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Flagellation is the act of whipping (Latin flagellum, "whip") the human body. Specialised implements for it include rods, switches and the cat-o-nine-tails. A switch is a flexible rod typically used for corporal punishment of the Birching type called switching after it especially when The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to 'the cat' is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe Physical punishment Typically, whipping is performed on unwilling subjects as a punishment; however, flagellation can also be submitted to willingly, or performed on oneself, in religious or sadomasochistic contexts. Sadism refers to Sexual or non-sexual gratification in the infliction of Pain or humiliation upon or by another person

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Disciplinary use and torture

Prisoners at a whipping post in a Delaware prison, circa 1907.
Prisoners at a whipping post in a Delaware prison, circa 1907. Delaware ( is a state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

Flogging is an approximate synonym that was probably derived from flagellum in the British navy, where flogging was a common disciplinary measure that became associated with a seaman's manly disregard for pain. The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British armed services (and is therefore known as the Senior Service) Aboard ships, knittles or the cat o' nine tails was used for severe punishment, while a rope's end or starter was used to administer the lightest discipline to sailors. Running the gauntlet (alternative spellings gantlet and rarely gantlope or gantelope) is a form of physical punishment wherein a man is compelled to run The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to 'the cat' is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe Physical punishment

Flagellation probably originated in the Near East but quickly spread throughout the ancient world. In Sparta, young men were flogged as a test of their masculinity. The city of Sparta ( Doric Σπάρτα Attic Σπάρτη The Jews limited flagellation to forty strokes, and in practice delivered forty strokes minus one, so as to avoid any possibility of breaking this law due to a miscount. PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Additionally they would have a doctor monitor the punishment, who would stop it if it became too much for the person to safely bear.

In the Roman Empire, flagellation was often used as a prelude to crucifixion, and in this context is sometimes referred to as scourging. The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial Crucifixion (from Latin crucifixio, noun of process crucifixio, from perfect passive participle crucifixus, fixed to a cross from Whips with small pieces of metal or bone at the tips were commonly used. Such a device could easily cause disfigurement and serious trauma, such as ripping pieces of flesh from the body or loss of an eye. In addition to causing severe pain, the victim would be made to approach a state of hypovolemic shock due to loss of blood. In Physiology and Medicine, hypovolemia (also hypovolaemia is a state of decreased Blood volume more specifically decrease in volume of Blood plasma The Romans reserved this torture for non-citizens, as stated in the lex Porcia and lex Sempronia, dating from 195 and 123 BC. The poet Horace refers to the horribile flagellum (horrible whip) in his Satires, calling for the end of its use. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, ( Venosa, December 8, 65 BC - Rome, November 27, 8 BC known in the English-speaking world as Horace Typically, the one to be punished was stripped naked and bound to a low pillar so that he could bend over it, or chained to an upright pillar as to be stretched out. Two lictors (some reports indicate scourgings with four or six lictors) alternated blows from the bare shoulders down the body to the soles of the feet. The lictor, derived from the Latin ligare (to bind was a member of a special class of Roman civil servant with special tasks of attending and guarding There was no limit to the number of blows inflicted— this was left to the lictors to decide, though they were normally not supposed to kill the victim. Nonetheless, Livy, Suetonius and Josephus report cases of flagellation where victims died while still bound to the post. Titus Livius (traditionally 59 BC &ndash AD 17 known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome Josephus (AD 37 – c 100 also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu (Joseph son of Matthias and after he became a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus Flagellation was referred to as "half death" by some authors and apparently, many died shortly thereafter. Cicero reports in In Verrem, "pro mortuo sublatus brevi postea mortuus" ("taken away for a dead man, shortly thereafter he was dead"). Marcus Tullius Cicero ( Classical Latin ˈkikeroː usually ˈsɪsərəʊ in English January 3, 106 BC &ndash December 7, 43 BC was a Roman Often the victim was turned over to allow flagellation on the chest, though this proceeded with more caution, as the possibility of inflicting a fatal blow was much greater.

Corporal punishment as whipping was especially popular in French Revolution. For example one of leaders of revolution Anne Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt went mad, ending her days in an asylum after public whipping. Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt (born Anne-Josèphe Terwagne; August 13, 1762 &ndash1817 a French woman who was a striking On the 31 May 1793 the Jacobin women seized her, stripped her naked, and flogged her on bare bottom in the public garden of the Tuileries. The Palais des Tuileries was a royal Palace in Paris. It stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed After humiliation shameless and bloodthirsty in delirium she started to live naked - refused to wear any garments, in memory of the outrage she had suffered. [1]

While flagellation and other forms of corporal punishment are now forbidden in most Western countries, flagellation is still a common form of punishment around the world, particularly in Islamic countries. For other meanings including people named 'Islam' see Islam (disambiguation. Medically supervised caning is also still used as a punishment for some categories of crime in Singapore and Malaysia [1]. Caning is a Physical punishment (see that article for generalities and alternatives consisting of a number of hits (known as "strokes" or "cuts" with Singapore For the biogeographical region see Malesia Malaysia (məˈleɪʒə or /məˈleɪziə/ is a country that consists of thirteen states and

