510 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Genoa, Piacenza, Modena, Rome and other Italian cities. A number of accounts have come down to us, now favorable as the account of the " notary of Pistoja," now unfavorable as the account of von Nieheim. According to the Pistojan writer, the movement had its origin in a vision seen by a peasant in the Dauphine, whicli is of interest as showing the relative places assigned in the popular worship to Christ and Mary. After a midday meal, the peasant saw Christ as a young man. Christ asked him for bread. The peasant told him there was none left, but Christ bade him look, and behold ! he saw three loaves. Christ then bade him go and throw the loaves into a spring a short distance off. The peasant went, and was about to obey, when a woman, clad in white and bathed in tears, appeared, telling him to go back to the young man and say that his mother had forbidden it. He went, and Christ repeated his command, but at the woman's mandate the peasant again returned to Christ. Finally he threw in one of the loaves, when the woman, who was Mary, informed him that her Son was exceedingly angry at the sinfulness of the world and had determined to punish it, even to destruction. Each loaf signified one-third of mankind and the destruction of one-third was fixed, and if the peasant should cast in the other two loaves, all mankind would perish. The man cast himself on his knees before the weeping Virgin, who then assured him that she had prayed her Son to withhold judgment, and that it would be withheld, provided he and others went in processions, flagellating themselves and crying "mercy" and " peace," and relating the vision he had seen.^
The peasant was joined by 17 others, and they became the nucleus of the new movement. The bands slept in the convents and church grounds, sang hymns, — laude, — from which they were also called laudesi, and scourged themselves with thongs as their predecessors had done. Miracles were supposed to accompany their marches. Among the miracles was the bleeding of a crucifix, which some of the accounts, as, for example, von Nieheim's, explain by their pouring blood into a hole in the crucifix and then soaking the wood in oil and placing it 1 See Forstemann, p. Ill sqq.
§ 58. HERETICAL AND UNCHURCHLY MOVEMENTS. 511
in the sun to sweat. According to this keen observer, the bands traversed almost the whole of the peninsula. Fifteen thousand, accompanied by the bishop of Modena, marched to Bologna, where the population put on white. Not only were the people and clergy of Rome carried away by their demonstrations, but also members of the sacred college and all classes put on sackcloth and white. The pope went so far as to bestow upon them his blessing and showed them the handkerchief of St. Veronica. Nieheim makes special mention of their singing and their new songs — nova carmiria. But the historian of the papal schism could see only evil and fraud in the movement,^ and condemns their lying together promiscuously at night, men and women, boys and girls. On their marches they stripped the trees bare of fruit and left the churches and convents, where they encamped, defiled by their uncleanness. An end was put to the movement in Rome by the burning of one of the leading prophets.
The bull of Clement VI. was followed, in 1372, by the fjilmination^fjLjregorv XI^, who associated the Flagellants with the Beghards, and by the action of the Council of Constance. In a tract presented to^thecoiiiicil in 1417, Gerson asserted that the sect made scourging a substitute for the sacrament of penance and confession. ^ He called upon the bishops to put down its cruel and sanguinary members who dared to shed their own blood and regarded themselves as on a par with the old martyrs. The laws of the decalogue were sufficient without the imposition of any new burdens, as Christ himself taught, when he said, " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." This judgment of the theologians the Flagellants might have survived, but the merciless probe of the Inquisition to which they were exposed in the IStli century tQok their life* Trials were instituted against them in Thuringia under the Dominican agent, Schonefeld, 1414. At one place, Sangerhausen, near Erfurt, 91 were burnt at one time and, on
1 Omnem populum mirahiliter deceperunt. De schismate, II. 26. Erler's ed., p. 168 sq.
2 Contra sectam flagellantium. Du Pin's ed., II. 659-664. Van der Hardt, III. 99 sqq.