Stop Hitting Yourself, Stop Hitting Yourself
Written Dec 18th, 2006 by Josh Rives | Email This
I am not a perfectionist. I am rarely accused of overworking myself. If I make mistakes then I just shrug it off and maybe I’ll try harder next time. Of course that is me and there are those of you out there who love perfection. We’ll call those people “nerds” or in the words of Sandlot, “a square, Benny, the kid’s a square.” Don’t worry. You are not alone as history is full of perfectionists who just beat themselves up until they get it right, literally. Flagellants are always popping up in church history trying to beat the sin out of themselves.
Flagellants are those who practice self-mortification by whipping themselves, usually to remind themselves of Christ’s suffering and to punish themselves for their sin. Flagellants are not a uniquely Christian idea. We have seen evidence of flagellants in ancient Egyptian and Greek cultures. The Romans even whipped the women during Lupercalia to ensure fertility. Nothing better to set the mood for a romantic evening [/sarcasm]. This form of penance (and worship?) first emerges with the monks and was an acceptable form of self-discipline. Even Martin Luther practiced it. The times when it became troublesome were when some took this private form of self-discipline and made it corporate and public.
The first known instance of group, public whippings comes in 1259 in Perugia, Italy. A hermit named Raniero Fasani is credited with organizing the groups and the practice spread to other groups in other countries. Priests would lead a procession from town to town and they would stand in the center of the city and flog themselves for hours. For some reason, others would join in and go with the group to the next town. 
From this point on flagellants come and go throughout history despite the church prohibiting its public practice. One group, the Brotherhood of the Cross, was an organized sect who taught that a miraculous letter they possessed commanded people to join their processions for thirty-three and a half days in order to escape God’s wrath. Another flagellant group known as the Doves grew to about 10,000 men, but they disbanded after they came into Rome and the citizens laughed at them. Flagellation became very popular as a reaction to the bubonic plague in the mid 1300s. To appease what was seen as the wrath of God, they would whip themselves, ironically increasing their chances of getting the Black Death as well as a myriad of other diseases.
The Church took a stance against these displays for two reasons. First, the public whippings turned into a display for shock and entertainment value instead of the private form of discipline it was originally intended for. The second reason is because the flagellant groups were generally sects that subscribed to other heretical or peculiar ideas. An example is the group that blamed the Black Plague on the Jews, although the Jews obviously were not immune to the Plague.
Supporters of flagellation point to 1 Corinthians 9:27 and Colossians 1:24 and claim that whipping themselves allows them to share in the sufferings of Jesus. Of course the obvious problem is that Jesus does not practice self-flagellation and Paul does not explicitly encourage it. Supporters also say that the Old Testament wearing of a sackcloth was possibly a form of self-mortification, 
quoting verses like Job 16:15, 1 Kings 21:27 and 2 Kings 6:30. Even if the sackcloth theory is true, fasting is the most prominent form of physical self-discipline found in the Bible.
Flagellant groups continue to surface throughout history but never in the numbers and with the same fervor as in the Middle Ages. There are still groups today that practice flagellation in private, but more surprising is that there are still those who practice it in public. A quick Google search will pull up some very graphic images of modern day flagellations. Around the border between Colorado and New Mexico, there is a somewhat secret society called the Penitentes who practice public whipping. Another display can be seen in Guardia Sanframondi, a town in Italy, where the parades of people practicing flagellation still occur. The closest I have ever encountered was with my dad’s belt after I punched my brother. Luckily I slipped on a few extra pair of underwear to dull the blow.
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Perugia now hosts a huge chocolate festival every year. They’ve come a long way in the public expositions.