33. Rise and Fall of the Flagellants
Practices like trying to achieve redemption through flagellation were most popular in times of crisis, so it is unsurprising that flagellant numbers soared during the Black Death. The Church condemned the practice, but the movement spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Clad in white robes, large groups of flagellants – sometimes numbering in the thousands – roamed the countryside, dragging crosses while flogging themselves and each other into a religious frenzy.
In one well-recorded episode, hundreds of flagellants arrived in London from Flanders. They paraded twice a day, stripped to the waist, and flogged themselves bloody with three-tailed scourges, some of them knotted and with nails affixed to them. Needless to say, flagellation proved as ineffective as all the other remedies for warding off the plague. Eventually, the practice proved itself a temporary fad, and enthusiasm for flagellation waned as suddenly as it had arisen.
