FLAGELLANTES, a set of wild fanatics who chastised and disciplined themselves in public by means of the lash. The sect of the Flagellantes took its rise in Italy in the year 1260; its author was one Rainier, a hermit, and it was thence propagated throughout almost all the countries of Europe. The formation of this sect was in all probability merely the effect of an indiscreet zeal. A great number of persons of all ages and sexes made processions, walking two by two with their shoulders bare, which they whipped till the blood ran down, in order to obtain mercy from God, and appease his indignation against the wickedness of the age. They were then called the devout; and having established a superior, he was called the general of the devotion. Though the primitive Flagellantes were exemplary in point of morals, yet they were joined by a turbulent rabble infected with the most ridiculous and impious opinions, and both the emperors and pontiffs felt themselves called upon to put an end to this religious frenzy, by declaring all devout whipping contrary to the divine law, and prejudicial to the eternal rest of the soul.
This sect was revived in Germany towards the middle of the next century, and, rambling through many provinces, occasioned great disturbances. They held, amongst other absurdities, that flagellation was of equal virtue with bap-
Flageoletism and the sacraments; that by means of it the forgiveness of all sins was to be obtained from God without the merits of Jesus Christ; and that the old law of Christ was soon to be abolished, and a new law enjoining the baptism of blood, to be administered by whipping, was to be substituted in its stead. By an injudicious as well as unrighteous policy, Clement VII. thundered out anathemas against the Flagellantes, who were consequently burnt by the inquisitors in several places; but they were not to be easily extirpated. They appeared again in Thuringia and Lower Saxony in the fifteenth century; and rejecting not only the sacraments, but every branch of external worship, placed their only hopes of salvation in faith and flagellation, to which they added other strange doctrines concerning evil spirits. Their leader Conrad Schmidt and many others were very needlessly committed to the flames by German inquisitors about the year 1414.