Flagellants
a Christian sect which arose in 1260 at Perugia, called by the French Perouse, and spread throughout and beyond Italy. Its adherents, who saw a plague raging, and moreover expected the world speedily speedily to terminate, believed that they could pro- FLAGLER pititate the Divine Being by walking in procession with only a cloth tied round them, and flagellating their bare shoulders with whips which they carried. At first they were noted for sanctity, and made many converts, but doubtful characters beginning to join their ranks, they fell into disrepute, and were restrained from their processions by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, when the sect gradually died away. The terror produced by the dreadful disease called the black death, which destroyed many millions of people in Europe between 1348 and 1351, produced a revival of the flagellation mania, which spread over most of Europe. In 1349 Clement VII. declared the Flagellants heretics and took steps to repress them. In 1414 an effort was made in Thuringia to revive them anew, but the burning alive of his followers led to the gradual decline their leader, Conrad Schmidt, and 90 of the sect.