Mystical systems
Flagellants
Direct answer
Flagellants: The Flagellants were lay penitents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who walked from town to town scourging themselves in public, above all during the Black Death.
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At a glance
- Also called
- flagellant movement
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Asceticism, Hair Shirt, Lent, Repentance
The Flagellants were lay penitents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who walked from town to town scourging themselves in public, above all during the Black Death.
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Who were the Flagellants?
Flagellant comes from the Latin flagellum, a whip. Self-scourging, called the discipline, had been a private penance in monasteries since the eleventh century, promoted by the monk Peter Damian. The Flagellants made it a mass movement. Bands of laymen marched behind crosses and banners, sang hymns, and at each town stripped to the waist and whipped themselves in the market square.
The first wave began at Perugia in 1260. The largest swept Germany and the Low Countries in 1349, as the plague advanced. Members joined for thirty-three and a half days, one for each year of the life of Jesus, and swore obedience to a lay master. The marchers believed their blood could turn away God's anger. In several towns their arrival was followed by attacks on Jews, who were falsely blamed for the plague.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Fasting and discipline.
What sets Flagellants apart
What distinguished the Flagellants from monks who used the scourge was the street. Theirs was penance as public theatre, performed in the open twice a day, with a set ritual of lying on the ground in postures that confessed particular sins. They kept strict rules while enrolled: no bathing, no shaving, no speaking to women, no bed. The movement was lay and self-governing, and its masters claimed a letter fallen from heaven as their authority, which is the point at which bishops turned against it.
- Word: Latin flagellum, a whip or scourge
- First outbreak: Perugia, 1260, linked to the hermit Raniero Fasani
- Greatest outbreak: 1349, in Germany and the Low Countries, during the Black Death
- Term of service: thirty-three and a half days
- Condemned by: Pope Clement VI, in a bull of October 1349
- Italian afterlife: the disciplinati brotherhoods and their hymns, the laude
Often mistaken for something else: The discipline was a private scourging allowed to monks under a superior; the Flagellants were lay crowds who performed it in public and answered to no bishop.
The story behind Flagellants
The movement of 1260 is linked to the hermit Raniero Fasani of Perugia and spread across northern Italy and over the Alps within months. In October 1349 Pope Clement VI issued a bull condemning the Flagellants, objecting that laymen were preaching and hearing confessions without authority, and rulers suppressed them. In Italy the impulse settled into parish brotherhoods, the disciplinati, who scourged themselves in private and composed vernacular hymns called laude.
Why Flagellants matters
They show how fear in a catastrophe can turn penance into a mass movement outside the control of any church.
How to read Flagellants
Historians use the name for the processions of 1260 and 1349 and, more loosely, for later brotherhoods of penitents.
Flagellants in practice: an example
Chroniclers of 1349 describe townspeople weeping as a long column of hooded men entered the square singing.
Where readings of Flagellants go wrong
Scourging wounds the body and is dangerous. It is recounted here as history, never as something to imitate.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- flagellant, flagellants black death, flagellant movement, brotherhood of the flagellants, flagellants meaning
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
See Flagellants in your personal almanac
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Common questions
Who were the Flagellants?
They were groups of lay Christians who travelled in procession and whipped themselves publicly as penance. The two great outbreaks were in Italy in 1260 and across central Europe during the Black Death in 1349.
Why did the Church condemn the Flagellants?
Pope Clement VI banned them in 1349. They acted without clergy, their masters heard confessions and gave absolution, some claimed their penance replaced the sacraments, and their marches stirred violence.
Does religious self-flagellation still exist?
Some Holy Week processions in Spain, Italy, the Philippines and New Mexico, and some Shia mourning rites in Muharram, include it. Many religious authorities in those traditions discourage or forbid the bloodier forms.
