Flagellant

If we turn from these abortions of tragedy to the metrical farces which may fairly be said to contain the germ or embryo of English comedy (a form of dramatic art which certainly owes nothing to the father of our tragic stage), we find far more of hope and promise in the broad free sketches of the flagellant head master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop of Bath and Wells; […]

Her heart answered. And that heart also was arraigned: and the heart’s fleshly habitation acting on it besides: so flagellant of herself was she: covertly, however, and as the chaste among women can consent to let our animal face them.

Women’s exclusion from the collective flagellation characteristic of battuti groups was based on more than just the shame of exposing their bodies or mixing male and female flagellants, since it continued through the period when those bearing the cords wore robes and hoods which obliterated their individual identity. More importantly, even the few “flagellant” consororities in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy may not have practised the exercise.