sb. and a. [ad. L. flagellant-em, pr. pple. of flagellāre to whip, f. flagellum: see FLAGELLE sb.]
A. sb.
1. One who scourges himself by way of religious discipline or penance; esp. one of a sect of fanatics (L. flagellantes) that arose in the 13th c. Usually pl.
1563–87. Foxe, A. & M. (1596), 139/2. Flagellants going barefoot in long white linen shirts, with an open place in the backe.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., 323. In their Ninevites or Flagellants.
1782. Priestley, Corrupt. Chr., II. ix. 213. In the thirteenth century there arose in Italy a sect that was called the Flagellants, or whippers, and it was propagated from thence over all the countries of Europe.
1857. Miss Winkworth, Tauler’s Life & Serm., 126. Then appeared the ghastly processions of the Flagellants, who traversed the country half-naked by hundreds and thousands, walking two and two in white shirts often stained with blood, and holding scourges in their hands.
2. In wider sense (chiefly transf. from 1): One who flagellates (himself or others).
1785. Burke, Sp. Nabob Arcot’s Debts, 9. These modern flagellants are sure are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of every small offender.
1855. Planché, trans. C’tess D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales, Gracieuse & Percinet (1858), 8. The flagellants so fatigued themselves, that they could no longer lift their arms.
1879. Geo. Eliot, Theo. Such, ii. 28–9. Their times are not much flattered, not much glorified by the yearnings of that modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing—not themselves but—all their neighbours.
fig. 1849. Bp. of Exeter, in Croker Papers (1884), III. xxvi. 194. This coincidence of opinion avowed by his [Macaulay’s] intending panegyrist with that of his actual flagellant.
Comb.
1876. J. Grant, History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland, II. v. 199. The unhappy teacher had sometimes to perform the duties of a flagellant-general—to punish not only for breaches of discipline committed in the school, but to flog for offences of which the scholar may have been guilty at home.
B. adj.
Given to flagellation, flagellating.
1880. Swinburne, A Study of Shakespeare, i. 27. We find far more of hope and promise in the broad free sketches of the flagellant head-master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop of Bath and Wells.
fig. 1891. G. Meredith, One of our Conq., II. x. 253. Her heart answered. And that heart also was arraigned: and the heart’s fleshly habitation acting on it besides: so flagellant of herself was she covertly, however, and as the chaste among women can consent to let our animal face them.
Hence Flagellantism.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), IX. XIV. i. 8. Instead of being amazed that the Friars swarmed in such hordes over Christendom, it is rather wonderful that the whole abject and wretched peasantry, rather than be trampled to the earth, or maddened to Flagellantism, Jacquerie, or Communism, did not all turn able-bodied religious Beggars, so the strong English sense of Wycliffe designates the great mass of the lower Franciscans in England.
1856. Kingsley, Misc., Froude’s Hist. Eng., II. 74. The philosopher in his study may prove their absurdity, their suicidal folly, till, deluded by the strange lull of a forty years’ peace, he may look on wars as in the same category with flagellantisms, witch-manias, and other ‘popular delusions.’
