The austerities of monks for ages had created an admiration for the practice of flagellation, and this grew till a new sect arose, which believed in this as a supreme rule of life. Sovereign princes, as Raymond of Toulouse, kings, as Henry II. of England, had yielded their backs to the scourge. And St. Louis of France used it as if it were a daily luxury. Peter Damiani had taught it by precept and example. Dominic, called the Cuirassier, had invented or popularised by his fame the usage of singing psalms to the accompaniment of self-scourging. At last, about 1259, all ranks, both sexes, all ages, were possessed with this madness; nobles, wealthy merchants, modest and delicate women, even children of five years old, admired it. They stripped themselves naked to the waist, covered their faces that they might not be known, and went two and two in solemn slow procession with a cross and a banner before them, scourging themselves till the blood tracked their steps, and shrieking out their doleful psalms. They travelled from city to city. Whenever they entered a city, the contagion seized the onlookers. They marched by night as well as by day. The busy mart and the crowded streets were visited by processions; in the dead midnight the sound of the scourge and the screaming chant were accompanied with tapers and torches. Thirty-three days and a half, the number of the years of our Lord's sojourn on earth, was the usual period of this penance. In the burning heat of summer, and when the wintry roads were deep with snow, the crowds moved on. At length the madness wore itself out. Some princes and magistrates, finding it was not sanctioned by the Roman See or by the authority of any great saint, began to interpose, and after being for a time an object of respectful wonder the practice sank into general contempt. A contemporary tells us that in the height of the mania for flagellation the fields and mountains echoed with the voices of the sinners calling to God. Usurers and robbers restored their ill-gotten gains, criminals confessed their sins and renounced their vices, the prison doors were thrown open, and the captives walked forth; homicides offered themselves on their knees with drawn swords to the kindred of their victims, and were embraced with tears; old enemies were forgiven, and exiles were permitted to return to their homes. The movement spread to the Rhine lands, and throughout Germany and Bohemia. But the excitement disappeared as rapidly as it came, and was even denounced as a heresy. Ulberto Pallavicino was resolved to keep the new heretics out of Milan, and erected three hundred gibbets by the roadside, at the sight of which the enthusiasts abruptly retraced their steps, and their enthusiasm left them. EXTRAVAGANT DRESS OF CLERGY IN 1347.