1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/956cdb3a8e124b1e9fa0e3ab20c0d61b.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=p6j2J159bJP-HkQ%7EPFvSa6y5HucWSjoBDiuvyKR5TTHUUkieLzgpK-dM5zprzQtc3rsaMw2UCSvN1wTYn0J9AQP-0pg-ONHFUAzhh%7EYTQ7UinfSwj2oy5B0PpCjhYai2zaafIxc7IExpd-NQC5ur1fT2Lisx7mJdTL7XpHhHZ-J3NytSLOpAyloLbRMfUzFRcSO3rL%7EuUauUdhQMM48EW7pZXuaukWAr6pe%7EDx%7EjL%7ER7GmWPh%7EvEUvl14gTqTO77DFgwk30gdw-UYEEo67Y49OxxJ8j3%7ESecAWwXMSwhfLvfTZlbEU9o4R-YDo1wymAV2FmR6N7zCYnXPGNqld0gNw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8eeae4abe981b7ba451c2ec29e90fd64
PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
FLAGELLANTS
'
AND
THE
COVENANTERS
(New Edition).
BY
SALADIN.
Author of “God and His Book,” etc.
London :
W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
From the era of its half-mythical Galilean down
wards, Christianity has laid incontestable claims to
be considered the Religion of Misery. A radical
doctrine of the faith is that this world is only a
Babelmandeb, or Gate of Tears to the “ glory that
shall yet be revealed.” The teaching’s recorded of
Christ have all the jaundiced acerbity of the Essenes.
The son of Mary was an ascetic, or nothing. Ac
cording to him, the end of the world was close at
hand. Its concerns and aims were despicable, and
the best that could be done was to regard its plea
sures as pernicious seductions and lay up “ treasures
in heaven,” as it would avail a man nothing should
he ** gain the whole world and lose his own soul.”
Strictly compatible with the teachings of Christ
were the doctrines of Cardinal Damiani, when he
wrote a panegyric upon the efficacy of self-inflicted
suffering, and those of the celebrated Dominic, when
he introduced penitential hymns, to be chanted to
a tune to which the self-inflicted lash kept time.
Hair shirts, protracted periods of fasting, and the
like, had long been m vogue as means to propitiate
an angry heaven ; but Dominic affirmed that twenty
recitations of the Psalms, accompanied by selfinflicted scourging, was equal to a hundred years,
of ordinary penitence.
Dominic flourished towards the middle of the
eleventh century ; but it was not till about two
centuries later (1260) that the seed of asceticism
he had sown sprang up to be a great and popular
tree of self-torture. It was in an age of gloom
and suffering and wickedness that, at Pergugia,
in Italy, a monk named Regnier, with wild and
bitter eloquence, preached Flagellation as the anti
dote that would restore an afflicted people to the
�The Flagellants.
3
favour of an angry God. Like Peter the Hermit
in the first Crusade, like Luther at the Reformation,
or Bernhardt of the Millenarian insanity, this
Regnier had rightly interpreted the spirit of the
times. He put in his sickle, and the corn was
already ripe for the harvest. The wars of Guelph
and Ghibelline, famine, pestilence, rapine, murder,
and misery had, after a thousand years of Chris
tianity, made Italy and the most of Europe feel
that life was, indeed, not worth living, but only
a horrid and mysterious burden, which was taken
up involuntarily, and which left those who bore it
such cravens that they had not the courage to lay
it down.
And so another violent epidemic of Lose you-r
Reason to Save your Soul fell upon Christendom
like a rinderpest. The memory and inspiration of
the Man of Sorrows was again to lay the load of
a great sorrow upon the shoulders of the world.
Once more, as, under the preaching of Bernhardt
and Peter the Hermit, rowdy and rascal, swash
buckler and sword-player, blackguard and blackleg,
worked themselves into a frenzy concerning one
Jesus, whose name has always been a spell-word
with miscreants from the time of the Christian cut
throats mentioned by Tacitus down to Booth’s latest
prize, the “ blood-washed soul ” of ’Arry Juggins
the burglar.
Two by two the holy ones of the whip-lash
marched through the gaping multitudes on the
crowded streets. Their heads wTere covered with
sackcloth ; their remaining article of attire was a
bandage round the loins, which rendered them a
little decent for God’s sake. Their backs and breasts
were entirely nude. The back bore a huge cross,
daubed upon J&B skin with red paint ; and another
cross was smeared upon the naked breast. On
through the town, and through the wilderness, in
long and narrow file, like the march of the ducks
from the dub to the dung-hill, marched those nasty
saints of God. The hand of each sacred fanatic
bore a heaw and horrible whip, the thongs tipped
with iron ; and, with this whip, every pious madman
lashed his own bare back till the thongs were clotted
and gory, and long lines of blood running down
�4
The Flagellants.
from the scapula to the pelvis defaced the red cross
which had been painted on the skin.
To what shall we liken the men of that genera
tion? To a crazy dog, refusing its food and chew
ing off its own hind legs to please its master. But
the analogy is imperfect, and the man flogging his
own back to please his Jesus is more irrational than
the dog chewing off his own hind legs to please his
master ; for the dog is positively sure he has a
master ; but the ablest Christian that has ever writ
ten has not been able to establish that his Jesus
really ever existed. The only record of him is in
four so-called “ Gospels,” written by nobodv knows
who, nobody knows where, and nobody knows when,,
and the statements of which are contradicted by
each other and are utterly unsupported by history.
A pretty source, indeed, from which to derive a
Jesus in whose honour you can flog your back 1
But backs always will be flogged, and noses ever
will be held close to the grindstone, till he with
the back and he with the nose takes the trouble to
cultivate his brain, and dares to confront, eagleeyed, the authorities that would make him a chattel
and a poor mad cats-paw in the hands of priest
and tyrant.
