The Curious Case of the Medieval Flagellants

Many of you have heard of the Bubpnic Plague that tore down society in 1348-1350. Few even have heard of the Flagellants who have infamously been portrayed in media as pentiment men who walked the streets whipping themselves.

Few people know they were a genocidal cult that was outlawed and had orgies.

People were mad from the plague. Everyone was dying and no one was truly living. Stories of parents abandoning children and children abandoning parents, of the plague doctors studying astrology (the scientists of the day declared 3 planets were out of alignment t and sending gases to the earth) and wild theories that the disease could be passed with eyesight.

The Flagellants began as a form of asking for forgiveness for sins, but people were desperate and more people joined. They had to make more rules. And they began speaking out against the church. They had rules that said you couldn't speak or have sex or sleep away from the group without permission. They supposedly had orgies together.

Eventually it got to a point where they were a roving band of genocidal lunatics attacking and murdering a non-Christian they could find and attacking priests as well. They were banned by almost every ruler of the day and over 300 were burned at the stake in the late 1350s.

Actually, interesting fact, in the Middle Ages, you were more likely to be attacked as a friar than any other profession. People would get pissed whenever someone saw one not loving as a friar should