FLAGELLATION
— A means of punishment, variously employed, inflicted by blows from a whip or bundles of rods or flexible rods. Widely used in ancient Egypt and Assyria on laborers engaged in construction work and on slave rowers carrying heavy loads, it spread to Greece (Spartan youths, even from distinguished families, prided themselves on enduring blows from rods and whips without a complaint) and to Rome.
In Rome, flagellation became, as a means of punishment, very common judging by the various terms used to denote the specific role of certain slaves (flagellones, verberones, torarici, etc.) and by the numerous references made by authors (e.g., Cicero, Horace, Juvenal).
The instrument used was the *flagrum flagellum*, consisting of a handle to which leather thongs and bundles of cords or chains were attached, ending in knots, small bones, metal pellets, spikes, hooks, or claws (*scorpiones*). The condemned man was stripped and tied to a post or column so as to present his back slightly arched; sometimes he was simply stretched on the ground and held down by assistants (Cicero, *Verrine*, actio II, 3, 5, 142; Suetonius, *Caligula*, 26, 3). The atrocity of the punishment can easily be inferred from the phrases of various authors: e.g., "horribile flagellum" (Horace, *Satires*, I, 3, V. 119; Prudentius, *Contra Symmachum*, I, 362; PL 60, 149), from the varied construction of the instruments, the cruelty of the magistrates condemning and executing the sentence, and from the fact that the number of blows was not prescribed. It is no wonder that many, even without being condemned to die by rods, ended up losing their lives or reduced to a wretched state worse than death (cf. Cicero, *Verrine*, actio II, 3, 5, 142; 4, 39, 85; Philo, *In Flaccum*, 10, 75). Beginning with Cato the Elder, Roman citizens were exempt from flagellation (*Lex Porcia a tergo civium* of 195 BC); they could be beaten with rods, but only after a regular trial; however, flagellation always preceded the execution of the death penalty, even for citizens.
Among the Hebrew people, the law (Deut. 25, 2) prescribed flagellation: "If they deem the guilty man worthy of stripes, they shall make him lie down and be beaten before them." But until a period that cannot be determined, instead of flagellation, beating with rods was used; the number of blows varied according to the gravity of the crime, but never, under any circumstances, was to exceed forty: "only so that they do not exceed the number of forty (stripes), lest your brother be too horribly mangled before your eyes" (ibid. 25, 3). While it is true that Gideon threatened flagellation against his enemies if they fell into his hands (ibid. 8, 7), and Roboam threatened the Hebrews who murmured against his conduct (I Kings 12, 11-14), these do not refer to a legal penalty. The first clear mention of it as a legal punishment appears in the martyrdom of the seven Maccabean brothers (II Macc. 7, 1).
For Christians, the thought of flagellation immediately recalls the punishment inflicted on Jesus by Pilate as a means of sparing Him death (Matt. 27, 26; Mark 15, 15; John 19, 3). However, the Gospel says nothing about the manner of execution, the type of whips, the number of executioners, or the number of blows; consequently, what is found on these points in various mystical authors has no authority (cf. Benedict XIV, *De festis Dom. N. Iesu Christi*, 1, 7, n. 56). Only one thing is beyond doubt: the punishment inflicted on Jesus was that which the Romans reserved for slaves, and therefore it had no limit in the number of blows.
Little or nothing certain is known about the column of the flagellation of Jesus Christ. Ancient tradition from the 4th century (cf. the itinerary of the pilgrim of Bordeaux, of 333, in *Itinera Hierosolymitana*, ed. P. Geyer [CSEL, 39], Vienna 1898, p. 23) placed it in the palace of Caiaphas, from where it must have been moved to the small church of the Cenacle, because in the Cenacle it was seen by St. Paula in 386 (St. Jerome, *Epist.*, 108; PL 22, 284) and, about the same time, by Prudentius (*Dittochaeum*, 81; PL 60, 108). Pilgrims continued to speak of it until the 10th century; however, it appears different from the one now preserved 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 St. Praxedes, brought there by Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in 1223.
Jesus, as He had foretold His own flagellation (Matt. 20, 19; Mark 10, 34; Luke 18, 32), so He also foretold it for His Apostles (Matt. 10, 17; 20, 19), who indeed suffered it by order of the Sanhedrin (Acts 5, 40). St. Paul also declares that he suffered it five times at the hands of his countrymen: "From the Jews, five times I received forty stripes minus one" (II Cor. 11, 24); when, however, arrested in Jerusalem, the tribune Lysias intended to condemn him to flagellation, he protested, as a Roman citizen exempt from that penalty, and the tribune desisted from inflicting it (Acts 22, 24).
As a sanction, flagellation was soon used in monastic discipline, and there is evidence of it from the 5th century (cf. Palladius, *Hist. Laus.*, 6; Socrates, *Hist. eccl.*, IV, 23; for the 6th century, the Rules of St. Caesarius of Arles [PL 68, 1111] and of St. Aurelian of Arles [PL 68, 392, 401-402]; for the 7th century, the Rule of St. Columbanus [PL 80, 215 ff.]). But soon flagellation came to be merely a voluntary practice of penance, as a means of mortification.
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### The Flagellation of Jesus in Art
The earliest representations of the flagellation date back to the 9th-10th centuries and can be seen in Ottonian illumination, such as in the *Codex Egberti* of Trier (late 10th century) and codex no. 948 of the Royal Library of Brussels, where Christ is depicted as one executioner binds Him to a column and another, at Pilate’s order, beats Him. It reappears in Romanesque art, not only in painting, as at St. Urban’s at the Caffarella near Rome (11th century), but also in the bronze reliefs of the doors of St. Zeno in Verona and the cathedral of Benevento.
With the spread of the narrative style typical of Romanesque and Gothic art, and perhaps also influenced by the fact that in 1223 Cardinal Giovanni Colonna brought from Jerusalem to Rome a fragment of a bloodstained column, now in St. Praxedes in Rome, which according to tradition is the very one to which Jesus was bound, representations of the flagellation became increasingly frequent during the 13th and then the 14th centuries. This continued into the 15th century, when the theme was particularly favored, perhaps because it offered an opportunity to depict, with poignant accents, the perfect beauty of the human limbs of the Redeemer. Thus in a representation by Fra Angelico in a panel in the Museum of St. Mark in Florence; in the beautiful panel by Piero della Francesca in the Gallery of Urbino; in that by Luca Signorelli in the Brera Gallery in Milan; and finally in the fresco by Sebastiano del Piombo in St. Peter in Montorio in Rome, for which Michelangelo, according to tradition, supplied the design. On the other hand, a drawing by Michelangelo is also connected with the bronze relief depicting the flagellation that adorns one of the forms of the ciborium by Jacopo del Duca in the Pinacoteca of the National Museum in Naples, where in the church of St. Dominic there is another magnificent flagellation, painted by Caravaggio in 1607.
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