Jehovah has ever liked singing and dancing and
capers to his glory and honour. David, the “ man
according to God’s own heart,” danced naked be
fore deity and certain young girls ; and another
worthy sang to God’s glory with acceptance because
Jael had hammered a nail into her guest’s head
while he slept. So the Flagellants, besides tickling
their own backs with whips, deemed it would be
well to tickle Jehovah’s ears with music. Accord
ingly they sang while they flogged. If vou think
flogging your back is conducive to making you
rival the efforts of Sims Reeves, just try the ex
periment. Flog your back while you sing, and you
will find-that many a quaver flies off into a scream,
and that many a crotchet is dead-born. But the
Lord had just to content himself with such music
as- was obtainable under the circumstances. Cer
tain fragments of the hymns which the Flagellants
sang have been preserved. Here are brief speci
mens
�The Flagellants.
5
“Through love of man the Saviour came,
Through love of man he died ;
He suffered want, reproach, and shame,
Was scourged and crucified.
Oh, think, then, on thy Saviour’s pain,
And lash the sinner, lash again ! ” *
The following are a few lines from the metrical
rendering' into English of “ The Ancient Song of
the Flagellants ” :—
“Tears from our sorrowing eyes we weep,
Therefore so firm our faith we keep
With all our hearts, with all our senses :
Christ bore his cross for our offences.
Ply well the scourge, for Jesu’s sake,
And God, through Christ, your sin will take.
For love cf God abandon sin—
To mend your vicious lives begin ;
So shall we his mercy win.” t
Thirty-three days and a-half was the shortest term
in which a Flagellant must macerate and lacerate
himself ; and these thirty-three and a-half days were
meant to be mystically symbolical of the thirty-three
years and a-half which the third part of God, and
yet equal to the "whole of God, had lived on earth
4‘saving souls” and making three-legged stools,
lhe devotees fell down on their dirty knees in the
dirty streets, and, setting up their naked, putrid,
and horrible backs, prayed to Jah and Jesus and
Mary to have mercy on their souls, before having
taken the trouble to find out whether they had souls
or not. Jah and Jesus and Mary had, however,
something else to do than attend to kneeling lunatics
with voices like cross-cut saws and backs like half
cooked beef-steaks. But the cities, then as now,
had plenty of fools, and certain of them rushed out
at their doors or leapt from their windows for God’s
sake to join the ranks of those who lashed their
hurdies with thongs and prayed with their knees
in the gutter. When all Christendom had managed
to lash its back to its own satisfaction, it threw
down the whip, got up from its knees, and took
to swearing and sinning in the usual way.
But, some fifty years afterwards, Christendom
again took it into its head that its back would be
* Preserved by L’Evesque : quoted by Lingard.
t Dr. He:ker.
�6
The Flagelleiits.
all the better for a flogging. So, in 1296, the saints,
particularly those of Strasburg, Spires, and Frank
fort, took unto themselves whips, and began busi
ness in earnest. The Jews had good broad backs,
which they were impious enough never to whip,
and this mightily offended the Christian Flagellants.
The Jews did not see their way to whip their own
backs, so, in the most obliging manner, the Chris
tians offered to whip them for them. The Jews
preferred to look after their commercial enterprises
to tearing away with a scourge at their own dorsal
rafters ; and, for this deadly sin, they were foully
massacred. The wretches who did not scourge their
backs had scourged the third of deity and crucified
him. Down with them to Tophet! One Jew,
goaded to desperation by Christian persecution and
outrage, set fire to the Town Hall and the Cathedral
of Frankfort, and they were reduced to ashes. Down
with the seed of Iscariot and Barabbas ! The holy
ones flung away their whips, and, seizing sword,
hatchet, and knife, devoted some hours of horror
to the slaughter of man, woman, and child of the
seed of Israel. The God of Jacob looked on ; but,
apparently, did not see his way to interfere. In
Frankfort, of all the sons and daughters of Salem
whose ancestors had sung to the Lord by the streams
of Babel, none remained alive, except a small rem
nant that, bursting through the carnage, had
escaped into Bohemia. Christ had “ redeemed ”
these Christians (they were well worth it) by a
bloody sacrifice upon Calvary, and, out of com
pliment—like Catherine Medici in her sanguinous
bath—they set him in blood to the chin. Every
tree must be judged by its fruit. I hereby defy the
history of all the other faiths to produce a tree like
the Christian one, which, from the deepest root to
the topmost twig, is dyed with human gore.
After the Frankfort tragedy of 1296, Flagellantism
did not rear its head conspicuously till the year 1348.
To students of history the mention of this date re
calls the deepest and widest grave that was ever
dug to receive the slag and refuse of morality. The
“ Black Death ” took into her hands the besom
of destruction, and swept into the sepulchre twentyfive millions of human beings ! Europe fell upon
�The Flagellants.
7
her knees, and from Dirt appealed to Deity. But
the appeal was in vain. In every Christian city
there was a plethora of disgusting sewage and un
speakable stench. Cleanliness is, proverbially, next
to godliness ; but the citizens of mediaeval Europe
were so godly that they forgot to be cleanly. Out
side Mohammedan Constantinople there was not a
bath on the entire European continent, from the
Straits of Behring to the Straits of Messina. Pious
Ignorance and theological Intolerance sat to the
eyes in filth, which it would give my readers the
jaundice to describe ; and mankind perished as do
clouds of locusts when overtaken by a gale at sea,
or as perish at the end of autumn tens of thousands
of hives of bees, when imprisoned amid the fumes
I
of burning brimstone.
“ God in heaven, Mary and all the Saints, what
is the matter now? ” gasped Christendom, as, with
pale lips and phrenized eye, she, in whole cityfuls,
-staggered into the grave. Nothing practical, as
connected with this wretched “Vale of Tears,’’
suggested itself to the follower of Jesus. He was
beyond and above attending to the carnal conditions
of this despicable earth, and from the midst of his
priests and relics and shrines and miracles his whole
hope was in heaven, and his only court of appeal
his “ Maker and Redeemer.’’ But neither Maker
nor Redeemer could be induced to interfere ; and
graves were dug till there were none left to dig
them, and corpses were borne out of the streets
and houses till there were none left to bear them.
