[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.
CHAP. XV.
Another difficulty. Which is the best plight to be in, for receiving a discipline?
EMINENT persons, in the times we speak of, did not differ from one another only in their opinions concerning the advantages of religious flagellations; but they also dissented with respect to the manner of performing them, as we may likewise conclude from the Writings and Ordinances of those times. Cardinal Damian, the great Patron of Flagellators, prescribed to them to strip themselves naked, and when thus perfectly free from every obstruction and impediment, to flog themselves in company with one another: this we learn from his xliid Opusculum, which he wrote to the Fathers of Mount Cassin, who were not intirely reconciled to the thought of those flagellations. On the other hand, an Ordinance which had been framed in the Assembly which was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, so early as the year 817, under the reign of Lewis le Débonnaire, forbad the above manner of flagellating Monks, because it did more harm than good. ‘Let the Monks (it is said in the 16th Canon) never be lashed naked, in the presence of the other Monks; let them not be whipped naked, for every trifling fault, in sight of the Brothers.’
Several religious Orders submitted to the directions of the above Canon; St. Lanfranc, among others, ordered, in his Statutes, ‘That Monks, guilty of offences, should be beaten with a thick rod, or wand, over their gowns.’ The Monks of Affligen, in the Netherlands, adopted the same Canon; and it was settled in their Ritual, as Haeftenus informs us, that the Monks should have their gowns on, when they were to be cudgelled.