Connected with this phase of parochial life were the public penances which had to be performed in the parish churches. In the comparatively rare instances of people convicted as heretics, the punishment was so severe that, in these days, it must cause astonishment that they were submitted to so quietly. For such a cause the penitent had to walk barefooted and dressed only in underclothing, bearing a bundle of faggots, in the Sunday procession for three successive Sundays. During the course of the passage of the clergy and people through the churchyard, the priest was to give certain disciplines (_fustigaciones_), and the penitent was then to kneel at the entrance of the chancel during Mass, with the faggot in front, and holding a candle in one hand. Other public ecclesiastical punishments were hardly less severe. I. de B., for example, in the fourteenth century, was condemned to undergo six public whippings (_fustigaciones_) on six Sundays before the procession in his parish church, for having violently beaten a cleric. In the fifteenth century, for a grave offence a person was enjoined to go round the market-place of Marlborough on two market days _nudus usque ad camisiam et braccas_, and to be whipped by a priest at each corner. This kind of penance, however, was not confined to the laity. There are instances of clergy being made to do public penances even in their own parish churches. For instance, the rector of the church of O., being convicted before the bishop of a crime, was sentenced to stand bareheaded at the font for three Sundays during High Mass. He was to be vested in surplice and stole, and to read his Psalter. He was then to go as a penitential pilgrim to Lincoln, Canterbury, and Beverley, and at each to offer a candle, and to bring back a testimonial letter that this had been faithfully done. To take one or two further examples of these public penances in church, (1) A man convicted of the sin of incontinence, which has been a scandal, is condemned to walk with bare feet and bareheaded before his parish priest in the procession on two solemn feast days. (2) A woman convicted of unchastity, publicly known, is sentenced to three fustigacions round the parish church in the usual penitential way, _sola camisia duntaxat induta_. She is to hold a wax candle of half a pound in weight from the beginning of Mass till the Offertory, when it is to be offered to the image in the chancel. This is to be done on three Sundays, and if the condemned refuse to undergo the punishment, she is then to be excommunicated, and is to be publicly proclaimed as such on each feast day till she repent and undergo her penance. CHAPTER XI PARISH AMUSEMENTS