There were only the voice of prayer, the cry of pain,
and the rattle of the death-cart ; and in certain dis
tricts even these sounds died away. In the houses
the dead were left with the dead. There lay a dis
used cart and a skeleton horse. Grass and weeds
flourished in the streets where a busy traffic had
— rolled its tides, and there the wind waved ghastly
shreds of human apparel, still adhering to more
ghastly relics of human beings. There was high
carnival for maggot and fly, and dogs and swine
tugged and snarled among the entrails of those who
bad trusted in Jesus and neglected their dust-bins.
The New Testament was looked to as the anti
dote to the bane ; and, whatever may be its merits,
�8
' -
The Flagellants.
it is a poor manual of hygiene. Scrubbing is never
mentioned, and there is no reference to washing,
except to the washing of “ souls,” whatever they
may be, in blood. There is, moreover, allusion to
the washing- of a certain party’s feet with tears,
and then drying them with maiden’s hair ; but this
is a sentimental and not an efficacious lavation. It
is not on record that Mary or Tabitha, or anyone
else, ever washed the shirt or tunica which was
worn under the seamless garment of Jesus, and I
question if it was ever washed or changed from
the day on which he left the carpenter’s bench till
the day that, with his life, he expiated his sedition
and folly. Through all the horror of the Black
Death we hear of no wholesome and honest wash
ing with water ; but there certainly was a washing
of the streets with blood. It was surmised that
tlris visitation of the wrath of Heaven was instigated
by the sinfulness of the Christians in allowing the
Jews to live ; for it was the Jews who had crucified
the Lord ; and yet, according to the Christian theory,
if the Lord had not been crucified, the world would
inevitably have been lost. The Black Death was
accompanied with another merciless massacre of the
Jews. It was also accompanied by another pitiless
flogging of backs. So fanatically wild did this selfinflicted back-flogging become that many held that
the rite of Flagellation should, in the Christian
Church, supersede the rite of Baptism. Many liter
ally flogged away the flesh off their bones, and yet
the plague did not abate ; and the sky and the earth
were pregnant with supernatural terrors. A pillar
of fire hung over the pope’s palace at Avignon ;
a red ball of fire in the heavens blazed over Paris,
and Greece and Italy were shaken with an earth
quake. And the Christians flogged and prayed, and
prayed and flogged, and sang and slew, and slew
and sang, and still the plague went on.
Flageliantism was not without its serio-comic as
pect. I cannot say whether it copied from the game
of Leap-the-Frog, or whether Leap-the-Frog has
copied from it. In Leap-the-Frog each boy vaults
over his neighbour’s bended back, and then bends
his own, and so on the process goes till each has
vaulted over the back of all. The Flagellants lay
!
/
|
�The Flagellants.
9
in rows, and one ran along the row scourging
furiously as he went with a leathern scourge tipped
with iron, and then he lay down ; and so on and
so on, till each had flogged the naked backs of all.
In lying in the rows to be flogged, however, those
who wished to do penance for certain crimes had
to observe certain recognized postures indicative of
these crimes. If the crime was perjury, till it was
his turn to get up and flog, the penitent lay on his
side, holding up three fingers ; if it was adultery,
he lay flat with his face on the ground ; and so on,
different postures of the body were fixed upon to
indicate different crimes. The Flagellants, too, were
not without their grotesque impostures in the shape
of pious forgeries. At one of their assemblies they
actually read a letter which had been sent to them
direct from heaven, and in which Jesus Christ was
good enough to give them his favourable opinion of
the efficacy of flagellation. The “ Blessed Virgin ”
had, with maternal affection, given her son some
assistance in the composition of this celestial missive.
Unlike the Millenarian mania, the Flagellant craze
•extended even to England. In 1351 a deputation
of 120 continental Flagellants visited London ; but
insular stolidity did not see its way to carry its piety
to the extent of lacerating its own flesh with
scourges. Even on the continent the irenzy began
to exhaust itself. The leaders betook themselves to
desperate resources to buttress up a falling cause.
They set themselves to the task of restoring life
to a dead child, and performed the “ miracle ” so
clumsily that the performance hastened their dis
solution instead of giving them a new lease of in
fluence. In the hey-day of their fanaticism neither
king nor pontiff saw it prudent to interlere with
the Flagellants ; but when the tide turned against
them, king and pontiff turned against them too. . A
bitter persecution set in, and Flagellantism, like
most other isms, was called upon to furnish its roll
•of martyrs, and it heroically enough responded to
the' call. Its dying spasm—and it was a vigorous
and terrible one—was in 1414, and some time later
it finally expired in the dungeons and amid the
fagots of the Holy Inquisition. Mankind, in the
mass, continue to be fools ; but, in the last four
�10
2 he Couenanteis.
centuries, there has been some small advance to
wards sanity, and it is now somewhat difficult toget anyone to flog his own back for the love of God.
W. S. R.
THE COVENANTERS.
MONDAY, October 27th, 1884.
The House met at tour o’clock.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
Answering Mr. Buchanan, the Marquis of Hartington said hehad communicated with Loid Wolseley as to the employment of a
greater number of Presbyterian chaplains with the Scottish regi
ments under his charge, adding that one at present at Alexandria
would be available, if his services were required.
Alas, that the world has not yet dispensed with'
the services of Presbyterian Beetles of god and gun I
I myself ran such a narrow escape of being a Scotch.
Beetle that this project of employing the ScarabceusScotorum in Egypt brings up to my memory sundry
of the bloodthirsty insects’ previous ravages scrolled,
over history’s panoramic canvas, and that in pig
ments of blackness and fire.
There, with hign cheek-bones and scowling browsr
with black gowns and Geneva bands, file past thedour and grim fanatics who barred the path of
Charles I., and of Laud, Juxon, and Wren. There
go they who, lor twenty-eight years, through steel!
and blood and heather, set their backs against thewall of Fate, and practically swore to lead Scotland
to Hell, rather than to Rome.
History has a pretty feasible hint that the shower
of clasp-Bibles that, on July 23rd, 1637, rained so>
murderously round the head of Dean Hanna, in
St. Giles’s Church, were flung by Scottish ministers,,
dressed in female gowns and mutches, and that
their pulpit-trained voices initiated the popular yell
of “Anti-Christ! Anti-Christ! A Pope! A Pope!
