ousands,
headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars.
They proceeded in the same manner in the villages: and the woods and
mountains resounded with the voices of those whose cries were raised to
God. The melancholy chaunt of the penitent alone was heard. Enemies
were reconciled; men and women vied with each other in splendid works of
charity, as if they dreaded that Divine Omnipotence would pronounce on
them the doom of annihilation."

The pilgrimages of the Flagellants extended throughout all the province
of Southern Germany, as far as Saxony, Bohemia, and Poland, and even
further; but at length the priests resisted this dangerous fanaticism,
without being able to extirpate the illusion, which was advantageous to
the hierarchy as long as it submitted to its sway. Regnier, a hermit of
Perugia, is recorded as a fanatic preacher of penitence, with whom the
extravagance originated. In the year 1296 there was a great procession
of the Flagellants in Strasburg; and in 1334, fourteen years before the
Great Mortality, the sermon of Venturinus, a Dominican friar of Bergamo,
induced above 10,000 persons to undertake a new pilgrimage. They
scourged themselves in the churches, and were entertained in the market-
places at the public expense. At Rome, Venturinus was derided, and
banished by the Pope to the mountains of Ricondona. He patiently endured
all--went to the Holy Land, and died at Smyrna, 1346. Hence we see that
this fanaticism was a mania of the middle ages, which, in the year 1349,
on so fearful an occasion, and while still so fresh in remembrance,
needed no new founder; of whom, indeed, all the records are silent. It
probably arose in many places at the same time; for the terror of death,
which pervaded all nations and suddenly set such powerful impulses in
motion, might easily conjure up the fanaticism of exaggerated and
overpowering repentance.

The manner and proceedings of the Flagellants of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries exactly resemble each other. But, if during the
Black Plague, simple credulity came to their aid, which seized, as a
consolation, the grossest delusion of religious enthusiasm, yet it is
evident that the leaders must have been intimately united, and have
exercised the power of a secret association. Besides, the rude band was
generally under the control of men of learning, some of whom at least
certainly had other objects in view independent of those whi