meet sacrifice, he offered up his poor, wounded, tortured, emaciated body.
“I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer.
Have mercy on me, LORD, and take away my sins,
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty GOD,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs....
A sign between the meadow and the cloud,
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed,
Thou wouldst have caught me up into Thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe, and the palm.
O take the meaning, LORD: I do not breathe
Nor whisper any murmur of complaint.”[58]We turn from these pictures of human error,—error based, it must be owned, on
a substratum of truth,—to put together a few particulars of the Sect of the
Flagellants, which practised on a curiously elaborate scale the science of self-
punishment.
This sect first made its appearance in Italy in 1210. The following account of its
origin is taken by Mr. Cooper from the “Chronicon Ursitius Basiliensis” of the
monk of Padua, S. Justin:[59]
“When all Italy was sullied with crimes of every kind, a certain sudden
superstition, hitherto unknown to the world, first seized the inhabitants of
Perusa, afterwards the Romans, and then almost all the nations of Italy. To such
a degree were they affected with the fear of GOD, that noble as well as ignoble
persons, young and old, even children five years of age, would go naked about
the streets without any sense of shame, walking in public, two and two, in the
manner of a solemn procession. Every one of them held in his hand a scourge,
made of leather thongs, and with tears and groans they lashed themselves on
their backs till the blood ran: all the while weeping and giving tokens of the
same bitter affliction, as if they had really been spectators of the passion of our
SAVIOUR, imploring the forgiveness of GOD and His Mother, and praying that He,
Who had been appeased by the repentance of so many sinners, would not disdain