If the first fakirs did not pronounce these words, it is very probable that they had them engraved at the bottom of their hearts.
Human sacrifices, perhaps, had their origin in these frantic austerities. Men who drew their blood in public with rods, and mangled their arms and thighs to gain consideration, would easily make imbecile savages believe that they must sacrifice to the gods whatever was dearest to them; that to have a fair wind, they must immolate a daughter; to avert pestilence, precipitate a son from a rock; to have infallibly a good harvest, throw a daughter into the Nile.
These Asiatic superstitions gave rise to the flagellations which we have imitated from the Jews. Their devotees still flog themselves, and flog one another, as the priests of Egypt and Syria did of old. Among us the abbots flogged their monks, and the confessors their penitents—of both sexes. St. Augustine wrote to Marcellinus, the tribune, that "the Donatists must be whipped as schoolmasters whip their scholars."
It is said that it was not until the tenth century that monks and nuns began to scourge themselves on certain days of the year. The custom of scourging sinners as a penance was so well established that St. Louis's confessor often gave him the whip. Henry II. was flogged by the monks of Canterbury (in 1207). Raymond, count of Toulouse, with a rope round his neck, was flogged by a deacon, at the door of St. Giles's church, as has before been said.
The chaplains to Louis VIII., king of France, were condemned by the pope's legate to go at the four great feasts to the door of the cathedral of Paris, and present rods to the canons, that they might flog them in expiation for the crime of the king, their master, who had accepted the crown of England, which the pope had taken from him by virtue of the plenitude of his power. Indeed, the pope showed great indulgence in not having the king himself whipped, but contenting himself with commanding him, on pain of damnation, to pay to the apostolic chamber the amount of two years' revenue.
From this custom is derived that which still exists, of arming all the grand-penitentiaries in St. Peter's at Rome with long wands instead of rods, with which they give gentle taps to the penitents, lying all their length on the floor. In this manner it was that Henry IV., of France, had his posteriors flogged by Cardinal Ossat and Duperron. So true is it that we have scarcely yet emerged from barbarism.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century fraternities of penitents were formed at Perosia and Bologna. Young men almost naked, with a rod in one hand and a small crucifix in the other, flogged themselves in the streets; while the women peeped through the window-blinds and whipped themselves in their chambers.
These flagellators inundated Europe; there are many of them still to be found in Italy, in Spain, and even in France, at Perpignan. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it was very common for confessors to whip the posteriors of their penitents. A history of the Low Countries, composed by Meteren, relates that a cordelier named Adriacem, a great preacher at Bruges, used to whip his female penitents quite naked.
The Jesuit Edmund Auger, confessor to Henry III., persuaded that unfortunate prince to put himself at the head of the flagellators.
Flogging the posteriors is practised in various convents of monks and nuns; from which custom there have sometimes resulted strange immodesties, over which we must throw a veil, in order to spare the blushes of such as wear the sacred veil, and whose sex and profession are worthy of our highest regard.