“Such a sudden repentance, which had thus diffused itself all over Italy, and had even reached other Countries, not only the unlearned, but wise persons also admired. They wondered whence such a vehement fervour of piety could have proceeded; especially since such public penances and ceremonies had been unheard of in former times, had not been approved by the sovereign Pontiff, who was then residing at Anagni, nor recommended by any Preacher or person of eminence, but had taken their origin among simple persons, whose example both learned and unlearned had alike followed.” The Ceremonies we mention were soon imitated, as the same Author remarks, by the other Nations of Italy: though they, at first, met with opposition in several places, from divers Princes, or Governments, in that Country. Pope Alexander the Fourth, for instance, who had fixed his See at Anagni, refused at first, as hath been above said, to give his sanction to them; and Clement VI. who had been Archbishop of Sens, in France, in subsequent times condemned those public flagellations by a Bull for that purpose (A. 1349). Manfredus, likewise, who was Master of Sicily and Apulia, and Palavicinus, Marquis of Cremona, Brescia, and Milan, prohibited the same processions in the Countries under their dominion; though, on the other hand, many Princes as well as Popes countenanced them, either in the same times, or afterwards. This spirit of public penance and devotion was in time communicated to other Countries; it even reached so far as Greece, as we are informed by Nicephorus Gregoras, who wrote in the year 1361. Attempts were likewise made to introduce ceremonies of the same kind into Poland, as Baronius says in his Annals; but they were at first prohibited: nor did they meet, at the same period, with more encouragement in Bohemia, as Dubravius relates in his History of that Country. In Germany, however, the Sect, or Fraternity, of the Flagellants proved more successful. We find a very full account of the first flagellating processions that were made in that Country, in the year 1349 (a time during which the plague was raging there) in the Chronicle of Albert of Strasbourg, who lived during that period.