FLAGELLATION. – A means of punishment, employed in various ways, inflicted by blows with a scourge or bundles of rods or flexible switches. It was widely used in ancient Egypt and Assyria against workers engaged in construction projects and against rowing and burden-bearing slaves; it passed into Greece (young Spartans, even those of distinguished families, took pride in enduring the blows of rods and scourges without uttering a complaint) and Rome.
Here flagellation must have become, as a means of punishment, very common, judging from the various terms used to designate the particular duties of certain slaves (flagilones, verberones, lorarii, etc.) and from the various references made to it by authors (e.g., Cicero, Horace, Juvenal).
The instrument used was the fragrum or flagellum, consisting of a handle to which leather thongs and bundles of cords or chains were fastened, ending in knots, little bones, metal balls, spikes, hooks, or claws (scorpiones). The condemned man was stripped and bound to a post or column in such a way as to present his back somewhat curved; sometimes he was simply stretched out on the ground and held fast by the feet by those attending (Cicero, In Verrem, actio II, 3, 54, 142; Suetonius, Caligula, 26, 3). The atrocity of the punishment can easily be inferred from the expressions of various authors: e.g., «horribile fragellum» (Horace, Satires, I, 3, V. 119; Prudentius, Contra Symmasum, I, 36a: PL 60, 149), from the varied construction of the instruments, from the cruelty of the magistrates who pronounced sentence and of the executioners, and from the fact that the number of blows was not prescribed. It is therefore no wonder that many, even without being condemned to die under the rods, ended by losing their lives or being reduced to a miserable condition worse than death (cf. Cicero, In Verrem, actio II, 3, 54, 142; 4, 39, 85; Philo, In Flaccum, 10, 75). Beginning with Cato the Elder, Roman citizens were exempt from flagellation (Lex Parcia a tergo cinum of 195 B.C.); blows with rods could be inflicted upon them only after a regular trial; nevertheless, execution of the death penalty always began with flagellation, even in the case of citizens.
Among the Jewish people, the Law (Deut. 25, 2) prescribed flagellation: «si eum, qui peccavit, dignum viderint plagia, prosterment et coram se facient verberari». But until a period that cannot be determined, beating with sticks was used instead of flagellation; the number of blows varied according to the gravity of the crime, but could never, under any circumstances, exceed forty: «ita dumiaxat, ut quadragenarium numerum (di piaghe) non excedant, ne foeda laceratus ante oculus tuos abest frater tuus» (ibid. 25, 3). Flagellation is indeed mentioned, as a threat, by Gideon concerning his enemies, should they fall into his hands (iudc. 8, 71), and by Rehoboam to the Hebrews who murmured against his manner of proceeding (I Reg. 12, 11-14), but these references do not concern a legal penalty. The latter, however, is explicitly recalled as such for the first time in the martyrdom of the seven Maccabean brothers (II Mach. 7, 1).
For Christians, the thought of flagellation immediately recalls the punishment inflicted on Jesus by Pilate as a means of sparing him death (Mt. 27, 26; Mc. 15, 15; Io. 19, 1). But the Gospel says nothing about the manner of execution, the type of scourges, the number of those carrying out the punishment, or the number of blows; consequently, what is found concerning these points in various mystical authors has no authority (cf. Benedict XIV, De festis Dom. N. Iesu Christi, I, 7, n. 56). The only point beyond doubt is that the punishment inflicted on Jesus was the one the Romans reserved for slaves, and therefore had no limitation on the number of blows.
Little or nothing certain is known about the column of the flagellation of Jesus Christ either. Ancient tradition, from the fourth century onward (cf. the itinerary of the pilgrim from Bordeaux, of 333, in Itinera Hierosolimytana, ed. P. Gever [CSEL, 39], Vienna 1898, p. 22), located it in the palace of Caiaphas; from there it must have been transferred to the small church of the Cenacle, because Saint Paula saw it in the Cenacle in 386 (St. Jerome, Epist., 108: PL 22, 284), as did Prudentius at approximately the same time (Dittocharum, 81: PL 60, 108). Pilgrims continued to speak of it until the tenth century; nevertheless, it appears to have been different from the one preserved today in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. From the time of the Crusades, another column is mentioned, lying in the praetorium of Pilate, which is now venerated in Rome in the church of S. Prassede, having been brought there by Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in 1223.
Just as Jesus had foretold his own flagellation (Mt. 20, 19; Mc. 10, 34; Lc. 18, 32), so he also foretold it for his Apostles (Mt. 10, 17, 20, 19), who in fact underwent it by order of the Sanhedrin (Act. 5, 40). St. Paul likewise declares that he suffered it five times at the hands of his fellow countrymen: «A Iudaeia, quinquies, quadragenas, una minus, accepi» (II Cor. 11, 24); when, however, having been arrested in Jerusalem, the tribune Lysias wished to condemn him to flagellation, he protested, as a Roman citizen exempt from that punishment, and the tribune suspended the execution (Act. 22, 24).
As a sanction, flagellation was soon employed in monastic discipline, and there is evidence of it from the fifth century onward (cf. Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca, 6; Socrates, Hist. eccl., IV, 23; for the sixth century, the Rule of St. Caesarius of Arles [PL 68, 1111] and that of St. Aurelian of Arles [PL 68, 392, 401-402]; for the seventh century, the Rule of St. Columbanus [PL 80, 215 ff.]). But flagellation soon became simply a voluntary penitential practice, as a means of mortification.
With the spread of the narrative taste characteristic of Romanesque art and the Gothic period, and perhaps also under the influence of the fact that in 1223 Cardinal Giovanni Colonna brought from Jerusalem to Rome a fragment of a column of blood-red jasper, now in S. Prassede, which according to tradition is the very one to which Jesus was bound, representations of the flagellation became increasingly frequent during the thirteenth and then the fourteenth century. This continued until, during the fifteenth century, the theme was perhaps especially favored because it also offered an opportunity to depict, in moving accents, the perfect beauty of the Redeemer’s human limbs. Thus in a representation by Beato Angelico on a small panel in the Museum of S. Marco in Florence; thus in the beautiful panel by Piero della Francesca in the Gallery of Urbino; thus in that by Luca Signorelli in the Brera Gallery in Milan; and finally in the fresco by Sebastiano del Piombo in S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome, for which Michelangelo himself, according to tradition, is said to have supplied the design. On the other hand, a bronze relief depicting the flagellation that adorns one of the panels of Jacopo del Duca’s ciborium, now in the Picture Gallery of the National Museum of Naples, is also connected with a design by Michelangelo. In that same city, in the church of S. Domenico, there is another beautiful flagellation, painted by Michelangelo da Caravaggio in 1607.