A Bellv-god ! Stone him ! ” It was the fanatical"
and hard-headed Presbyterian Beetles who, by their
wild biblically-phrased warnings, roused the Scottish
�The Covenanters.
11
peers to a vivid apprehension that, if Charles and’
Laud succeeded, the estates which had been con
fiscated from the Church at the Reformation would7
be .wrenched from the nobles and restored to Rome.
This was a potent argument ; for, whatever might
be the territorial lord’s desire for a place in the
kingdom of heaven, he would fight and sing psalms
for twenty years rather than lose a single acre of
his lands in the kingdom of Scotland. And thus
there was almost instantly arrayed ag-ainst the
Government a black phalanx of ninety Beetles,
walled round by John, Earl of Rothes ; John, Earl
of Cassilis ; Alexander, Earl of Eglington ; James,
Earl of Biome ; William, Earl of Lothian ; John,
Earl of Wemyss ; and John, Earl of Loudon ; Lord
Lindesay, Lord Yester, Lord Balmerino, Lord
Cranston, and large numbers of the gentry and
lesser nobility. These, of course, led with them
the psalm-singing yokels of their estates, primed
up by the Beetles to a perfect phrenzy of religious
fanaticism, which could not fail to be exceedingly
profitable to their lords and masters. There is no
patriotism in denying that Scotland’s desperate
struggle in the seventeenth century was carried out
bv the immoral instrumentality of Beetle and nobleprimed bumbkins, howling from Jeremiah and cant
ing from Ezekiel, grimly frantic with suffering and
fanaticism, who, singing psalms, mutilated the slain,
and dashed their texts and swords at the same time
through .the bodies of the dragoons of the Govern
ment. Scotland did all this drunk with divinity,
and I should respect her quite as much if she had
done it all drunk with whisky. And yet I should’
like to see the land in the whole world that can
afford to scoff at her. Man, up to this time, has
been a small and nasty animal at the best, and what
are magniloquently called his noblest motives will
not bear anything like rigid analysis. You are
kinder to mankind when you expect too little of
them, than when you expect too much. And it will.'
puzzle your ingenuity to expect less than you will
get.
1 The passage in Genesis, anent God’s making all
things very good, would have stood better on its
legs, if it had read, 4 God made all thing's verv good
�12
The Covenanters.
save man, and him he made mad.” It is teleology
alone that makes man madder than his “ earth-born
companions and fellow-mortals. ” Well might Burnsapostrophise the mouse :—
“ Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me :
The Present only toucheth thee ;
But, ah ! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear ;
And, forward though I canna see,
I guess and fear,”
It is all very well for writers of the school of Dr.
Lewins to abjure, teleology absolutely. It rises
superior to abjuration. The speculatively religious
instinct is strong in normal man, and I, for one,
rejoice, rather than lament that it is so. It is not
the religious instinct that has stultified and cursed
the race, but the diversion of that instinct into
baleful channels by interested sacerdotal and civil
chicane. Man has too little religion, rather than
too much ; but he has certainly too much theology
rather than too little.
"
fc' ’
But, back to the Black-Beetles of the Presbyterian
corner of the vineyard of the Lord. So well did
the interested leaven of religious sedition work, that
in June, 1638, the Hig’h Commissioner swaggered
up to Holyrood escorted by 20,000 men, most of
them mounted. There were present, moreover, 700
Beetles, the most sour and grim kind that ever
banged a bible for the love of God. Many of them
had buff coats under their Geneva cloaks, and,
according, to Burnet, many wore in their belts
swords, pistols, and daggers, that, for the love of
heaven, they might redden the earth with blood.
Madly Beetle-bitten, the peasantry flew to arms ;
every Beetle-box in the country breathed of fire and
slaughter ; the crackle of musketry was in every
sermon, the roar of cannon in every prayer ; the
sword-blade was sharpened on the pulpit, and the
kirk became a recruiting-ground for the battlefield.
We have now cast down the walls of Jericho ;
let him who rebuildeth them beware of the curse
of Hiel and Bethelite, ” was the refrain of a Tyrteeaa
sermon by Henderson, of Leuchars. Beetles Musfiet,
Row, Cant, Dickson, and a mighty host of mur
derous piety, took up the cry. It was thundered
■from hundreds of pulpits. The heather was, indeed,
�The Covenanters.
U
on fire. The Beetle struck the Bible with his fist
in the emphasis of bloodthirsty rhetoric, and his
voice found a terrible echo in the ring of the
armourer’s anvil, as the hammer clashed and clanged
upon the red-hot iron that was being fashioned into
bit and stirrup, helmet and sword-blade.
The Lords of the Covenant prepared for war..
Wheresoever the carcase of prey is, there shall the
eagles of militarism be gathered together. Hereto
fore Scotland had proved too stale and pacific to be
a fitting arena for the restless energies of her gentle
men of the sword and swashbuckling fire-eaters,
and they had accordingly poured in thousands from
the banks of the Forth, the Dee, and the Clyde to
the banks of the Elbe, the Oder, and the Danube,
to follow Gustavus Adolphus for gold and glory,
and write their names imperishablv in their blood
in the annals of the Thirty Years’ War, in which
the stubborn valour of the Scottish Legion filled
all Europe with their renown. The Beetles had now
wrung the coin out of the pockets of their frugal
countrymen at home, and their fighting countrymen
abroad rushed back to offer their steel blades and
their blood for the merks of the peasant and the
burgher. The world had no better soldiers than the
Scoto-Swedish officers of Gustavus, among the most
distinguished of whom were Sir Alexander Leslie,
Sir Alexander Hamilton, Sir James Livingstone,
Monroe, Baillie, and other heroes of Prague and
Fleura, and numerous battlefields in Polish Prussia,
Brandenberg, Westphalia, and Silesia. The Beetle,
the ancestor of him now wanted in Egypt, had done
it with a veng-eance. Every -fourth man in Scotland
was to consider himself a soldier. The sword of
the Lord and of Gideon ! The land was as busy as
a beehive declaiming sermons, whining prayers,
drawling psalms, and getting ready arms and muni
tions—bodv armour for the cavalry, buff-coats and
morions for pikemen, and muskets with rests for
the musketeers. A cannon foundry was, moreover,
established at the Potter Row, Edinburgh, under
the direction of Sir Alexander Hamilton, formerly
master of the cannon foundries of Gustavus
Adolphus at Urbowe, in Sweden. And all Beetledom was up on end, and raving to Jehovah to hurl
�14
*
The Covenanters.
