The flagellants of 1260 and the crusades

Abstract

Both in its geographical scope and in the institutions it created, the flagellant movement of 1260-61 may be regarded as the most significant popular religious revival of the thirteenth century. The crusading context of this movement has never been systematically explored. Such a context, while it has little relevance to the Spring inception of the penitential enthusiasm in its local Umbrian homeland, does help to account for the crucial step taken by the flagellants in the autumn of 1260, when the disciplinati left Perugia and started out on their missionary pilgrimage. This was the point at which a local enthusiasm began to develop into a major European revival. Acquiring converts along their line of march, the enthusiasts introduced the ritual of collective public flagellation to many northern Italian cities, and to the Germanic, Magyar, and Slavic territories of transalpine Europe. A preliminary discussion of the nature and consequences of the flagellant movement will serve as an introduction to the following topics, to be considered in relation to the departure of the disciplinati from Perugia, and to the character the movement assumed in the course of its peregrinations: (1) as an anti-Manfred crusade; (2) as a peace movement and anti-heresy crusade; (3) as a crusade against the Mongols; and, finally, (4) mission and pilgrimage: prophecy as synthesis.

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