Memorials of Human Superstition / being a paraphrase and commentary on the Historia Flagellantium of the Abbé Boileau, Doctor of the Sorbonne

by Jean Louis de Lolme

The flagellating Solemnities, for instance, that took place in Lacedæmon, are not in any degree intitled to our approbation; very far from it. The cruel advantage that was taken in them, of the silly pride of Boys, to prevail upon them to suffer themselves to be cut to pieces, rendered such ceremonies a practice of really a brutish kind; and it is difficult to decide whether there was in them more inhumanity, or stupidity. The same is to be said of the Solemnities of a similar kind that were performed among the Thracians.

Less exceptionable than those just mentioned certainly were the ceremonies exhibited by the Egyptians, and by the Syrian Priests of Bellona; since it is evident that no kind whatever of compulsion took place in them, in regard to any person.

The same observation is to be made in favour of the processions of modern Flagellants, in which every one has the scourging of his own skin; and at the same time it must be owned that the gallantry and courtship paid to the fair Sex, which so eminently prevail in those processions, are circumstances that greatly recommend them. On the other hand, the gloomy affectation of sanctity which is mixed with the festivity and pageantry of those disciplining solemnities, gives the whole an air of hypocrisy, which is in some degree disgusting, and the degree of real cruelty with which they are attended, cannot but compleat the aversion of such persons as use has not reconciled to the thought of them.

The festival of the Lupercalia that was performed in Rome, had indeed greatly the advantage of all the ceremonies of the kind that ever were instituted. It really deserved to have been contrived, or continued, by a People more polite and refined than the Romans, especially in early times, are represented to us to have been.

Among other excellencies the Festival we speak of possessed, it was performed but once a year, and only continued a few days: for, ceremonies of this kind ought to occur but seldom, and be only of short duration; and it was like a short time of Saturnalia, during which each Sex kindly exhibited to the sight of the other those personal charms and advantages which they wisely kept hidden during the rest of the whole year.

In the second place, the real design of the whole transaction was pretty openly and candidly acknowledged: and if we except the few religious rites by which the ceremony was begun, which served to give dignity to it, and the notion of the power of the slaps of the Luperci to render Women fruitful, which served to give importance to the whole solemnity, it was agreed fairly enough on all sides, that no more was meant than temporary pastime and amusement.

In the third place, no cruelty whatever took place in the performance of the Festival we speak of, nor was it possible any should; and from the lightness and the breadth of the straps which the Luperci employed, we may judge of their tender anxiousness not to do, through zeal or other cause, any injury to the fair objects who made application to them.

When one of the three bands of Luperci (out of which every Man who wanted an excellent shape or elegant address, was no doubt irremissibly blackballed) had been let loose out of the Temple of the God Pan, and after the coming of a Lupercus into any particular street had been announced by the flourishes of the haut-boys, the clarinets, the trumpets, kettle-drums, and other musical instruments that were stationed near the entrance of it (for we are absolutely to suppose that music contributed to embellish so charming a festival) some one of the amiable persons who proposed to receive benefit from the Lupercus’s services, moved out of the croud, and threw herself into his way.

On sight of her, the whole fierceness of the Lupercus became softened. However kindled his spirits might have been by the religious rites by which the ceremony was begun, by the course he had just performed, and the sight of the multitude of spectators who lined the streets, whatever in short might be that state of fever in which Festus seems to represent him, the februans Lupercus, at the sight of the lovely creature who obstructed his passage, felt his agitation succeeded by sensations of the most benevolent sort.