• down the curse of Meroz upon those who failed
to gird up their loins and go forth to help the Lord
.against the mighty.
The old legend-book of Judah was clasped to the
very heart of Scotland. Its bloodiest and most ter
rible texts were interwoven with the common par
lance of mundane affairs, and preached from with
a wild and volcanic vehemence. “ And I will feed
them that oppress thee with their own flesh ; and
they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with
sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I, the
Lord, am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty
one of Jacob.” ‘‘The Lord hath a sacrifice in
Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of
Idumea.” “ Cursed be he who keepeth back his
sword from blood.” “ Thus saith the Lord God cf
Israel : Put every man his sword by his side, and
go in and out, from gate to gate, throughout the
camp, and slay every man his brother, and every
man his companion, and every man his neighbour.”
These were the sort of bases of Beetle-spun
harangues that scared the pee-wheet and the plover
-of the hills and moors. “ Now go and smite Amalek,
and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare
them not ; but slay both man and woman, infant
and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. And
Saul gathered the people together, and numbered
them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen,
and ten thousand men of Judah. And the Lord sent
thee on a journey, and said : Go and utterly destroy
the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them
until they be consumed,” was the fearful text from
which a certain Beetle of Hell preached, and incited
the Covenanters to, after the Battle of Philiphaugh,
enclose the defeated musketeers of Montrose in the
-courtyard of Newark Castle, and pour in volley
after volley of shot upon the defenceless and un
resisting mass, till not a man remained standing ;
and the gunpowder smoke cleared away and left the
court covered with blood and brains like the floor
of a slaughter-house, and the air rent with the
shrieks of those to whom Death had not yet come
in mercy to end their agony. After this holy
massacre, 1,000 corpses were interred in a spot
which to this day bears the shuddering- name of
�The Covenanters.
15
'The Slain Man's Lea. And so much did the
Presbyterian Beetles insist upon the curses that
-would overtake those who spared the A malekites,
the enemies of God, and so terribly did they em
phasise “ man and woman, infant and suckling,”
that the swords of the Covenant ripped open the
■bodies of the women with child, and transfixed the
unborn babe with the blade reeking with the blood
-of its mangled mother, that the Scripture might
*
be fulfilled.
So much for the antecedents of the Presbyterian
Beetles Mr. Buchanan inquires about so kindly, and
in regard to whom the Marquis of Hartington replies
that there is a spare one to be had at Alexandria.
Even now, it would seem, Scottish soldiers do not
feel they can slaughter properly for the Lord unless
they are under the beetlefications of an Ephraim
MacBriar or a Gabriel Kettledrummle !
How long, O Lord, how long, will it be accounted
glorious to drill a bayonet through a diaphragm,
and valorous to lodge a leaden pellet in the medulla
•oblongata? No religion whatever can be true whose
God is the God of Battles, and whose priests officiate
in the sanctification of slaughter. O that there were
.a righteous heaven, and that man’s objective Para•dise was correlative with man’s subjective desire I
Then would I call to this heaven to witness that
the torn banners and emblazoned rags of war are
hung up as trophies in the Christian churches and
^cathedrals—the relics and memorials of wounds and
misery and hate and death in the temples of “ the
Prince of Peace ” ! I have sat in a certain cathedral
and listened to the Gospel of goodwill to all man
kind, although, at the entrance, I had to pass dusty,
torn, and ghastly relics of some of the bloodiest
-engagements in India and the Peninsula. I yearn
for the religion that will account State murder and
■private murder alike unhallowed, and which will find
no room in its fanes for bannered rags in memorial
of burning towns, slaughtered men, shrieking
widows, and breadless orphans, more than for the
gory knives which were wielded by the miscreants
and murderers whose infamy is perpetuated in the
'Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s.
*
W. S. R.
Gordon of Ruthven.
�NEW EDITION.
'
•
380 pp, cloth, gold lettered. Price 3s.; post free, 3s. 3d;
GOD-AND HIS BOOK.
By SALADIN.
Ix Two Volumes Complete.
New Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt lettered.
Vol. I., 260 pp. Price 2s. 6d. ; post free, 2s. gd.
Vol. II., 268 pp. Price 2s. 6d. 5 post free, 2s. 9d.
WOMAN :
Her Glory, Her Shame, and Her God.
By SALADIN.
Large Crown Svo, cloth, gold lettered, 265 pp.
Piice 3-.; post free, 3s. 3d.
THE
BOOK OF “AT RANDOM.”
By SALADIN.
Catalogue of Recent Works by Saladin free on application.
London: Il. Stewart & Co, $r, Farringdon St, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Flagellants and the Covenanters
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: The Flagellants (p.[2]-10).--The Covenanters (p.10-15). The Covenanters is a new edition. Publisher's advertisements on back cover Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
W. Stewart & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[188-?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N587
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religious practice
Protestantism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Flagellants and the Covenanters), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Covenanters
Flagellants
Flagellation
NSS
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/344bec557dc0abfca02df809afb3cd01.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=gsP1gduo4Mb-1KqqlOjm%7Eh3SJLDaiPvt92LD2hwmaPQIr6dxgao-XrTTTey3omDpBOZ5Ag5-eVOKCMDghjTRHQ5ax1GpCRIzPkSwtCgfbieu%7Ex20K2BqzE18AjmHl1XnqVL%7EGFhetkUoLg2CH0L4BqhLu86vEUpIMbli3thlAQvaBN4t7otcbnwhlcmrPgJCP05pLKhoD91YhaGxeD8xOvgsPPN0zDdaJpomvOhp-WFt5y8QqGmgt0em2F20kWW0sYj%7E%7EbjY1L3QXmtlWch6UjApMyL-G8imCdDpBIZ4ANB5P3GRqtWusNm52oc5cgOVvSzwMYSGlw2iCvPlEJrqkQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
bc4a3680957036561aed77db02cbb74d
PDF Text
Text
THE
FLAGELLANTS,
SALADIN.
