Plague and pestilence in literature and art — Part 89

Before this mediaeval pageant of penitence the mind insensibly reverts to the ancient ritual of the Salii on this same Italian soil, to their choric hymn of expiation, to the _supplicationes_, and to the love-feast of the _lectisternium_ of later days.

Under the stimulus of the Black Death, the Brotherhood of the Cross, or Cross-bearers, arose out of the ranks of the Flagellants, first in Hungary, and afterwards in Germany. Ditmar[155] has left the following account of their processions:

‘Their heads covered as far as the eyes: their look fixed on the ground, accompanied by every token of the deepest contrition and mourning. They were robed in sombre garments, with red crosses on the breast, back and cap, and bore triple scourges, tied in three or four knots, in which points of iron were fixed. Tapers and magnificent banners of cloth of gold were carried before them: wherever they made their appearance they were welcomed by the ringing of the bells: and the people flocked from all quarters, to listen to their hymns and to witness their penance, with devotion and tears.’

When the Flagellants entered the town they would hand the citizens a document setting forth God’s anger and determination to destroy mankind, had not the Virgin Mary interceded for them. Some of the crosses carried by the Flagellants are still to be seen at Gross-Glogau, Kaysersberg, and Ammerschweyer in Upper Alsace.

This spirit of religious fanaticism spread like wildfire through Hungary, Germany, Bohemia, Silesia, Poland, and Flanders, and even beyond these countries. In the autumn of 1349 some six-score Flagellants crossed from Holland and paraded the streets of London, but the metropolis had not then acquired the taste for processions, and ejected them as undesirable aliens. At last the movement had alighted on uncongenial soil. So great was the number of the Flagellants that they became a cause of well-founded anxiety to the clergy, whose churches they actually invaded, and whose influence they threatened to supersede. Their hymns were in every mouth, and one of them, the chief psalm of the Cross-bearers, is reproduced by Hecker in his _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_.

The secular authorities also saw cause for alarm at the growing numbers and power of the brotherhood, bound together by common ritual and common regulations, and capable, under bold and designing leaders, of exerting their influence in the affairs of states. The Emperor Charles IV appealed to the Holy See for protection against the heretics, and Clement VI responded by issuing a bull from Avignon on October 20, 1349, prohibiting the pilgrimages on pain of excommunication. Philip VI forbade altogether their reception in France, and several other ruling princes followed his example. Relentless persecution soon took the place of unthinking homage. The processions were abandoned, but the spirit that animated them was not dead, and the same fanaticism broke out again in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in Italy even as late as the eighteenth, under the influence of successive plagues.