Flagellant. Flagellants are practitioners of an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments.
Most notably, Flagellantism was a 14th-century movement, consisting of radicals in the Catholic Church. It began as a militant pilgrimage and was later condemned by the Catholic Church as heretical.
The followers were noted for including public flagellation in their rituals. This was a common practice during the Black Death, or the Great Plague.
They did this because they thought harming themselves would make God have pity on them, and that they would not get the disease, and if they already had it they tried to get God to take it back. But, some did it because they thought that it would remove the infected blood from their bodies.
Flagellation was quite a common practice amongst the more fervently religious throughout antiquity. Following the example of the Benedictine monk Peter Damian in the 11th century, flagellation became a form of penance in the Catholic Church and its monastic orders. The 11th-century zealot Dominicus Loricatus repeated the entire Psalter twenty times in one week, accompanying each psalm with a hundred lash-strokes to his back. The distinction of the Flagellants was to take this self-mortification into the cities and other public spaces as a demonstration of piety. The first recorded incident was in Central Italy in Perugia, in 1
Most notably, Flagellantism was a 14th-century movement, consisting of radicals in the Catholic Church. It began as a militant pilgrimage and was later condemned by the Catholic Church as heretical.
The followers were noted for including public flagellation in their rituals. This was a common practice during the Black Death, or the Great Plague.
They did this because they thought harming themselves would make God have pity on them, and that they would not get the disease, and if they already had it they tried to get God to take it back. But, some did it because they thought that it would remove the infected blood from their bodies.
Flagellation was quite a common practice amongst the more fervently religious throughout antiquity. Following the example of the Benedictine monk Peter Damian in the 11th century, flagellation became a form of penance in the Catholic Church and its monastic orders. The 11th-century zealot Dominicus Loricatus repeated the entire Psalter twenty times in one week, accompanying each psalm with a hundred lash-strokes to his back. The distinction of the Flagellants was to take this self-mortification into the cities and other public spaces as a demonstration of piety. The first recorded incident was in Central Italy in Perugia, in 1
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