[reprinted
from
“the secular review.”]
♦
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
�Price Twopence.
Every Thursday.
THE SECULAR REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED
BY SALADIN.
The Secular Review is the recognised organ of cultured
Freethought in England, and its contributors comprise some
of the leading scholars and foremost thinkers of the country.
Subscription
...
...
2s. Z^d. per Quarter.
Publishing Office : 41, Farringdon St., London, E.C.
Price 2s. Post Free.
In Limp Cloth.
POEM S:
GENERAL, SECULARISTIC, AND
SATIRICAL.
By LARA.
Dedicated to Saladin.
“ Contains specimens of the most biting satire penned since
the days of Pope.”
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Price is. 6d. Post Free.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE
HYLO-IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
demonstrating the true basis of
AGNOSTICISM,
By WILLIAM BELL McTAGGART.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�E ^072
[reprinted
THE
from
“the
secular review.”]
FLAGELLANTS.
From the era of its half-mythical Galilean downwards,
Christianity has laid incontestable claims to be con
sidered the Religion of Misery. A radical doctrine of
the faith is that this world is only a Babelmandeb, or
Gate of Tears to the “ glory that shall yet be revealed.”
The teachings recorded of Christ have all the jaundiced
acerbity of the Essenes. The son of Mary was an
ascetic, or nothing. According to him, the end of the
world was close at hand. Its concerns and aims were
despicable, and the best that could be done was to
regard its pleasures as pernicious seductions and lay up
“ treasures in heaven,” as it would avail a man nothing
should he “ gain the whole world and lose his own soul.”
Strictly compatible with the teachings of Christ were
the doctrines of Cardinal Damiani, when he wrote a pane
gyric upon the efficacy of self-inflicted suffering, and those
of the celebrated Dominic, when he introduced peni
tential hymns, to be chanted to a tune to which the selfinflicted lash kept time. Hair shirts, protracted periods
of fasting, and the like, had long been in vogue as means
to propitiate an angry heaven ; but Dominic affirmed
that twenty recitations of the Psalms, accompanied by
self-inflicted scourging, was equal to a hundred years of
ordinary penitence.
Dominic flourished towards the middle of the eleventh
century; but it was not till about two centuries later
(1260) that the seed of asceticism he had sown arose
to be a great and popular tree of self-torture. It was in
an age of gloom and suffering and wickedness that, at
Pergugia, in Italy, a monk named Regnier, with wild and
�2
THE FLAGELLANTS.
bitter eloquence, preached Flagellation as the antidote
that would restore an afflicted people to the favour of
an angry God. Like Peter the Hermit in the first
Crusade, like Luther at the Reformation, or Bernhardt
of the Millenarian insanity, this Regnier had rightly
interpreted the spirit of the times. He put in his sickle,
and the corn was already ripe for the harvest. The wars
of Guelph and Ghibelline, famine, pestilence, rapine,
murder and misery had, after a thousand years of Chris
tianity, made Italy and the most of Europe feel that life
was, indeed, not worth living, but only a horrid and
mysterious burden, which was taken up involuntarily, and
which left those who bore it such cravens that they had
not the courage to lay it down.
And so another violent epidemic of Lose your Reason
to Save your Soul fell upon Christendom like a rinder
pest. The memory and inspiration of the Man of
Sorrows was again to lay the load of a great sorrow upon
the shoulders of the world. Once more, as, under the
preaching of Bernhardt and Peter the Hermit, rowdy
and rascal, swashbuckler and sword-player, blackguard
and blackleg, worked themselves into a frenzy concern
ing one Jesus, whose name has always been a spell
word with miscreants from the time of the Christian
cut-throats mentioned by Tacitus down to Booth’s latest
prize, the “blood-washed soul” of ’Arry Juggins the
burglar.
Two by two the holy ones of the whip-lash marched
through the gaping multitudes on the crowded streets.
Their heads were covered with sackcloth ; their remain
ing article of attire was a bandage round the loins, which
rendered them a little decent for God’s sake. Their
backs and breasts were entirely nude. The back bore a
huge cross, daubed upon the skin with red paint; and
another cross was smeared upon the naked breast. On
through the town, and through the wilderness, in long
and narrow file, like the march of the ducks from the
dub to the midden, marched those nasty saints of God
The hand of each sacred fanatic bore a heavy and
horrible whip, the thongs tipped with iron ; and, with this
whip, every pious madman lashed his own bare back till
the thongs were clotted and gory, and long lines of blood
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
3
running down from the scapula to the pelvis defaced the
red cross which had been painted on the skin.
To what shall we liken the men of that generation ?
To a crazy dog, refusing its food and chewing off its own
hind legs to please its master. But the analogy is im
perfect, and the man flogging his own back to please
his Jesus is more irrational than the dog chewing off his
own hind legs to please his master; for the dog is positively
sure he has a master; but the ablest Christian that has
ever written has not been able to establish that his Jesus
ever existed. The only record of him is in four socalled “ Gospels/’ written by nobody knows who, nobody
knows where, and nobody knows when, and the state
ments of which are contradicted by each other and utterly
unsupported by history. A pretty source, indeed, from
which to derive a Jesus in whose honour you can flog
your back ! But backs always will be flogged, and noses
ever will be held close to the grindstone, till he with the
back and he with the nose takes the trouble to cultivate
his brain, and dares to confront, eagle-eyed, the authori
ties that would make him a chattel and a poor mad catspaw in the hands of priest and tyrant.
Jehovah has ever liked singing and dancing and
capers to his glory and honour. David, the “ man
according to God’s own heart,” danced naked before
God and certain young girls ; and another worthy sang
to God’s glory with acceptance because Jael had
hammered a nail into her guest’s head while he slept.
So the Flagellants, besides tickling their own backs with
whips, deemed it would be well to tickle Jehovah’s ears
with music. Accordingly they sang while they flogged. If
you think flogging your back is conducive to making you
rival the efforts of Sims Reeves, just try the experiment.
