole sugar. This incident led to several pamphlets. In The Presbyterian, Lash or Noctroff's Maid Whipt (1661), a satire on Crofton, we read: "It is not only contrary to Gospel but good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all"; and in the doggerel ballad of "Bo-Peep," which was also written on the same subject, it is said that Crofton should have left his wife to chastise the maid. Crofton published two pamphlets, one under his own name and one under that of Alethes Noctroff (1657), in which he elaborately dealt with the charge as both false and frivolous. In one passage he offers a qualified defense of such an act: "I cannot but bewail the exceeding rudeness of our times to suffer such foolery to be prosecuted as of some high and notorious crime. Suppose it were (as it is not) true, may not some eminent congregational brother be found guilty of the same act? Is it not much short of drinking an health naked on a signpost? May it not be as theologically defended as the husband's correction of his wife?" This passage, and the whole episode, show that feeling in regard to this matter was at that time in a state of transition.
Flagellation as a penance, whether inflicted by the penitent himself or by another person, was also extremely common in medieval and later days. According to Walsingham ("Master of the Rolls' Collection," vol. i, p. 275), in England, in the middle of the fourteenth century, penitents, sometimes men of noble birth, would severely flagellate themselves, even to the shedding of blood, weeping or singing as they did so; they used cords with knots containing nails.
At a later time the custom of religious flagellation was more especially preserved in Spain. The Countess d'Aulnoy, who visited Spain in 1685, has described the flagellations practised in public at Madrid. After giving an account of the dress worn by these flagellants, which corresponds to that worn in Spain in Holy Week at the present time by the members of the Cofradias, the face concealed by the high sugar-loaf head-covering, she continues: "They attach ribbons to their scourges, and usually their mistresses honor them with their favors. In gaining public admiration they must not gesticulate with the arm, but only move the wrist and hand; the blows must be given without haste, and the blood must not spoil the costume. They make terrible wounds on their shoulders, from which the blood flows in streams; they march through the streets with measured steps; they pass before the windows of their mistresses, where they flagellate themselves with marvelous patience. The lady gazes at this fine sight through the blinds of her room, and by a sign she encourages him to flog himself, and lets him understand how much she likes this sort of gallantry. When they meet a good-looking woman they strike themselves in such a way that the blood goes on to her; this is a great honor, and the grateful lady thanks them.... All this is true to the letter."
The Countess proceeds to describe other and more genuine penitents, often of high birth, who may be seen in the street naked above the waist, and with naked feet on the rough and sharp pavement; some had swords passed through the skin of their body and arms, others heavy crosses that weighed them down. She remarks that she was told by the Papal Nuncio that he had forbidden confessors to impose such penances, and that they were due to the devotion of the penitents themselves. (Relation du Voyage d'Espagne, 1692, vol. ii, pp. 158-164.)
The practice of public self-flagellation in church during Lent existed in Spain and Portugal up to the early years of the nineteenth century. Descriptions of it will often be met with in old volumes of travel. Thus, I find a traveler through Spain in 1786 describing how, at Barcelona, he was present when, in Lent, at a Miserere in the Convent Church of San Felipe Neri on Friday evening the doors were shut, the lights put out, and in perfect darkness all bared their backs and applied the discipline, singing while they scourged themselves, ever louder and harsher and with ever greater vehemence until in twenty minutes' time the whole ended in a deep groan. It is mentioned that at Malaga, after such a scene, the whole church was in the morning sprinkled with blood. (Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in 1786, vol. i, p. 122; vol. iii, p. 15.)
Even to our own day religious self-flagellation is practised by Spaniards in the Azores, in the darkened churches during Lent, and the walls are often spotted and smeared with blood at this time. (O. H. Howarth, "The Survival of Corporal Punishment," Journal Anthropological Institute, Feb., 1889.) In remote districts of Spain (as near Haro in Rioja) there are also brotherhoods who will flagellate themselves on Good Friday, but not within the church. (Dario de Regoyos, España Negra, 1899, p. 72.)