Flagellants

FLAGELLANTS. - The Rule of St. Benedict contemplates the case of having to resort to flagellation to punish unruly and guilty monks (Reg., chaps. 2, 28, 30). Among the ascetic practices of mortification, that of voluntary flagellation also gained a foothold as penance for one's own sins. In the 11th century St. Peter Damian and his disciple St. Dominic Loricatus defended this custom in their monasteries

DE

TRANS-
LATIONE IMPE-

RII ROMANI AD
GERMANOS.

Item
DE ELECTIONE EPISCOPOL.
ras, subd equis ad glidem penitent.
MATTIA FLACCIO ILLY-
RICUS AS AUTHOR

collection, afflated and reigning in lit. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100

R A S I L R A E
1 5 6 6.

(Int. Enc. Coll.)
FLACIO (VLACIC), MATTIA - Frontispiece of De translatione Imperii Romanum ad Germanum, Basel 1560 - Exercisable preserved in the Vatican Library.

became its propagators. In imitation of the monks, laypeople too embraced such a practice, especially on the occasion of public calamities, to avert the divine wrath. However, collective public manifestations of this kind of penance are known for the first time only in the 13th century, and particularly when in 1260 Ranieri Fasani, a hermit, began to call the citizens of Perugia to penance; dressed in sackcloth, girded with a rope and with a scourge of leather thongs in his hand, by preaching and example he moved the people to publicly discipline themselves, forming a numerous Company, called the Disciplinati of Christ, which very soon spread from the city into the countryside and the surrounding regions.

In October, processions of disciplinati led by Fasani are encountered at Imola; from there the movement spread to Bologna, in November to Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza, Tortona and descended to Genoa. On 30 November Asquino, dean of Aquileia, arrived at Cividale in Friuli with naked penitents who flagellated themselves, and within twenty days they became numerous throughout all Friuli, and while the men did this publicly by day, the women did the same by night in their houses, or gathering at dusk in the churches. The movement, through France and Austria, reached Germany and even Poland; it was repeated here and there several times in that century, bringing about everywhere improvements in morals, pacification of minds, the return of exiles, restitution of ill-gotten goods. The lasting consequence that followed from it was the foundation in many regions of Italy of numerous confraternities known under the names of F., Battuti, Disciplinati, Frusati, whose members, laypeople for the most part, organized themselves to practice according to their particular statutes the discipline in their churches or chapels, to sing their lauds and to attend to well-defined exercises of piety and works of charity; alms in favor of the poor, with special regard for the shamefaced, periodic visits to the sick and to prisoners, accompaniment and suffrage for the deceased; and in these offices they were to spend legacies and income from goods entrusted to them by the piety of the faithful and especially of the confreres. It can well be asserted that in this respect such confraternities were a very important channel of beneficence in the 13th-15th centuries. Of special importance were the hospitals founded and directed by them in the cities of Italy; some of which still exist and bear the disciplines in their coat of arms. In Rome there arose in 1267 the Confraternity later called del Confalone, which had confraternities of the same name aggregated to it in various parts of Italy, even quite distant ones. No less famous than the preceding was the Company of the Disciplinati of the Most Holy Savior, erected near the Lateran, which also became an archconfraternity and had in Rome the care of several hospitals later united into one at the Lateran itself.

To the care of the Disciplinati was entrusted in Siena the famous Hospital of S. Maria della Scala. Many times these companies were under the protection and guidance of the mendicant Orders; and this fact very probably served to keep them far from heretical infiltrations. Indeed, if at their rise they could have been influenced by Joachimite elements, and if some manifestation of fanaticism (which must not be judged by modern criteria) is found especially at the beginnings, all this must be kept well distinct from what could be noted especially abroad and which moved Clement VI on 20 October 1349 (on the morrow of the great plague) to condemn the F. Movements analogous to that of 1260 occurred in 1334 through the work of the Bl. Venturino da Bergamo (v.), who from northern Italy reached as far as Rome, and then in 1309 through the work of the Bianchi (v.), whose beneficent activity links up with that of the preceding age, expanding it and reviving it in many places. In northern Europe the movement was renewed in the following age, not without heretical influences.

FOLKLORE

In the popular tradition of some regions of Italy, especially in the southern ones such as Calabria and Sicily, the ancient companies of the Battuti or Battenti (in the local dialect "Vattenti") still survive in certain localities, or at least the custom remains, among the faithful animated by warmer religious fervor, of striking themselves with whips (disciplines) or with canes, or other similar means of torment. The custom is especially connected with the processions of Holy Week, during which the "Vattenti" proceed dressed in the special white "sack," which has openings at the shoulders or on the back.

Paolo Toschi