Flog your back while you sing, and you will find that
many a quaver flies off into a scream, and that many a
crotchet is dead-born. But Jehovah had just to content
himself with such music as was obtainable under the
circumstances. Certain fragments of the hymns which
the Flagellants sang have been preserved. Here are
brief specimens :—
“ Through love of man the Saviour came,
Through love of man he died ;
�4
THE FLAGELLANTS.
He suffered want, reproach, and shame,
Was scourged and crucified.
Oh, think, then, on thy Saviour’s pain,
And lash the sinner, lash again !”*
The following are a few lines from the metrical rendering
into English of “The Ancient Song of the Flagellants ” :—
“ Tears from our sorrowing eyes we weep,
Therefore so firm our faith we keep
With all our hearts, with all our senses :
Christ bore his cross for our offences.
Ply well the scourge, for Jesu’s sake,
And God, through Christ, your sin will take.
For love of God abandon sin—
To mend your vicious lives begin ;
So shall we his mercy win.”+
Thirty-three days and a half was the shortest term in
which a Flagellant must macerate and lacerate himself;
and these thirty-three and a half days were meant to be
mystically symbolical of the thirty-three years and a
half which the third part of God, and yet equal to the
whole of God, had lived on earth “ saving souls ” and
making wheelbarrows. The devotees fell down on their
dirty knees in the dirty streets, and, setting up their
naked, putrid, and horrible backs, prayed to Jah and
Jesus and Mary to have mercy on their souls, before
having taken the trouble to find out whether they had
souls or not. Jah and Jesus and Mary had, however,
something else to do than attend to kneeling lunatics
with voices like cross-cut saws and backs like beef
steaks. But the cities, then as now, had plenty of fools,
and certain of them rushed out at their doors or leapt
from their windows for God's sake to join the ranks of
those who lashed their hurdies with thongs and prayed
with their knees in the gutter. When all Christendom
had managed to lash its back to its own satisfaction, it
threw down the whip, got up from its knees, and took
to swearing and sinning in the usual way.
But, some fifty years afterwards, Christendom again
took it into its head that its back would be all the better
for a flogging. So, in 1296, the saints, particularly those
* Preserved by L’Evesque ; quoted by Lingard.
+ Dr. Hecker.
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
5
of Strasburg, Spires, and Frankfort, took unto themselves
whips, and began business in earnest. The Jews had
good broad backs, which they were impious enough
never to whip, and this mightily offended the Christian
Flagellants. The Jews did not see their way to whip
their own backs, so, in the most obliging manner the
Christians offered to whip them for them. The Jews
preferred to look after their commercial enterprises to
tearing away with a scourge at their own dorsal rafters ,
and, for this deadly sin, they were foully massacred.
The wretches who did not scourge their backs had
scourged the third of God and crucified him. Down
with them to Tophet! One Jew, goaded to despera
tion by Christian persecution and outrage, set fire to the
Town Hall and the Cathedral of Frankfort, and they
were reduced to ashes. Down with the seed of Iscariot
and Barabbas 1 The holy ones flung away their whips,
and, seizing sword, hatchet, and knife, devoted some
hours of horror to the slaughter of man, woman, and
child of the seed of Israel. The God of Jacob looked
on; but, apparently, did not see his way to interfere.
In Frankfort, of all the sons and daughters of Salem
whose ancestors had sung to the Lord by the streams
of Babel, none remained alive, except a small remnant
that, bursting through the carnage, had escaped into
Bohemia. Christ had “ redeemed ” these Christians
(they were well worth it) by a bloody sacrifice upon
Calvary, and, out of complement—like Catherine Medici
in her sanguinous bath—they set him in blood to the
chin. Every tree must be judged by its fruit. I hereby
defy the history of all the other faiths to produce a tree
like the Christian one, which, from the deepest root to
the topmost twig, is dyed with human gore.
After the Frankfort tragedy of 1296 Flagellantism did
not rear its head conspicuously till the year 1348.
To students of history the mention of this date recalls
the deepest and widest grave that was ever dug to receive
the slag and refuse of mortality. The “ Black Death ”
took into her hands the besom of destruction, and swept
into the sepulchre twenty-five millions of human beings !
Europe fell upon her knees, and from Dirt appealed to
Deity. But the appeal was in vain. In every Christian
�6
THE FLAGELLANTS.
City there was a plethora of disgusting sewage and unspeak
able stench. Cleanliness is, proverbially, next to godli
ness ; but the citizens of mediaeval Europe were so godly
that they forgot to be cleanly. Out of Mohammedan
Constantinople there was not a bath on the entire Euro
pean continent, from the Straits of Behring to the Straits
of Messina. Pious Ignorance and theological Intoler
ance sat to the eyes in filth, which it would give my
readers the jaundice to describe; and mankind perished
as do clouds of locusts when overtaken by a gale at sea,
or as perish at the end of autumn tens of thousands of
hives of bees, when imprisoned amid the fumes of burn
ing brimstone.
“ God in heaven, Mary and all the Saints, what is the
matter now ?” gasped Christendom, as, with pale lips and
phrenzied eye, she, in whole cityfuls, staggered into the
grave. Nothing practical, as connected with this wretched
vale of Tears,” suggested itself to the follower of
Jesus. He was beyond and above attending to the
carnal conditions of this despicable earth, and from the
midst of his priests and relics and shrines and miracles
his whole hope was in heaven, and his only court of
appeal his Maker and Redeemer. But neither Maker
nor Redeemer could be induced to interfere; and graves
were dug till there were none left to dig them, and corpses
were borne out of the streets and houses till there were
none left to bear them. There were only the voice of
prayer, the cry of pain, and the rattle of the Death-cart;
and in certain districts even these sounds died away. In
the houses the dead were left with the dead. There was
a disused cart and a skeleton horse. Grass and weeds
flourished in the streets where a busy traffic had rolled
its tides, and there the wind waved ghastly shreds of
human apparel, still adhering to more ghastly relics of
human beings. There was high carnival for maggot and
fly, and dogs and swine tugged and snarled among the
entrails of those who had trusted in Jesus and neglected
their dustbins.
