The Black Death (13 page)

Then came the collective flagellation. Each Brother carried a heavy scourge with three or four leather thongs, the thongs
tipped
with metal studs. With these they began rhythmically to beat their backs and breasts. Three of the Brethren acting as cheer-leaders, led the ceremonies from the centre of the circle while the Master walked among his flock, urging them to pray to God to have mercy on all sinners. Meanwhile the worshippers kept up the tempo and their spirits by chanting the Hymn of the Flagellants. The pace grew. The Brethren threw themselves to the ground, then rose again to continue the punishment; threw themselves to the ground a second time and rose for a final orgy of self-scourging. Each man tried to outdo his neighbour in pious suffering, literally whipping himself into a frenzy in which pain had no reality. Around them the townsfolk quaked, sobbed and groaned in sympathy, encouraging the Brethren to still greater excesses.

Such scenes were repeated twice by day and once by night with a benefit performance when one of the Brethren died. If the
details
of the ceremonies are literally as recorded then such extra shows must have been far from exceptional. The public wanted blood and they seem to have got it. Henry of Herford
18
records: ‘Each scourge was a kind of stick from which three tails with large knots hung down. Through the knots were thrust iron spikes as sharp as needles which projected about the length of a grain of wheat or sometimes a little more. With such scourges they lashed themselves on their naked bodies so that they became swollen and blue, the blood ran down to the ground and
bespattered
the walls of the churches in which they scourged
themselves
. Occasionally they drove the spikes so deep into the flesh that they could only be pulled out by a second wrench.’

But though, gripped as they were by collective hysteria, it is easy to believe that they subjected their bodies to such an ordeal, it is impossible to accept that they could have repeated the dose two or three times a day for thirty-three days. The rules of the Brotherhood precluded bathing, washing or changes of clothing. With no antiseptics and in such grotesquely unhygienic
conditions, the raw scars left by the spikes would quickly have
become
poisoned. The sufferings of the Brethren would have become intolerable and it seems highly unlikely that any
Flagellant
would have been physically capable of completing a
pilgrimage
. The modern reader is forced to the conclusion that, somewhere, there must have been a catch. Possibly the serious blood-letting was reserved for gala occasions, such as that
witnessed
by Henry of Herford. Possibly two or three victims were designated on each occasion to attract the limelight by the
intensity
of their sufferings. The Flagellants were not fakes but some measure of restraint there must have been.

Certainly there was little in their chanting intrinsically likely to lead to total self-abandonment. The celebrated Ancient Hymn of the Flagellants, even in the Latin or vernacular German, was a pitiful little dirge; as remote from ecstatic excitement as a Women’s Institute Choir’s rendering of ‘Abide With Me’:

A slightlier livelier refrain is quoted by Nohl:

but even this lacks something as a stimulant.

The Flagellant Movement, at first at least, was well regulated and sternly disciplined. Any new entrants had to obtain the prior permission of their husband or wife and make full
confession
of all sins committed since the age of seven. They had to promise to scourge themselves thrice daily for thirty-three days and eight hours,
20
one day for each year of Christ’s earthly life, and were required to show that they possessed funds sufficient to provide 4d. for each day of the pilgrimage to meet the cost of food. Absolute obedience was promised to the Master and all the Brethren undertook not to shave, bathe, sleep in a bed, change their clothes or have conversation or other intercourse with a member of the opposite sex.

The entrance fee ensured that the poorest members of society were barred from the Brotherhood; the strict rules, at first at any rate conscientiously observed, kept out the sensation-mongers who wished only to draw attention to themselves or to give
unbridled
scope to their passions. In these conditions, the public were generally delighted to receive the visits of the Flagellants and, at a small charge, to meet their simple needs. Their arrival was an event in the drab lives of the average German peasant; an occasion for a celebration as well as for the working off of surplus emotion. If the plague was already rife then the visit offered some hope that God might be placated, if it had not yet come then the penance of the Flagellants was a cheap and
possibly
useful insurance policy. Without at first being overtly
anticlerical
the movement gave the villager that satisfaction of seeing his parish priest manifestly playing second fiddle if not actually humiliated. Ecclesiastics had no pre-eminence in the movement; indeed, in theory, they were forbidden to become Masters or to take part in Secret Councils, and the leaders of the movement prided themselves upon their independence from the church
establishment
.

So bourgeois and respectable, indeed, did the movement at first appear that a few rich merchants and even nobles joined the pilgrimage. But soon they had reason to doubt their wisdom. As the fervour mounted the messianic pretensions of the Flagellants became more pronounced. They began to claim that the
movement
must last for thirty-three years and end only with the
redemption of Christendom and the arrival of the Millenium.
Possessed
by such chiliastic convictions they saw themselves more and more, not as mortals suffering to expiate their own sins and humanity’s, but as a holy army of Saints. Certain of the Brethren began to claim a measure of supernatural power. It was
commonly
alleged that the Flagellants could drive out devils, heal the sick and even raise the dead. Some members announced that they had eaten and drunk with Christ or talked with the Virgin. One claimed that he himself had risen from the dead. Rags dipped in the blood they shed were treated as sacred relics. All that was lacking to give the movement the full force of a messianic crusade was a putative Messiah. Such a figure had appeared in the
thirteenth
century but though there may have been one or two local claimants, no major figure emerged on this occasion to lead the Brethren of the Cross into the Millenium.

