# female flagellants

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-flagellants/49967>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [January 14, 2001, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-flagellants/49967 "2001-01-14T05:25:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![shell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/46a35a/32.png) [@shell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shell)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2001, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-flagellants/49967/1 "2001-01-14T05:25:14Z")

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Is/was flagellation something practiced by both genders or is it purely a guy thing?  
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010112.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010112.html)  
(link fixed by moderator - if you want an URL to “automagically” turn into a link, make sure you have a space **before** and **after** the text of the URL)

[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 01-14-2001 at 10:57 AM]

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**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2001, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-flagellants/49967/2 "2001-01-14T19:26:26Z")

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Ah, the joys of cruising the back roads of the Internet. Putting “female flagellant” into Google brings up mainly kinky sex websites. “Female flagellant medieval” brings up [http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/culture/artarch/Danish/location/MK28.html](http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/culture/artarch/Danish/location/MK28.html) with its reference to a female flagellant figure in a medieval Danish wall painting.

> [@](#):
>
> VELJBY, AARHUS c.1490. 28-41. Devil. Choir, north arch.  
> Devil plagues woman. Center, woman churning is plagued by devil.  
> Left, two devils carry basket by rod put through loops, rod on  
> their shoulders. Right, a female flagellant with birches and  
> scourge, shows bare breasts.

And we’re back at kinky sex again. :rolleyes:

Try “men women flagellants medieval”. Ah.  
[http://www.xenos.org/essays/waldo1f.htm](http://www.xenos.org/essays/waldo1f.htm)

> [@](#):
>
> 1. In 1259 the Flagellants appeared. By a kind of mass contagion men, women, and children bewailed their sins and many of them marched through the streets, naked except for loin cloths, crying to God for mercy, and scourging themselves until the blood ran.25 “They proclaimed complete certainty of salvation to all who should persevere in flagellation for thirty-three days. Scourging was the one necessary sacrament. They were condemned in 1349.”

So it looks like, yes, sometimes it was both men and women.

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**Author:** ![shell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/46a35a/32.png) [@shell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shell)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2001, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/female-flagellants/49967/3 "2001-01-15T03:18:46Z")

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Could not have found that information without your help Duck. Sorry about the url… I’ll go flagellate myself now.