Flagellant

As if Jewish communities of Europe had not already suffered enough, a second and stranger horror was marching down the roads of the continent, one that fed on the very same well of terror and often left the same trail of Jewish blood in its wake.

They called themselves the Flagellants, and they arrived not as an army, but as a procession.

Bare-chested men, unsanctioned by any church authority, moving from town to town in tight, disciplined columns, scourging their own bare backs and shoulders raw with knotted whips and iron-tipped scourges.

This was penance made spectacle, a public beating offering meant to appease a God the Flagellants believed had turned his face from a sinful world.

Nowhere did the movement take root more fiercely than in Germany, where it swept through the towns like a second contagion, one of ideology rather than bacteria, yet every bit as difficult to contain.

The theology, if one could call it that, was simple and desperate.

But whatever it was, the church were useless.

And so the Flagellants were born, a Christian religious movement who directly sought to undermine the Catholic Church.

The Flagellants began leading processions in towns and cities across Europe, and they were made up of people from all sorts of demographics, but it was really interesting that a lot of upper-class men joined the Flagellants.

Like, that is the main starting point of the movement.

And depending on where they were, geographically speaking, the Flagellants would be wearing big, pointy hats in either black, red, or white.

And if you look at the images of the ones that are wearing the big white ones, it really makes them look like the KKK.

Mm-hmm.

I can see why, yeah.

The other Ghibelline chiefs were similarly butchered, the horrible scenes of bloodshed so working on the feelings of the susceptible Italians that many of them did penance at the grave of Alberich, arrayed in sackcloth.

From this circumstance arose the sect of the Flagellants, who ran through the streets lamenting, praying, and wounding themselves with thongs as an atonement for the sins of the world.

In southern Italy, Manfred for a while was successful.

In 1259, he married Helena, the daughter of Michael of Cyprus and Attolia, a maiden of seventeen years, and famed far and wide for her loveliness.

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Historical Tales, Volume 5, German by Charles Morris.

Chapter 16, The Black Death and the Flagellants.

The middle of the 14th century was a period of extraordinary terror and disaster to Europe.

In this already deeply religious era, many turned to religion for salvation.

The Flagellants, a group of militant pilgrims traveled through the countryside of Italy and Germany, beating and whipping themselves in punishment for the sins of humanity.

Others took the opposite approach and decided that if they were going to die, they might as well go out with a bang.

Taverns and brothels filled up with hedonistic fatalists making merry.