Scourge

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Scourge

A scourge (from Italian scoriada, from Latin excoriare = "to flay

Flaying

Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact....
" and corium = "skin") is a whip or lash, especially a multi-thong type used to inflict severe corporal punishment or self-mortification on the back.

typical scourge (Latin: flagrum; English: flagellum) has several thongs fastened to a handle; c.f.

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A scourge (from Italian scoriada, from Latin excoriare = "to flay

Flaying

Description

The typical scourge (Latin: flagrum; English: flagellum) has several thongs fastened to a handle; c.f. Scottish tawse

Tawse

A tawse is an implement for physical punishment, called tawsing. It was used for educational and domestic discipline, primarily in Scotland....
(usually two or three leather thongs without a separate handle); cat o' nine tails

Cat o' nine tails

The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to 'the cat', is a type of multi-tailed Whip that originated as an implement for severe physical punishment, notably in the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom....
: naval thick-rope knotted-end scourge, the army and civil prison versions usually are leather.

The scourge, or flail

Flail (agriculture)

A flail is an agriculture tool used for threshing to separate cereals from their husks.It is usually made from two or more large sticks attached by a short chain; one stick is held and swung, causing the other to strike a pile of grain, loosening the husks....
, and the crook

Crook

Crook can refer to the following:...
, are the two symbols of power and domination depicted in the hands of Osiris

Osiris

Osiris was an Egyptian mythology, usually called the god of the Afterlife.Osiris is one of the oldest gods for whom records have been found; one of the oldest known attestations of his name is on the Palermo Stone of around 2500 BC....
in Egyptian monuments; they are the unchanging form of the instrument throughout the ages; though, the flail depicted in Egyptian mythology was an agricultural instrument used to thresh wheat

Wheat

Wheat , is a worldwide cultivated Poaceae from the Levant region of the Middle East. Globally, after maize, wheat is the second most-produced food among the cereal just above rice....
, and not for corporal punishment.

The priests of Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was the Phrygian deification of the Earth Mother. As with Greek Gaia , or her Minoan civilization equivalent Rhea , Cybele embodies the fertile Earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals ....
scourged themselves and others, and such stripes were considered sacred.

From a Biblical quotation, scorpio 'scorpion' is Latin for a Roman flagrum. Hard material was affixed to multiple thongs to give a flesh-tearing 'bite' [1 Kings
Books of Kings

The Books of Kings are a part of Judaism's Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. They were originally written in Hebrew language and were later included by Christianity as part of the Old Testament....
12:11: ...My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions]. The name testifies to the pain caused by the arachnid

Arachnid

Arachnids are a class of Arthropod invertebrate animals in the subphylum Chelicerata. All arachnids have eight legs, but some exceptions are of some species having the first pair legs convert to sensory function and harvest mite larvae have only 3 pairs of legs....
. To its generous Roman application testifies the existence of the Latin words Flagrifer 'carrying a whip' and Flagritriba 'often-lashed slave'.

Scourging played a famous role as the punishment inflicted in the Flagellation of Christ

Flagellation of Christ

The Flagellation of Christ, sometimes known as Christ at the Column, is a scene from the Passion of Christ very frequently shown in Christian art, in cycles of the Passion or the larger subject of the Life of Christ....
during the Passion

Passion (Christianity)

The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering ? physical, spiritual, and mental ? of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion....
on Jesus Christ before crucifixion

Crucifixion

Crucifixion is an ancient method of execution , whereby the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead....
.

Scourging was the first step in the traditional Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
punishment for parricide

Parricide

Parricide stemming from is defined as:#the act of murdering one's father , mother , or other close relative#the act of murdering a person who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father...
.

Scourging was soon adopted as a sanction in the monastic discipline of the fifth and following centuries. Early in the fifth century it is mentioned by Palladius of Galatia

Palladius of Galatia

Palladius of Galatia was bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, and a devoted disciple of Saint John Chrysostom. He is best remembered for his work, the Lausiac History; he was also, in all probability, the author of the Dialogue on the Life of Chrysostom....
in the Historia Lausiaca, and Socrates Scholasticus

Socrates Scholasticus

Socrates of Constantinople was a Greek Christian church historian, a contemporary of Sozomen and Theodoret, who used his work; he was born at Constantinople c....
tells us that, instead of being excommunicated, offending young monks were scourged. (See the sixth-century rules of St. Cæsarius of Arles for nuns, and of St. Aurelian of Arles.) Thenceforth scourging is frequently mentioned in monastic rules and councils as a preservative of discipline. Its use as a punishment was general in the seventh century in all monasteries of the severe Columban rule.

Canon law

Canon law

Canon law is internal ecclesiastical law governing the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church churches, and the Anglicanism of churches....
(Decree of Gratian, Decretals of Gregory IX) recognized it as a punishment for ecclesiastics; even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it appears in ecclesiastical legislation as a punishment for blasphemy

Blasphemy

Blasphemy is the disrespectful use of the name of one or more Deity. It may include using sacred names as stress expletives without intention to pray or speak of sacred matters; it is also sometimes defined as language expressing disapproved beliefs, or disbelief....
, concubinage

Concubinage

Concubinage is the state of a woman or youth in an ongoing, matrimonial relationship with a man of higher social status. Typically, the man has an official wife and, in addition, one or more concubines....
and simony

Simony

Simony is the ecclesiastical crime of paying for holy offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church, named after Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24....
. Though doubtless at an early date a private means of penance

Penance

Penance is repentance of sins as well as the proper name of the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation/Confession....
and mortification, such use is publicly exemplified in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the lives of St. Dominic Loricatus

St. Dominic Loricatus

Saint Dominic Loricatus — in Italian, San Domenico Loricato — was an Umbrian saint, born in the Italy village of Luceolis near Cantiano ....
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 the scourge or "discipline" as a means of mortification and penance. Thenceforth it is met with in most medieval religious orders and associations.

The practice was, of course, capable of abuse, and so arose in the thirteenth century the fanatical sect of the Flagellants, though in the same period we meet with the private use of the "discipline" by such saintly persons as King Louis IX of France

Louis IX of France

Louis IX , commonly Saint Louis, was List of French monarchs from 1226 to his death. He was also Counts of Artois from 1226 to 1237. Born at Poissy, near Paris, he was a member of the House of Capet and the son of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile....
and Elisabeth of Hungary

Elisabeth of Hungary

Saint Elisabeth of Hungary is a German Catholic saint. According to tradition, she was born in the castle of S?rospatak, Hungary, on July 7, 1207....
.

Metaphoric use

Semi-literal usages such as "the scourge of God" for Attila the Hun (i.e. "God's whip to punish the nations with") led to metaphor

Metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
ic uses to mean a severe affliction, e.g. "the scourge of drug abuse". As a result, some people forget its literal meaning and seem to imagine a connection with "scour" -to clean something by scrubbing it vigorously.

Sources and references

Catholic Encyclopaedia
H. H. Mallinckrodt, Latijn-Nederlands woordenboek (Latin-Dutch dictionary)

Scourge

Description

Metaphoric use

Sources and references

See also