It is true he might have had recourse to a more gradual system of education, like that proposed by a bishop of Metz—at the first offence the offender was to be warned: at the second, admonished: at the third, publicly reprimanded: at the fourth, he was to be put on bread and water: at the fifth, to be separated from the rest of the community and locked up or beaten, _if his age permitted_: and lastly, if those corrections were ineffective, God should be asked to cure him, and he should be taken before the bishop. Let us be just: if there were some incorrigible children, certain masters treated them with a brutality which invited reprisals. On that, we have undeniable testimony. Guilbert de Nogent, speaking of the master who had trained him, pays homage to his virtue but confesses that he overwhelmed him almost daily with cuffs and blows, to force him to learn what he himself could not teach. ‘One day when I had been thrashed I went and sat at my mother’s knees, cruelly hurt and most certainly more than I deserved. My mother having asked me, as was her custom, if I had been beaten again, I, not wishing to denounce my master, said that I hadn’t. But, in spite of my resistance, she pulled aside my shirt and saw my blackened arms and weal-marked shoulders. As in ecclesiastical schools, so also in monasteries and convents was flogging in vogue. A rule of St. Cesaire d’Arles, dating from the year 508, stipulates the punishment of flagellation for unruly nuns. St. Benoit, the restorer of monastic discipline in France, who began his reform in the eight century, prescribed excessive fasts and harsh and bloody flagellations, even for children. If a brother, after having been often checked, neglects to correct himself, he must be punished with strokes. If anyone soils or damages the monastery fitments, he is to be checked and punished according to rule, if he does not mend. If a monk is found with anything claimed as his own property, it is to be taken from him up to two times; if he does not correct himself, he is to be severely punished. If anyone violates the rule of silence, he shall be severely chastised, likewise he who receives books or presents; who reports what he has seen or heard during a voyage; he who takes upon himself to publicly reprimand persons older than himself without an express order from an abbot; or even he who shall correct children with too much warmth and severity. Disobedience of the abbot was also to be punished in the same way. St. Colomban enters into the most minute details for the administration of discipline to ecclesiastics: so many strokes for the monk who has not prostrated himself when going out of the monastery: so many for him who, at the beginning of a meal, has not made the sign of the cross on his spoon: so many for him who has not trimmed his nails before saying mass: so many for him who has not gathered up his crumbs at table. The superior allotted the punishment and generally administered it.