Part 1

DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL & CLOISTER

Subscriber’s copy.

DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL AND CLOISTER

BY

Dr. JACOBUS X....

PARIS

ISIDORE LISEUX

MCMII

Five hundred copies.

Printed in France

C. Unsinger, Paris

FOREWORD

The subject dealt with in the present work touches one of the dark patches of our social life. Flogging as an aid to education, a mode of discipline, or a means of repression is universal in time and space. The subject has always had a strange fascination for curious minds. The facts presented here are all drawn from authentic sources. They are stated plainly, without any attempt at colouring them.

DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL AND CLOISTER

Right up to the beginning of the present century the birch rod was an ordinary part of a school’s equipment, and only a few years have elapsed since it was looked on by the schoolmaster as the _ultima ratio_. Indeed, we would not swear that, in certain out-of-the-way places where, in spite of the railway, civilization has not yet penetrated, the teacher is not still known by the insulting but picturesque name of bum-brusher. Today, at any rate in our French schools, this method of correction has been abandoned; and yet, is the time so far gone when it would have been regarded as revolutionary not to use the whip or rod?

But was corporal punishment really efficacious with vicious and undisciplined children? Was there no risk of defeating one’s own object—might not a slumbering vice be aroused in the attempt to train an ill-formed character?

This consideration had not escaped the wisdom of a theologian, who was also a medical man, Father Debreyne: ‘Flagellation may have a result quite different from what one expected. It is therefore very important to abolish this form of punishment from our homes and schools as being indecent, disgraceful, and dangerous to morals.’

Should we have a more perverse imagination than our ancestors if we credited them with malign thoughts; or must we believe that a wind of sadism has blown over our poor humanity during long centuries? Assuredly, the intentions of most of them were pure, but how many black sheep there may have been in the flock!

In primitive times the whip was the attribute of brute force. The father, having complete authority over his child, delegates this authority to the teacher, who exercises it with more or less rigour according to his temperament or temper.

The best policed people have not felt called upon to abandon this instrument of government. If education was severe in Sparta, where children were submitted early to the most difficult exercises, it was hardly any milder at Athens, if we are to judge by this description of Greek customs. ‘Hardly had a child escaped from the tyranny of his nurse, when he fell into the hands of the teacher, the grammarian, and the musician, and these took turns at flogging him to teach him their art. As he grows up, there arrive the arithmetician, the geometer, and the riding-master. Under these masters he gets no rest, he rises early, and is often flogged. A little older, and it is the tactician and gymnastic instructor who now flog and torture him.’ And there have been philosophers to praise and poets to sing the happy results of this brutal method.

However, one voice is raised against this system—the voice of Plutarch, who considers that we should lead children to do their duty by kind words and gentle remonstrances and not by blows, for flogging is more suitable for slaves than the free. It hardens and deadens them, and the pain and shame makes them hate work. Praise and blame are more suitable for freeborn children than whips and rods.

Rome had borrowed this method of treating slaves from Greece. According to Petronius, the following notice could be seen on the fronts of certain houses: ‘Slaves who leave this house without permission will receive one hundred lashes.’

The least impatience of the mistress, or the least fault of the female-slave sufficed to get the latter hung up by the hair and lashed till the blood came. The picture which Juvenal, SAT. vi, has left of these scenes is simply revolting. This practice was so common that, in his _Art of Love_, Ovid recommends women not to give way to anger in the presence of the lover who is watching them at their toilet. Many of them, indeed, had the rather unhappy habit of choosing this moment for beating and biting their slaves, or sticking hairpins in their breasts. And let us not forget that these pins were seven or eight inches long. Flogging must have seemed very mild alongside such a martyrdom, and we are no longer astonished that the satirical Horace thanks his teacher Orbilius for having soundly flogged him when at school.

It was not always the pupils who lent their ... backs to the rod: the master’s turn came one day. Livy reports that a schoolmaster was condemned to be flogged for having committed treason. After he had been stripped of all his clothing and his hands tied behind him, he was handed over to the children, who flogged him heartily. The roles were indeed changed.

From time to time sensitive spirits protested against these methods of education, although the custom was quite generally received and approved. There was some merit in protesting when one was quite alone in the belief.

Quintilian wished to abolish flogging, and the only fault about his reasons was that they were addressed to barbarians who were not yet ready to understand. ‘I would like scholars not to be beaten: firstly, such treatment is degrading and used for slaves; if the victims were older they would be justified in claiming reparation. Secondly, because if a child is so stubborn that reprimands do not cure him, there is every possibility of his being made worse by blows, as are rebellious slaves; besides, such punishment would be needless if the teacher understood his work. But nowadays teachers are so careless in their corrections that, instead of compelling the scholars to do what they should, they are content to punish them when they have not done it.

