Flesh and Blood Cults: the flagellants

“When they came to a town the flagellants would make their way to a church, form a circle in front of it, take off their clothes and shoes and put on a sort of skirt reaching from the waist to the feet…[They] marched round in a circle and one by one threw themselves on their faces and lay motionless, with outstretched arms, in the form of a crucifix. Those behind stepped over the prostrate body, striking it gently with their scourges as they passed. Men with heavy sins to redeem lay in positions which symbolized their transgressions; and over these men the Master himself stepped, beating them with his scourge and repeating his formula of absolution: ‘Arise, by the honour of pure martyrdom …’

When the last man had lain down all rose to their feet and the flagellation began. The men beat themselves rhythmically with leather scourges armed with iron spikes, singing hymns meanwhile in celebration of Christ’s Passion and of the glories of the Virgin. Three men standing in the centre of the circle led the singing. At certain passages – three times in each hymn – all would fall down ‘as though struck by lightning’ and lie with outstretched arms, sobbing and praying. The Master walked amongst them, bidding them pray to God to have mercy on all sinners. After a while the men stood up, lifted their arms towards heaven and sang; then they recommenced their flagellation.

If by any chance a woman or a priest entered the circle the whole flagellation became invalid and had to be repeated from the beginning. Each day two complete flagellations were performed in public; and each night a third was performed in the privacy of the bedroom. The flagellants did their work with such thoroughness that often the spikes of the scourge stuck in the flesh and had to be wrenched out. Their blood spurted on to the walls and their bodies turned to swollen masses of blue flesh”.

That was Norman Cohn describing a flagellant procession in his book on millenarian cults: The Pursuit of the Millennium.

The practice of ritual flagellation wasn’t new; it had been a feature of pre-Christian cults such as the cult of Isis and the Dionysian mysteries. The Latin word "flagellum" refers to a multi-thonged whip with interlaced metal or bone pieces that inflicted severe wounds. It was originally used in Rome as a form of torture or as prelude to execution, such as a crucifixion.

In early Christianity, flagellation was used as a monastic discipline aimed at spiritual purification. The Rule of Benedict prescribed flagellation for stubborn monks and novices to encourage humility and obedience. In his treatise entitled In Praise of the Whip, the 11th century hermit and church reformer Peter Damian argued that flagellation was a spiritual imitatio Christi; an imitation of Christ which provided a means of communicating with God through the willing acceptance of suffering.

In 1260 in Perugia, Italy, Raniero Fasani, a Franciscan hermit, claimed to have seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary and Saint Bevignate, commanding him to preach penance and establish peace. Italy was in crisis: there’d been an outbreak of plague in 1259; prolonged political tyranny and anarchy was rife throughout the various Italian states, and apocalyptic prophecies concerning the Antichrist and the world's end began to circulate.

These were inspired by the writings of Joachim of Fiore, an abbot and theologian who lived two centuries beforehand. He believed that history was divided into three fundamental epochs based on the Holy Trinity: The Age of the Father, The Age of the Son, and The Age of the Holy Spirit. This would signal the birth of a contemplative utopia in which the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, a new dispensation of universal love, would proceed from and transcend the Gospel of Christ. He calculated that 1260 would be the beginning of this third epoch.

Some of you may recognise this as a mediæval version of those memes about 2012 and the Mayan calendar when New Year’s Eve 2012 was supposed to usher in either the end of the world or the dawn of a New Age.

Fasani organized brotherhoods known as Disciplinati di Gesù Cristo, which spread rapidly throughout Central and Northern Italy. These early flagellant processions attracted thousands of participants across all social classes and ages, with great processions passing through cities, bearing crosses and banners and calling the faithful to repentance.

The movement spread to nearby regions in Germany and the flagellants began to claim that they were able to achieve salvation by their own merits. While the movement lost momentum in Italy as 1260 neared its end with no sign of the new age commencing, in Germany, they started to preach that taking part in one of their processions absolved a man from all sin without the aid of the Church. Soon archbishops and bishops were busily excommunicating and expelling these heretics, with noblemen such as the Duke of Bavaria helping in the work of repression. Eventually, by 1260, the cult was all but dead apart from some small underground communities of flagellants.

