Flagellants (Lat. flagellare, to scourge), a name given during the middle ages to various societies of penitents, who went about scourging themselves in public. The first organization of this kind arose in 1056, and was due to St. Peter Damian; and bis efforts were crowned with such success that persons were everywhere seen scourging and lacerating themselves to appease the wrath of heaven. This practice, though discountenanced by the ecclesiastical authorities, became more and more prevalent. In 1260 the calamities consequent upon the long wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines impressed the popular mind with the belief that the end of the world was at hand, and a guild of flagellants was founded in Perugia by one Rainier, a Dominican friar. A branch society was soon after established in Rome, and thence rapidly spread throughout Italy. Vast bodies of men, girded with ropes, marched in procession through the streets, and from city to city, singing lugubrious chants, scourging their naked shoulders, and calling on the people to repent. All hostilities ceased; and the effect of this display, though not lasting, was at first irresistible. Such processions spread from Italy to other countries.

In 1261 large numbers of flagellants were to be seen in Austria, Hungary, and Poland, scourging themselves publicly during 33 days in memory of the 33 years of Christ's life upon earth. These displays were repressed for the time by the civil magistrates; but they recommenced on a larger scale about 1349, when all Europe had been desolated by the "black death." The flagellants now proclaimed that Christ was about to come back on earth, that the world was to be purified by the baptism of blood, and that flagellation was to be the sole sacrament of this new era. These fanatics spread all over Europe, and a band of 120 reached London in the time of Edward III., but found no sympathy among the English people. On the continent women and boys joined in these processions. But to the excesses which characterized their devotion were soon added disorders of every kind. In several places they excited the populace to rise against the Jews, whom they represented as the cause of the "black death." In 1349 Pope Clement VI. issued a bull against them, and in 1372 they were denounced as heretics by Gregory XI. Early in the 15th century they reappeared in Germany; but their leader, Conrad Schmidt, was burned as a heretic in 1414. In France the celebrated Gerson wrote against them in the name of the university of Paris, and a royal edict forbade their processions.

In Italy and Spain some good men, like Vincent Ferrer, endeavored to encourage the practice of public flagellation, while restraining every excess and disorder; but after the council of Constance the flagellants disappeared from European history.-The name of flagellants was also given to some pious guilds in Catholic countries, approved by the ecclesiastical authorities, but which are now almost entirely extinct. In southern France they existed under the name of the white flagellants (blancs battus) down to the reign of Henry III., who established a branch of them in Paris, and joined them, with several of his most licentious courtiers. This effectually extinguished them.-See Muratori, Antiquitates Italicoe Medii Aevi; and especially Forstemann, Die christlichen Geislerge-sellschaften.