Scourge

Testifying to its frequent Roman application is the existence of the Latin words Flagrifer 'carrying a whip' and Flagritriba 'often-lashed slave'.

Early in the fifth century it is mentioned by Palladius of Galatia in the Historia Lausiaca,[6] and Socrates Scholasticus[7] tells us that, instead of being excommunicated, offending young monks were scourged.

Scourging as a means of penance and mortification is publicly exemplified in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the lives of St. Dominic Loricatus[12] and St. Peter Damian (died 1072).

The latter wrote a special treatise in praise of self-flagellation; though blamed by some contemporaries for excess of zeal, his example and the high esteem in which he was held did much to popularize the voluntary use of a small scourge known as a discipline, as a means of mortification and penance.

[4] The fourteenth-century Flagellants were named for their self-flagellation; King Louis IX of France and Elisabeth of Hungary also made private use of the "discipline".