Further, if we constrain a boy with stripes, how shall we treat a young man who cannot be flogged, and whose honour should be appealed to encourage him to study? Add to that, that accidents happen to those who are beaten which decency forbids us to describe, and which are caused by fear and pain. The shame felt by the victims injures them and cows them to such an extent that they fly from the light and sink under their shame. If wise and skilful teachers have not been chosen, it is impossible to say to what extremes of cruelty they may not go, and to what extent they will terrify their pupils.’ Bk. 1, iii.

Quintilian addressed the empty air. He spent his efforts in sheer waste, trying to uproot a prejudice which was to last longer than he.

The Jesuits have been charged with the invention of pedagogical flogging—they might well reply that they had many precursors. The history of monastic flagellation is an argument they would have been justified in urging in support. But they have a respondent of another opinion. Has not Solomon said: ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child?’

In the _Coutumes de Cluny_, written by the monk Udabric in 1087, we read: ‘At prayers, if the children sing badly or fall asleep, the prior or master will strip them to their shirt and flog them with osiers or specially prepared cords.’

We know nothing of the duration of the punishments, but the following fact plainly shows that the delinquents were intimidated. On St. Mark’s Day some scholars of St. Gall’s had incurred the punishment of a flogging for truancy. The boy who was sent to the attic to fetch the rods, wishing to save himself and his comrades from the punishment, seized a burning brand and set fire to the abbey. This simple fact plainly shows that the children of those days were little rascals, and one is not surprised to find a priest complaining to St. Anselme du Bec that he could do nothing with his pupils although he thrashed them soundly.

It is true he might have had recourse to a more gradual system of education, like that proposed by a bishop of Metz—at the first offence the offender was to be warned: at the second, admonished: at the third, publicly reprimanded: at the fourth, he was to be put on bread and water: at the fifth, to be separated from the rest of the community and locked up or beaten, _if his age permitted_: and lastly, if those corrections were ineffective, God should be asked to cure him, and he should be taken before the bishop.

Let us be just: if there were some incorrigible children, certain masters treated them with a brutality which invited reprisals. On that, we have undeniable testimony. Guilbert de Nogent, speaking of the master who had trained him, pays homage to his virtue but confesses that he overwhelmed him almost daily with cuffs and blows, to force him to learn what he himself could not teach. ‘One day when I had been thrashed I went and sat at my mother’s knees, cruelly hurt and most certainly more than I deserved. My mother having asked me, as was her custom, if I had been beaten again, I, not wishing to denounce my master, said that I hadn’t. But, in spite of my resistance, she pulled aside my shirt and saw my blackened arms and weal-marked shoulders.

As in ecclesiastical schools, so also in monasteries and convents was flogging in vogue. A rule of St. Cesaire d’Arles, dating from the year 508, stipulates the punishment of flagellation for unruly nuns.

St. Benoit, the restorer of monastic discipline in France, who began his reform in the eight century, prescribed excessive fasts and harsh and bloody flagellations, even for children. If a brother, after having been often checked, neglects to correct himself, he must be punished with strokes. If anyone soils or damages the monastery fitments, he is to be checked and punished according to rule, if he does not mend. If a monk is found with anything claimed as his own property, it is to be taken from him up to two times; if he does not correct himself, he is to be severely punished. If anyone violates the rule of silence, he shall be severely chastised, likewise he who receives books or presents; who reports what he has seen or heard during a voyage; he who takes upon himself to publicly reprimand persons older than himself without an express order from an abbot; or even he who shall correct children with too much warmth and severity. Disobedience of the abbot was also to be punished in the same way.

St. Colomban enters into the most minute details for the administration of discipline to ecclesiastics: so many strokes for the monk who has not prostrated himself when going out of the monastery: so many for him who, at the beginning of a meal, has not made the sign of the cross on his spoon: so many for him who has not trimmed his nails before saying mass: so many for him who has not gathered up his crumbs at table. The superior allotted the punishment and generally administered it.

Another rule stipulates that the monks who shall have gone out of the monastery without the permission of their superior, or who, having been allowed out have not returned as soon as the errand was finished, shall be excommunicated for thirty days or beaten with rods; the same punishment for those who have eaten or drunk to excess. Young monks who have been convicted of theft are never to be promoted to the clericature.

The monks who, after having been excommunicated, should wish to re-enter the community of their brothers (Rule of St. Macaire), are to be flogged in the presence of the abbot and the whole community in order that, it not having been possible to correct them by remonstrances, they shall be corrected by rods.

The monks who shall disturb their brothers or impose on their simplicity, shall be whipped before the door of the monastery if, after having been warned three times, they do not correct themselves. (Rule of St. Pacôme).