Flogging as military punishment

In the 1700s and 1800s, European armies administered floggings to common soldiers who committed breaches of the military code. During the American Revolutionary War, The American Congress raised the legal limit on lashes from 39 to 100 for soldiers who were convicted by courts-martial. In this article the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies that supported the American Revolution are primarily referred to as "Americans" with occasional references to "Patriots" [2] Generally, officers were not flogged. However, in 1745, a cashiered British officer could have his sword broken over his head, among other indignities inflicted on him. [3]

In the Napoleonic Wars, the maximum number of lashes that could be inflicted on soldiers in the British Army reached an astonishing 1,200. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815 involved Napoleon's French Empire and a shifting set of European allies and opposing coalitions This many lashes could permanently disable or kill a man. Oman, historian of the Peninsular War, noted that the maximum sentence was inflicted "nine or ten times by general court-martial during the whole six years of the war" and that 1,000 lashes were administered about 50 times. The Peninsular War or Spanish War of Independence pitted an alliance of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal against France [4] Other sentences were for 900, 700, 500 and 300 lashes. One soldier was sentenced to 700 lashes for stealing a beehive. [5] Another man was let off after only 175 of 400 lashes, but spent three weeks in the hospital. [6] Later in the war, the more draconian punishments were abandoned and the offenders shipped to New South Wales instead, where unfortunately, more whippings often awaited them. (See Australian penal colonies section. ) Oman later wrote,

"If anything was calculated to brutalize an army it was the wicked cruelty of the British military punishment code, which Wellington to the end of his life supported. Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, KP, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS ( c There is plenty of authority for the fact that the man who had once received his 500 lashes for a fault which was small, or which involved no moral guilt, was often turned thereby from a good soldier into a bad soldier, by losing his self-respect and having his sense of justice seared out. Good officers knew this well enough, and did their best to avoid the cat-of-nine-tails, and to try more rational means -- more often than not with success. "[7]

Meanwhile, during the French Revolutionary Wars the French Army stopped floggings altogether. The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts from 1792 until 1802 fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states The King's German Legion (KGL), which were German units in British pay, did not flog. In one case, a British soldier on detached duty with the KGL was sentenced to be flogged, but the German commander refused to carry out the punishment. When the British 73rd Foot flogged a man in occupied France in 1814, disgusted French citizens protested against it. [8]

Australian penal colonies

While common in the British Army and British Royal Navy as a means of discipline, flagellation also featured prominently in the British penal colonies in early colonial Australia. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. A penal colony is a Settlement used to detain Prisoners and generally use them for Penal labour in an economically underdeveloped part of the state's For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. Given that convicts in Australia were already "imprisoned", punishments for offenses committed in the colonies could not usually result in imprisonment and thus usually consisted of corporal punishment such as hard labour or flagellation. A convict is "a person found guilty of a Crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison" sometimes referred to in Slang Unlike Roman times, British law explicitly forbade the combination of corporal and capital punishment; thus, a convict was either flogged or hanged but never both. Capital punishment, the death penalty or execution, is the Killing of a person by judicial process as Punishment.

Flagellation took place either with a single whip or more notoriously, with the cat o' nine tails. The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to 'the cat' is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe Physical punishment Typically, the offender's upper half was bared and he was suspended by the hands beneath a tripod of wooden beams (known as 'the triangle'), while either one or two floggers administered the prescribed number of strokes. During the flogging, a doctor or other medical worker was consulted at regular intervals as to the condition of the prisoner - if the offender had fainted from blood loss or suffered extreme skin and flesh loss from the back, the punishment was usually suspended until such time that the offender had sufficiently healed. Once healed, the remainder of the required strokes were administered. Punishment was usually limited to 20, 50 or 100 strokes at one flogging, though records exist of prisoners in Australian penal colonies such as Norfolk Island or Port Arthur receiving more than 3,000 strokes over a number of months or years. Norfolk Island ( Norfuk: Norfuk Ailen) is a small inhabited island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand Port Arthur is a small town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania, Australia.

Due to its prevalence, flagellation featured prominently in the culture of early colonial Australia. It was often a mark of pride for a flogged former convict to "show his stripes" (expose his flagellation scars) as an "iron man", or to hide them at all costs if an emancipated convict was attempting to rebuild some semblance of a normal life in society. Children in the Australian colonies were often observed playing "flogging games" where a doll or another child would pretend to be "strung from the triangles" and whipped.

(See also: History of Australia). The written history of Australia began when Dutch explorers first sighted the country in the 17th century

Association with religion

Flagellants. From a fifteenth century woodcut.
Flagellants. From a fifteenth century woodcut.

