wounds. Not only during the day, but even by night, and in the
severest winter, they traversed the cities with burning torches
and banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, 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