The monks who will not forgive those who have offended them and who strike their brothers, must be treated in a similar manner; but whatever the offence may be, the number of strokes shall not exceed the thirty-nine allowed by law. (Rule of St. Aurelian).

And let the victims beware they do not complain, if they wish to escape severer punishment!

The whip serves also to lead back to the path of duty those monks who speak too loudly, who are angry, who make others laugh, who rail, who calumniate—at least, if they do not correct themselves after having been warned several times. The same treatment must be meted out to those who are lewd, impudent, and haughty; to those who are liars, thieves, and blackguards; to those who are wild and stubborn, and who boldly sustain their faults. (Rule of Saint Fructueux).

Neither young brothers under fifteen nor nuns who have committed a theft are excused a flogging; nor are the nuns who have struck their sisters, or are guilty of certain crimes. And so we come to learn how common were acts of indecency in these communities where only the divine spirit should have entered.

Licentious conversations with a person of the same or the opposite sex, as also the more intimate relations, are taken account of by monastic regulations.

The crime of frequenting women was punished with repeated fustigations. Those who persisted in casting lascivious glances on women might, after having been flogged, be expelled from the community, for fear their bad example might contaminate their brethren. One rule assimilates the monk convicted with theft with an adulterer, for ‘it can only be lust which has led him to commit a theft.’

We have an example of the severity with which crimes of this nature were punished in the story of a nun who was accused and convicted of incest, by the Council of Donzi, June 13th, 874.

This nun was named Duda; she had sinned with a priest named Humbert. The latter denied the charge, but the two guilty persons were overwhelmed by the evidence. It was in fact proved that they had two accomplices, two nuns named Bertha and Erprède.

The punishment awarded by the council deserves to be set on record: for three years Duda was to be flogged on the back with rods in the presence of the abbess and the other nuns, in order to expiate by the pains of the flesh, the faults which the pleasures of the flesh had made her commit. For the next three years she was authorised to share the prayers with the other sisters; however, she was not to be in the choir with them, but behind the door or in such other place as the abbess would indicate. The seventh year, she might go to the offering, but after the others, and at the end of the year she might receive the body and blood of Our Lord if she were really penitent. She was warned never to forget the sin, and to move always with downcast eyes, and to make the sign of the cross whenever she was tormented with impure thoughts. As to the two accomplices, the council imposed a penitence of three years and a half, during which time they were to be flogged for not having divulged their sister’s secret to those who could have prevented so grave a scandal.

We have sometimes been reproached for using in our various writings terms which really belong to medicine: it is amusing to see ourselves justified by a theologian, the Abbé Thiers, who is accusing a colleague of having erred in that direction. ‘There is nothing to be said against medical men, when speaking of parts of the human body, using the most proper and natural terms to explain what modesty forbids us to name on other occasions: the necessity of their profession compels them so to do; but that a priest, a doctor of theology, writing a history which might well be written without the admission of impure facts, yet admits many which have no bearing on this subject, this, I feel, is beyond excuse.’

The worthy Abbé Boileau, who is hinted at here, has however denied having written an immoral work. Has he not proclaimed that the usage of lower discipline (he could hardly have been more discreet in his expression) is nearly always not only unprecedented, new, and useless, but even bad, infamous, and very shameful?

It would be unjust not to admit that it was this custom he combatted and tried to abolish. Although he was in a position to know of all the excesses which are committed in monasteries, he has nevertheless not drawn aside all the veil; there are others who have not had the same scruples, and those who are in love with truth have reason therefore to congratulate themselves.

Even had the written word failed to inform us, religious iconography would have supplied the missing facts. Glance at a 15th century manuscript preserved in the Bourgogne Library at Brussels: could words say more? There we see a monk being flogged in the presence of his brothers, and the field of operation laid bare to their view.

The same treatment was also meted out in convents: for moral offences, for negligence or slackness in the performance of religious duties, the superior punished the offender in the presence of all the other sisters so that the words of the apostle might be fulfilled: ‘Let sinners be confounded in the sight of all.’

In an assembly of ecclesiastics held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, it was decided that monks should be flogged naked before all their brethren. It would appear that the penitence was more meritorious when it was applied _in anima vili_ (_in corpore vili_ would be more in keeping with the facts).

The constitution of the Carmelites stipulated that the master of the novices was to flog them gently, after having decently uncovered the bottom of the back. In some communities, shirts had to be made open at the back so that they could be opened and allow a fair field.

In several convents there were novices who were trained specially for administering discipline. The Ursulines had a mistress specialty charged to teach them how to hold the instrument, how to lengthen and shorten their arm so that the blows got home effectively, and how to maintain a decent posture.

