Flagellation, like the dancing mania and the strange parades of the Turlepins and Anabaptists in the Middle Ages, has its root in nervous excitement and morbid devotion. Under Anthony of Padua, about 1210, all Perugia lashed themselves through the streets. Justin of Padua relates that great disorders and indecency attended the processions. The madness spread like wildfire through Rome and Italy. In 1260 and in 1261 the custom was again revived after some decadence, in the same town of Perugia and under one Rainer. And at this date thousands went out into Germany led by priests with banners and crosses. Again fading from public notice, the flagellants reappeared during the progress of the plague in 1349. Hecker and Cooper supplement the account given by Boileau. The affair was itself an epidemic. The company marched and sang hymns—among which was the _Stabat Mater_—and bore tapers and magnificent banners. They finally became a regular nomadic tribe, separating into two portions, one of which went to the south and the other to the north. The Church was powerless, and those _pro_ and _anti_ flagellationists, who happened to be in ecclesiastical authority, solemnly excommunicated each other! The wild license of these scenes was far from aiding either morality or religion. Clement VI. (1332-52) issued his bull against them. And, inasmuch as these fanatics had failed to restore a dead child to life in Strasburg, the malediction of Rome had some effect, and once more the harsh custom died out. Then there was another upheaval under Venturinus, a Dominican of Bergamo, and ten thousand persons joined the order. Like a perennial plant it again perished and again sprang up in 1414, when these awful orgies were renewed under the leadership of a person named Conrad. But now the Inquisition interfered, and among the testimony taken to show the lengths to which the fanaticism went is the sworn evidence of a citizen of Nordhausen who, in 1446, asserted that his wife wanted to have the children scourged just as soon as they had been baptized! Once more, in the sixteenth century the Black and Gray Penitents appeared in France. In 1574 the Queen-mother put herself at the head of the black band in Avignon, and the disorders, indecency, and general depravity of manners which followed would scarcely be believed even if it was proper to mention them. From that date to the present time more or less of this old insanity occasionally reappears. It affords a singular commentary on our boasted advance beyond those dark ages, for us to know that the _Penitentes_ of our own Californian coast do precisely every year what Dominic of the Cuirass and Anthony of Padua and Conrad and Rainer all did centuries ago. And this frightful enginery of fanaticism was set in motion by the man who wrote one of the loveliest hymns in the Latin language!