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 FLAGELLANTS

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FLAGELLANTS

absolve one another, to cast out evil spirits, and to work miracles. They asserted that the ordinary ec- clesiastical jurisdiction was suspended and that their pilgrimages would be continued for tliirty-three and a half years. Doubtless not a few of them hoped to estabhsh a lasting rival to the Catholic Church, but very soon the authorities took action and endeavoured to suppress the whole movement. For, while it was thus growing in Cermany and the Netherlands, it had also entered France.

At first this fiituus novits ritus was well received. As early as 1348, Pope Clement VI had permitted a similar procession in Avignon in entreaty against the plague. Soon, however, the rapid spread and heretical tendencies of the Plagellants, especially among the turbulent peoples of Southern France, alarmetl the authorities. At the entreaty of the University of

fourteenth century, too, the great Dominican, St. Vin- cent Ferrer, spread this penitential devotion through- out the north of Spain, and crowds of devotees fol- lowed him on his missionary pilgrimages through France, Spain, and Northern Italy.

In fact, the great outburst of 1.349, while, perhaps, more widespread and more formidable than similar fanaticisms, was but one of a series of popular up- heavals at irregular intervals from 1260 until the end of the fifteenth century. The generating cause of these movements was always an obscure amalgam of horror of corruption, of desire to imitate the heroic expiations of the great penitents, of apocalyptic vision, of despair at the prevailing corruption in Church and State. All these things are smouldering in the minds of the much-tried populace of Central Europe. It needed but a sufficient occasion, such as the accvunulated

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Processk in the Chro

N OF Flagellants at Tournai, 13-49

licle of Gillon li Muisis (1353). Library of Brussels

Paris, the pope, after careful inquiry, condemned the tyranny of some petty ruler, the horror of a great movement and prohibited the processions, by letters plague, or the ardent preaching of some saintly ascetic, dated 20 Oct., 1349, which were sent to all the bishops to set the whole of (Jhristendom in a blaze. Like fire

of France, Cermany, Poland, Sweden, and England. This condemnation coincided with a natural reaction of public opinion, and the Flagellants, from being a powerful menace to all settled public order, foimd themselves a hunted and rapidly dwindling sect. But, though severely stricken, the I'lagellant tendency was by no means eradicated. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were recrudescences of this and similar heresies. In Germany, about 1360, there appeared one Konrad Schmid, who called him- self Enoch, and pretended that all ecclesiastical

the impulse ran through the people, and like fire it died down, only to break out here and there anew. At the beginning of each outbreak, the effects were gener- ally good. Enemies were reconciled, debts were paid, prisoners were released, ill-gotten goods were restored. But it was the merest revivalism, and, as always, the reaction was worse than the former stagna- tion. Sometimes the movement was more than sus- pected of being abused for political ends, more often it exemplified the fatal tendency of emotional pietism to degenerate into heresy. The Fl.iycllant movement

authority was abrogated, or rather, transferred to was but one of the manias that afflicted the end of the

himself. Thousands of young men joined him, and lie was able to continue his propagani la till 13!l, wlicii the vigorous measures of the In(|uisition resulted in his suppression. Yet we still hear of trials and condemna- tions of Flagellants in 1411 at Erfurt, in 1446 at Nord- hausen, in i4")3 at Sangerhausen, even so late as 14sl at Ilallierstadt. Again the "Albati" or "Bianchi" are heard of in Provence about 13'.lil, with their proces- sions of nine days, during which they beat themselves and chanted the "Stabat Mater". At the end of the

Middle iVges; others were the dancing-mania, the Jew- baiting rages, which the Flagellant processions encour- aged in 1349, the child-crusades, and the like. And, according to the temiierainent of the peoples among whom it spread, the niovenii'iit became a revolt and a fantastic iieresy, a rush of devotion .settling soon into pious practices and good works, or a mere spectacle that aroused the curiosity or the pity of the onlookers. Although as a dangerous heresy the Flagellants are not heard of after the fifteenth century, their practices