One of the masters of the art of flagellation, Julien de la Croix, wanted the lashes to be of unequal length so that they fell in different places and widened the tormented area.

A daughter of Louis XI, Jeanne de France, invented a scourge which made five wounds. It was a silver cross, armed with five spikes.

Flagellation was not only applied in monasteries; very soon a number of bishops claimed the same right over their priests as abbots had over monks.

Although monks, priests, and deacons were, by special canon, exempt from abbatial fustigation, the monk Godescal submitted to it with grand apparel in the presence of Charles the Bald. The bishop of Spire was flogged by order Pope John XII.

This punishment was frequently used with heretics when they were no longer immured for life, or burnt alive. Their rank was no safeguard against this infamous chastisement.

Prince Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, suspected of heresy, was publicly flogged outside the church of St. Gilles, Valencia, by the hand of the pope’s legate. Henry II of England was publicly flogged to expiate the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury.

The son and successor of Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, being found guilty of having continued to claim the English crown when the pope had taken it from him (after having freely given it him), was compelled to expiate this rebellion by consenting to pay the pope a tenth of his income for two years, and to present himself barefooted and with a rod at the door of Notre Dame, Paris, there to be flogged by the canons. Report says that he was flogged on the backs of his chaplains.

Henry IV also was whipped, in 1595, but this was on the backs of his ambassadors, Cardinals du Perron and d’Ossat.

This vicarious flagellation was not exceptional. In the last century but one there could always be found, and almost anywhere, some worthy capuchin who was willing to make his buttocks responsible for the sins of the whole parish, and who, proportionate to the payment received, would flog himself—or at least give out that he had done so. From thence comes the famous Spanish saying: _yo soy el culo del fray_: which in the interpretation may be rendered: I feel as sore and rum as the friar’s bum.

This symbolic application is met with again in the ceremony of absolution for excommunicated persons. The pleader (if a man), had to present himself before the church door with bared shoulders, and before the bishop or priest who was presiding at the ceremony. Kneeling, and bare headed, he had to humbly beg for the absolution of his sin; and then the priest, having made him swear to obey the commandments of the church, would sit down and, taking a whip or rod, would recite a long psalm and, at each verse, he would strike the petitioner.

The ceremonial was somewhat more solemn for those who had been excommunicated with anathema, or for those who had been excommunicated for grave sins or serious crimes.

Illustrious personages, among others William, Duke of Aquitaine: Raymond, Count of Toulouse: Foulques, Count of Anjou, etc., submitted to this humiliating penitence. The last named had married the widow of Alain de Bretagne and had had her son, the heir to the estate, drowned in a bath. In reparation for this crime he went to Jerusalem, accompanied by two servants, one of whom led him by a rope which was fastened round his neck like a victim for the gallows, dragging him thus to the Holy Sepulchre, while the other continually flogged him with a bundle of rods.

A rarely consulted source of documentation is the collection of letters of remission. Among other prerogatives, the French kings enjoyed the right of pardon. They exercised this right by divers acts, known under different names: letters of grace, of remission, of abolition, of pardon, repeal of bans, and so on.

Among these letters of remission there are two which have particularly held our attention: one dates from the end of the fourteenth, and the other from the first half of the fifteenth centuries. The first concerns a man named Durand Tontif, a schoolmaster at Brienon. It was this teachers custom at the end of the class, to have his pupils recite, each in his turn, a _De profundis_ and a _Paternoster_ for the dead of the district. One day, one of the boys either wouldn’t or couldn’t recite the psalm and the master, from the height of his chair, struck the child several times on the head with his birch. In trying to escape, the poor boy was struck on his ears and face, and was soon drenched with blood. As he still persisted in not saying the lesson, the master sprang down from his seat, flung the boy on the floor and flogged him unmercifully. The wretched boy had been operated on a few days before for stone in the bladder and was not yet recovered. He struggled to his feet as best he could and dragged himself home to bed. He died a few days later from the blows he had received. The brutal teacher was arrested, but he obtained a letter of grace from the king wherein it was stated that he was ignorant of the boy’s condition, and that he had not flogged him from any feeling of hatred but simply with the object of discipline. Nevertheless he had to give up teaching and compensate the parents. That was in 1398.

The second story shows that in the fourteenth century masters had little more consideration for servants than the worst of savages had for their slaves, and this state of things lasted till the seventeenth century.

A groom’s daughter, aged eight, entered the service of a gentleman, governor of Langres. She was so ill-treated by her mistress that she hated her and only awaited an opportunity to get even. After seven different attempts, (she was now sixteen), she tried to blow the place up, having particularly in view her mistress’s bedroom. Caught in the act, she confessed.