The New Testament was looked to as the antidote to
the bane; and, whatever may be its merits, it is a poor
manual of hygiene. Scrubbing is never mentioned, and
there is no reference to washing, except to the washing of
�THE FLAGELLANTS.
7
“souls,” whatever they may be, in blood. There is,
moreover, allusion to the washing of a certain party’s feet
with tears, and then drying them with maiden’s hair; but
this is a sentimental and not an efficacious lavation. It
is not on record that Mary or Tabitha, or any one else,
ever washed the shirt or tunica which was worn under
the seamless garment of Christ, and I question if it was
ever washed or changed from the day on which he left
the carpenter’s bench till the day that, with his life, he
expiated his sedition and folly. Through all the horrors
of the Black Death we hear of no wholesome and honest
washing with water; but there certainly was a washing
of the streets with blood. It was surmised that this
visitation of the wrath of the Almighty was instigated by
the sinfulness of the Christians in allowing the Jews to
live ; for it was the Jews who had crucified the Lord;
and yet, according to the Christian theory, if “ the Lord ”
had not been crucified, the world would inevitably have
been lost. The Black Death was accompanied with
another merciless massacre of the Jews. It was also
accompanied by another pitiless flogging of backs. So
fanatically wild did this self-inflicted back-flogging become
that many held that the rite of Flagellation should, in
the Christian Church, supersede the rite of Baptism.
Many literally flogged away the flesh off their bones, and
yet the plague did not abate; and the sky and the earth
were pregnant with supernatural terrors. A pillar of fire
hung over the Pope’s palace at Avignon; a red ball of
fire in the heavens blazed over Paris, and Greece and
Italy were shaken with an earthquake. And the Chris
tians flogged and prayed, and prayed and flogged, and
sang and slew, and slew and sang, and still the plague
went on.
Flagellantism was not without its serio-comic aspect.
I cannot say whether it copied from the game of Leapthe-Frog, or whether Leap-the-Frog has copied from it.
In Leap-the-Frog each boy vaults over his neighbour’s
bended back, and then bends his own, and so on the
process goes till each has vaulted over the back of all.
The Flagellants lay in rows, and one ran along the row
scourging furiously as he went with a leathern scourge
tipped with iron, and then he lay down ; and so on and
�8
THE FLAGELLANTS.
so on, till each had flogged the naked backs of all. In
lying in the rows to be flogged, however, those who wished
to do penance for certain crimes had to observe certain
recognised postures indicative of these crimes. If the
crime was perjury, till it was his turn to get up and flog,
the penitent lay on his side, holding up three fingers ; if
it was adultery, he lay flat with his face on the ground :
and so on, different postures of the body were fixed upon
to indicate different crimes. The Flagellants, too, were
not without their grotesque impostures in the shape of
pious forgeries. At one of their assemblies they actually
read a letter which had been sent to them direct from
heaven, and in which Jesus Christ was good enough to
give them his favourable opinion of the efficacy of Flagel
lation. The “ Blessed Virgin ” had, with maternal affec
tion, given her Son some assistance in the composition
of this celestial missive.
Unlike the Millenarian mania, the Flagellant craze ex
tended even to England. In 1351 a deputation of 120
continental Flagellants visited London; but insular
stolidity did not see its way to carry its piety to the extent
of lacerating its own flesh with scourges. Even on the
continent the frenzy began to exhaust itself. The
leaders betook themselves to desperate resources to
buttress up a falling cause. They set themselves to the
task of restoring life to a dead child, and performed the
“miracle” so clumsily that the performance hastened
their dissolution instead of giving them a new lease of
influence. In the hey-day of their fanaticism neither
king nor pontiff saw it prudent to interfere with the
Flagellants ; but when the tide turned against them king
and pontiff turned against them too. A bitter persecu
tion set in, and Flagellantism, like most other isms, was
called upon to furnish its roll of martyrs, and it heroically
enough responded to the call. Its dying spasm—and it
was a vigorous and terrible one—-was in 1414, and some
time later it finally expired in the dungeons and amid
the fagots of the Holy Inquisition. Mankind, in the
mass, continue to be fools ; but, in the last four centuries,
there has been some small advance towards sanity, and
it is now somewhat difficult to get any one to flog his
own back for the love of God.
�Post Free Three-Halfpence.
Price One Penny.
FROM THE VALLEY
OF
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
By SALADIN.
IN
BRUNO
MEMORI AM
STEWART
ROSS,
Died igth November, 1882, aged two years and five weeks.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
Recently Published.
Post free Twopence-halfpenny.
WITCHCRAFT
IN CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES.
By SALADIN.
Being an Address delivered at the Inauguration of the Secular
Society at Stockport, November 19th, 1882—the Marquis of
Queensberry in the Chair.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C
Price 2s. post free.
Elegantly printed in colours.
SONGS BY THE WAYSIDE
OF AN AGNOSTIC’S LIFE.
By Himself.
“It is not an irreverent Agnosticism that is uttered in these pages,
although, without doubt, it is terribly heterodox ; but the author evidently
feels and think, which is more than can be said of some of our versifiers.”
—Scotsman, July 21st, 1883.
London: W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�Now ready, price id., post free l%d.,
THE DIVINE
INTERPRETATION OF
SCRIPTURE:
A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
By Saladin.
Being a Paper read at the Cassadaga Conference, New York,
by S. P. Putnam, Secretary, American Liberal League.
“ This trenchant and incisive impeachment of the pretensions
of our greatest enemy, the Romish Church, was well worth re
printing, and we hope it will have a large circulation.”—Free
thinker.
16 pp., with Illustration, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE
CRUSADES.
By Saladin.
i6 pp., price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION,
By Saladin.
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE FLAGELLANTSBy Saladin.
In neat wrapper, price One Penny, post free Threehalfpence,
THE
COVENANTERS.
By Saladin.
The Publishers will be pleased to forward an assorted parcel of
ioo copies of the above Pamphlets (carriage paid) for distribution
on receipt of ys. 6d.
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Flagellants
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the Secular Review. "By Saladin" [title page], the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
W. Stewart & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N586
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religious practice
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Flagellants), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Flagellants
Flagellation
NSS