Flagellant movements resurfaced between 1347 and 1351 when the Black Death tore through Europe. The disease was caused by a bacterium - Yersinia pestis - carried by infected fleas from Asia to Europe through trade routes. It was particularly prevalent in major port cities, transmitted through direct contact with infected individuals or through flea bites. It was really two pandemics in one: bubonic plague, which caused painful swellings called buboes and pneumonic plague, which attacked the lungs and had a very high mortality rate.

The plague still exists but nowadays, it can be successfully treated with antibiotics. In the 14th century, however, they lacked an understanding of how infection occurred. The medical practices of the day were helpless in the face of such overwhelming illness and the Black Death ended up killing an estimated 50 million people in Europe, a significant portion of the population. Many people of the time viewed this as a judgement from God for humanity’s collective sin and this created fertile ground for cults to flourish.

The Flagellants believed their public self-scourging, would atone not just for their own sins but for the sins of all humanity, thereby appeasing God's wrath and ending the plague. Flagellant began to sprout up throughout Germany in 1349 and soon, large bands of penitents marched through towns and cities.

The cult's theology incorporated apocalyptic elements and claimed divine messages delivered by angels specifying that followers must undertake pilgrimages of exactly thirty-three and a half days (representing Christ's earthly lifespan) without experiencing "a good day or night," requiring them to spill their blood as penance.

As with all too many cults, this soon extended to spilling the blood of others, specifically the clergy and, inevitably, the Jews. It didn’t take much to tap into resentment of the clergy who were seen as unduly worldly in comparison with the flagellants, feeding themselves rather than their flocks, enriching themselves through corrupt practices such as simony, where ecclesiastical offices were bought rather than earned.

The cult also took a millenarian turn, proclaiming these to be the Last Days and spoke of the coming of a new monastic order of unique holiness. They were talking, of course, about themselves. The populace was urged to rebel against the clergy; monks and priests were stoned and killed, church properties taken over by cult members and anyone, even among their own number, who urged restraint found themselves in danger.

The Jews suffered even more greatly. Rumours had spread that the Jews had poisoned the wells and thus caused the plague, leading to a first wave of massacres that ended when it became apparent that Jews were not being spared from the ravages of the pandemic. Shortly after, however, bands of flagellants began attacking Jewish quarters in the cities and towns they entered. Whole communities were killed in Mainz and Brussels.

The Pope intervened. In 1349, he issued a Papal Bull against the flagellants which was dispatched to the archbishops in Germany, Poland, France, England and Sweden, and was followed by letters to the kings of France and England. The University of Paris too now pronounced its formal condemnation; and clerics hastened to write tracts against the flagellants.

Religious and secular authorities set to the task of suppressing the movement. Their parades were banned, cult leaders and members were removed from towns and cities at best, executed at worst. People began to flee the movement in droves, fearing similar persecution and, by 1357, the last smouldering embers of the flagellant cult were extinguished.

The current cult of gender also demands mortification of the flesh in service of the “true authentic self”. Online, young people bear witness to this: women proudly display their double mastectomy scars or their forearms, flayed of flesh, to provide the material for a phalloplasty; young men celebrate the removal of their genitals. their facial surgery wounds. On Drag Race, a trans-identified female with the drag name Gottmik walked the runway topless, fake arms slicing at her chest with scalpels and a bag filled with blood-soaked spheres to represent her amputated breasts. Through this sacrifice, they have transcended the prison of their own bodies and stand transformed: a new, holy caste, the priesthood of gender identity.

Early in the flagellant cult’s ascendancy, prominent people joined the procession before falling away as it became more radical and less fashionable. We can see echoes of this in the supply of Hollywood celebrities and their transed children. But now, instead of a Pope, we have a US President ordering the recognition only of male and female, reminding those children that they have not metamorphosed into their desired sex. Instead of priests, we have doctors and medical organisations rowing back on their support for “gender affirming care” as its harms become ever more evident. Perhaps soon, the celebrity supporters will fade away, the supply of willing celebrants will dwindle and this current cult of flesh and blood will die a natural death.