936 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION bth.ahx.14 



memory of the thirty-three years of Christ's life. The strokes of tlie 

 whip were timed to the music of hymns. Men and women together 

 took part in the scourging. The mania finally wore itself out, but 

 reappeared in 1349 with more systematic organization. According to 

 Schaff, " When they came to towns, the bands marched in regular mili- 

 tary order and singing hymns. At the time of flagellation they selected 

 a square or churchyard or field. Taking off their shoes and stockings 

 and forming a circle, they girded themselves with aprons and laid down 

 flat on the ground. . . . The leader then stepped over each one, 

 touched them with the whip, and bade them rise. As each was touched 

 they followed alter the leader and imitated him. Once all on their feet 

 the flagellation began. The brethren went two by two around the 



whole circle, striking their backs till the bl I trickled down from the 



wounds. The whip consisted of three thongs, each with lour iron 

 teeth. During the flagellation a hymn was sung. After all had gone 

 around the circle the whole body again fell on the ground, beating upon 

 their breasts. On arising they flagellated themselves a second time. 

 While the brethren were putting on their clothes a collection was taken 

 up among the audience. The scene was concluded by the reading of a 

 letter from Christ, which an angel had brought to earth and which com- 

 mended the pilgrimages of the Flagellants. The fraternities never 

 tarried longer than a single day in a town. They gained great popu- 

 larity, and it was considered an honor to entertain them." (Schaff, 

 Religious Encyclopedia.) The society still exists among the Latin 

 races, although under the ban of the church. As late as 1820 a pro- 

 cession of flagellants passed through the streets of Lisbon. Under 

 the name of IYnitentes they have several organizations in the Mexican 

 towns of our southwest, where they periodically appear in processions, 

 inflicting horrible self torture on themselves, even to the extent of 

 binding one of their number upon a cross, which is then set up in the 

 ground, while the blood streams down the body of the victim from the 

 wounds made by a crown of cactus thorns and from innumerable gashes 

 caused by the thorny whips. Such things among people called civil- 

 ized enables us to understand the feeling which leads the Indian to 

 offer himself a willing sacrifice in the sun dance and other propitiatory 

 rites. 



RANTERS, QUAKERS, AND FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN 



The middle of the seventeenth cenlury was a time of great religious 

 and political upheaval in England. Hatreds were intense and persecu- 

 tions cruel and bitter, until men's minds gave way under the strain. 

 "The air was thick with reports of prophecies and miracles, and there 

 were men of all parties who lived on the border land between sanity 

 and insanity." This was due chiefly to the long-continued mental ten- 

 sion which bore on the whole population during this troublous period, 

 and in particular cases to wholesale confiscations, by which families 

 were ruined, and lo confinement in wretched prisons, suffering from 