As this side of the movement’s character attracted more
attention
, so a clash with the Church became inevitable. Already the claim of the Masters to grant absolution from sins infringed one of the Church’s most sacred and, incidentally, lucrative
prerogatives
. A number of dissident or apostate clerics began to secure high office in the movement and these turned with
especial
relish on their former masters. The German Flagellants took the lead in denouncing the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, ridiculing the sacrament of the eucharist and refusing to revere the host. Cases were heard of Flagellants interrupting religious services, driving priests from their churches and
looting
ecclesiastical property. Other heretics – the Lollards, the Beghards and the Cellites – made common cause with them in
contesting
the authority of the Catholic Church.

The parallel between the Pilgrimage of the Flagellants and the preceding ‘People’s Crusades’ became more apparent.
According
to John of Winterthur, the people were eagerly awaiting the resurrection of the Emperor Frederick who was expected to massacre the clergy and break down the barriers between rich and poor.
21
This delectable vision fused in the popular mind with the apocalyptic ambitions of the Brethren. The movement took on a revolutionary character and began to direct the hostility of its audiences as much against the rich layman as the cleric. What
was left of the merchants and nobles now deserted the movement in disgust, leaving the extremists free to direct its passions as they wished.

The loss of its bourgeois members in itself would probably have mattered little to the Flagellant Crusade. But as they
trekked
from plague centre to plague centre, often bearing infection with them to those whom they were supposed to succour, it was inevitable that many of their older members should perish,
including
the responsible leaders who had set the standards for the rest. To make up numbers, pilgrims were recruited less
remarkable
for their piety or their dour asceticism than for their failure to fit into any regular pattern of life. Bandits too discovered that a convenient way to enter a guarded town was to tack
themselves
on to the tail of a Flagellant procession. Little by little the more respectable citizens of Europe began to look with
diminished
favour on their turbulent visitors.

Up to the middle of 1349, the Flagellants had things pretty much their own way. Central and southern Germany was their favoured hunting ground but they spread freely over Hungary, Poland, Flanders and the Low Countries. In March they were in Bohemia; April, Magdeburg and Lübeck; May, Würzburg and Augsburg; June, Strasbourg and Constance; July, Flanders. Their numbers were formidable and their needs often strained the
resources
of their hosts. A single monastery in the Low Countries had to provide for 2,500 pilgrims in a matter of six months; in two and a half months 5,300 Flagellants visited Tournai; when the crusade arrived at Constance it was even claimed that there were 42,000 men in the company. If anyone opposed them their reaction was ferocious. Mendicant friars in Tournai who
objected
to their pretensions were dismissed as scorpions and
Antichrists
and, near Meissen, two Dominicans who tried to interrupt a meeting were attacked with stones and one of them killed
before
he could escape.

From the start, however, a few doughty spirits had declined to be intimidated. The magistrates of Erfurt refused entry to the Flagellants and neither from the Brethren themselves nor from the citizens was there any attempt to defy their ruling.
Archbishop
Otto of Magdeburg suppressed them from the start. In
Italy they made little impression; perhaps the example had not been forgotten of Uberto Pallavicino of Milan who, in 1260,
hearing
that a Flagellant procession was on the way, erected three hundred gibbets outside his city. The hint was taken and the pilgrims never came. In France they were beginning to gather popular support when Philip VI, showing unusual
determination
, prevented their penetrating beyond Troyes.

According to Robert of Avesbury they arrived in London in May (or possibly September) 1349,
22
but Walsingham, who also records the visit, puzzlingly delays it to 1350, by which time the movement had long been on the wane.
23
‘… there came into England,’ wrote the latter, ‘certain penitents, noblemen and foreigners, who beat their naked bodies very sharply until the blood ran, now weeping, now singing. Yet, as was said, they did this too unadvisedly, since they had no licence from the Apostolic See.’ Robert of Avesbury puts their numbers at more than six score, ‘for the most part coming from Zealand and Holland’. They are only known to have held one ceremony in London, on the open plot in front of St Paul’s. They seem to have met with indifference or even hostility and were rapidly deported as
unwanted
guests.

But the turning point came with the declaration of war by the Church. In May 1348 Pope Clement VI had himself patronized ceremonies involving public flagellation within the precincts of his palace at Avignon but he took fright when he saw that he could not control the movement which he had encouraged. Left to himself he would probably have turned against them sooner, but members of the Sacred College prevailed on him to hold his hand. In mid-1349, the Sorbonne was asked for its opinion and sent to Avignon a Flemish monk, Jean da Fayt, who had studied the phenomenon in his homeland. It seems that his advice was decisive. Shortly after his arrival, on 20 October 1349, a papal Bull was published and dispatched to the Archbishops. This was followed by personal letters to the Kings of France and England. The Bull denounced the Flagellants for the contempt of Church discipline which they had shown by forming unauthorized
associations
, writing their own statutes, devizing their own
uniforms
and performing many acts contrary to accepted
observances
.
All prelates were ordered to suppress the pilgrimages and to call on the secular arm to help if it seemed necessary.

That the Pope meant business was shown when a party of a hundred Flagellants arrived in Avignon from Basle. Clement promptly interdicted public penance and prohibited their
pilgrimages
under threat of excommunication. Emboldened by his example, the rulers of Europe turned on the Brethren. Manfred of Sicily threatened to execute any Flagellant who appeared in his lands;
24
Bishop Preczlaw of Breslaw made threats reality and had a Master burned alive. The German prelates took up the attack with especial relish. The Flagellants were denounced from the pulpit as an impious sect and harsh penalties were
threatened
against any who failed to return humbly to the bosom of the Church. Even those who obeyed were likely to find
themselves
in trouble if they had played a prominent part in the movement and hundreds were incarcerated, tortured or
executed
. In 1350 many Flagellants were in Rome enjoying a
busman’s
penance by being beaten in front of the High Altar of St Peter’s.