History of Flagellation Among Different Nations | Project Gutenberg
Transcriber's Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
The figures in the upper half of this plate represent the Prison-Rod and Whipping-Post. The Rattan, Birch, and Loose Garment belong to ladies’ boarding schools in the last century. The Rule and Spatula (or “Jonathan”) were used in boys’ schools. The holes in the spatula raised blisters.
Beneath are the modern Jesuit discipline with the Whipping-Post or Hurdle in Wandsworth House of Correction. On either side are Knouts of leather and of twisted cord.
HISTORY<br>—OF—<br>FLAGELLATION<br>AMONG DIFFERENT NATIONS.<br>A NARRATIVE OF THE<br>STRANGE CUSTOMS AND CRUELTIES<br>OF THE<br>Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Etc.<br>WITH<br>AN ACCOUNT OF ITS PRACTICE AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS<br>AS A RELIGIOUS STIMULANT AND CORRECTOR OF MORALS.<br>ALSO ANECDOTES OF<br>REMARKABLE CASES OF FLOGGING AND OF CELEBRATED FLAGELLANTS.<br>WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.
New York.
MEDICAL PUBLISHING CO.
1924
Copyright, 1903.
BY
The Medical Publishing Co.
Printed in U. S. A.
iii<br>PREFACE.
A period will, sooner or later, arrive, at which the<br>disciplining and flagellating practices even now in<br>use, and which have been so for so many centuries,<br>will have been laid aside, and succeeded by others<br>equally whimsical. And while the men of those days<br>will overlook the defects of their own extravagant<br>customs, or perhaps even admire the rationality of<br>them, they will refuse to believe that the practices of<br>which accounts are given in this work, ever were in<br>use among mankind, and even matter of great moment<br>among them. The design, therefore, is effectually<br>to remove all doubts in that respect, by handing<br>down to them the flower and choice parts of the facts<br>and arguments on the subject.
This book will likewise be extremely useful to the<br>present age; and it will in the first place be so, the<br>subject being considered in a moral light. The numerous<br>cases that are produced in this book, of disciplines<br>which offenders of all classes, kings as well as<br>others, have zealously inflicted upon themselves, will<br>supply a striking proof of that deep sense of justice<br>which exists in the breasts of all men; and the reader<br>ivwill from such facts conclude, no doubt with pleasure,<br>that even the offenders of the high rank we have just<br>mentioned, notwithstanding the state by which they<br>were surrounded, and the majestic countenance which<br>they put on, sometimes in proportion as they more<br>clearly know that they are wrong, are inwardly convinced<br>that they owe compensation for their acts of<br>injustice.
If considered in a philosophical light, this work will<br>be useful to the present age, in the same manner as<br>we have said it would be to posterity. The present<br>generation will find in it proofs, both of the reality of<br>the singular practices which once prevailed in various<br>countries, and are still in full force in many others,<br>and of the important light in which they have been<br>considered by mankind. They will meet with accounts<br>of bishops, cardinals, popes and princes, who<br>have warmly commended such practices; and will not<br>be displeased to be moreover acquainted with the debates<br>of the learned on the same subject, and with the honest,<br>though opposite, endeavours of a Cerebrosus and a<br>Damian, a Gretzer and a Gerson.
We may add that the principal part of the facts and<br>anecdotes are taken from the very rare work of the<br>Abbe Boileau.
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE.
The present brief treatise is a reprint of a book published<br>some years ago. It contains an accurate and<br>full account of the various modes of inflicting punishment<br>with the rod or flagellum, and descriptions of<br>the implements used; and quotes many remarkable<br>cases of flogging. The work is anonymous both as<br>to author and publisher. According to the unknown<br>author’s preface the facts are taken from “Historia<br>Flagellantium,” by the Abbe Jacobus Boileau<br>(John De Lolme) who was born in Paris in 1635<br>and died in 1716. The author’s purpose, is as he<br>states in his Preface, to prove that the practices he describes<br>were not only in vogue in ancient days, but<br>that they were customs of his own time. Neither were<br>they confined to classes or individuals, all sorts and<br>conditions of men were victims of the deplorable habit.<br>Kings, slaves, and military men were disciples of the<br>rod, as was also the religious zealot who submitted the<br>bodily organs which the Phallic worshipers venerate<br>to the flagellant’s rod. By an intelligent handling of<br>the subject the writer endeavors to suppress a virile<br>custom that exists (even to-day) among religious orders.<br>For the same moral motives the Publisher issues the<br>book.
PUNISHMENT OF POLITICAL OFFENDERS IN COLDBATH FIELDS’ PRISON.
—Caricature by Gillray.
History of Flagellation.
Chap. I.—The use of Flagellations known among the ancient heathens.
It is not to be doubted, that flagellations had been<br>invented, and were become, in early times, a<br>common method of punishment...