Christianity

The Flagellation refers in a Christian context to the Flagellation of Christ, an episode in Jesus' physical degradation leading to the Crucifixion. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Christ is the English term for the Greek ( Khristós) meaning "the anointed " Jesus of Nazareth (7–2 BC / BCE —26–36 AD / CE) (See also: The Passion, Jesus and the Money Changers). This article describes the Christian Passion For other meanings see Passion. The narrative of Jesus and the Money Changers occurs in both the Synoptic Gospels and in the Gospel of John, although it occurs close to the end of the Synoptic Gospels The practice of mortification of the flesh for religious purposes was utilized in the Christian Flagellant movements of the 13th century, and is still very common, to this day, in the Philippines and Latin America. For the Christian metal band see Mortification (band. For the record label see Mortification Records. Flagellants are practitioners of an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by Whipping it with various instruments The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP Some strict monastic orders such as the Carmelites still practice mild self-flagellation using an instrument called a "discipline", a cattail whip made of light chains with small spikes or hooks on the end, which is flung over the shoulders repeatedly during private prayer. Monasticism (from Greek μοναχός, monachos, derived from Greek monos, alone is the religious practice in which one The Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel or Carmelites (sometimes simply Carmel by Synecdoche; Latin: Ordo fratrum Beatæ Practitioners are cautioned against over- or underuse of the device.

Islam

Flagellation is still in use today under Islamic Sharia law in Saudi Arabia and Iran for various crimes, particularly sexual crimes. For other meanings including people named 'Islam' see Islam (disambiguation. Sharia ( Arabic: ar شريعة) is the body of Islamic Religious law. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA ( المملكة العربية السعودية, al-Mamlaka al-ʻArabiyya as-Suʻūdiyya) or Suudi For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iran topics.

While Self Harm is forbidden in Islam a few Shi'a Muslims perform self-flagellation to mourn the death of Hussain during Muharram. Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar حسين بن علي بن أﺑﻲ طالب)‎ (third of Shaban 4 AH / 8th January 626 AD at Medina See also Day of Ashura The Mourning of Muharram is an important period of mourning in the Shi'a branch of Islam, taking place in Muharram Most usually beat their chests with their hands. The practice is common among Shiites in the Middle East and Asia.

Ecstatics and Mystics

Because practices such as starvation, sleep denial and flagellation are known to induce altered states, flagellation may be used by religious ecstatics and mystics as part of ritualistic practices or ceremonies to achieve unusual states of mind. Religious ecstasy is an Altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently Mysticism (from the Greek grc μυστικός mystikos, an initiate of a Mystery religion) is the pursuit of communion with identity

Erotic use

Main article: Erotic spanking
Three floggers used for BDSM play
Three floggers used for BDSM play

In the sexual sub-culture of BDSM, "flagellation" involves beating the submissive partner and is a form of impact play. Erotic spanking is the practice of Spanking another person for the sexual gratification of either or both parties " Play " is the term given to taking part in a BDSM scene. Impact play is a human sexual practice in which one person (the bottom) is struck (usually repeatedly by another person (the top) for the sexual gratification Such a flogging is not always delivered with forceful blows; sometimes it is done with very soft blows, repeated a great many times so as to make the skin sensitive. Thus, the softest impact will eventually feel very intense. Flogging for erotic thrill, typically with implements such as floggers, whips, paddles, or canes, has been called the "English vice". The word whip describes two basic types of tools A long stick-like device usually slightly flexible with a small bit of leather or cord called a "popper" on the A paddle is a tool used for pushing against Liquids either as a form of propulsion in a Boat or as an implement for mixing A cane is a long straight wooden stick generally of Bamboo, Malacca ( Rattan) or some similar plant mainly used as a support such as a Walking stick [9] See also paraphilia.

The flogger used in this context has a large number of soft broad thongs made of suede, leather, or comparable materials. Suede is a type of Leather with a napped finish However it can also refer to a similar napped or brushed finish on many kinds of fabrics Leather is a material created through the Tanning of hides and Skins of Animals primarily Cattlehide The Tanning process Its impact is felt as an impact ("thud") leaving a stinging sensation. Used with light or medium intensity, it can almost act as a form of massage. Used intensely or for longer periods, it becomes painful. Flogging with this implement, usually on the shoulder blades, buttocks, or other fatty areas of the body, can leave bruising but does not cut or permanently mark the skin.

See also

References and further reading

Footnotes

  1. ^ Roudinesco, Elisabeth. (1992) Madness and Revolution: The Lives and Legends of Theroigne de Mericourt, Verso. ISBN 0-86091-597-2. p. 198
  2. ^ Martin, p 76
  3. ^ Tomasson, p 127
  4. ^ Oman, p 239
  5. ^ Oman, p 246
  6. ^ Oman, p 254
  7. ^ Oman, p 43
  8. ^ Rothenberg, p 179
  9. ^ Gibson

External links

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