A scene of a flagellant procession from the film The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. As the Black Death swept Europe in 1348 / 1349, a radicalized Christian movement developed that paraded from town to town, whipping themselves, wearing crowns of throrns, and engaging in other self-infliction as they begged for Gods forgiveness. The prevalent belief was the plague was a punishment by God on mankind because of his sins. The flagellants started in the Rhine valley and quickly spread across Germany. They usually advanced into a town ahead of the plague, where they preached and abused themselves before the local population, stirring them into a religious fanaticism. It was hoped this fanatic conversion would result in Gods forgiveness and the community being spared. (Undoubtably in some cases the flagellants actually brought the plague with them without knowing it). The Jews and other marginalized populations in the community would be accused, attacked, and often murdered en masse through large public burnings. The idea behind this, spread by the flagellants, was that the Christians were being punished for allowing the Jewish non-believers to live in peace next to them, and now the time had come to cleanse the community of their evil. Many thousands of Jews were murdered in horrific massacres across Germany. Only Vienna seems to have not brutally persecuted the Jews during the Black Death period, and as a result the Jewish population of the city grew as refugees from other areas fled to the city. In this scene of a flagellant procession, Bergman attempts to capture the religious fanaticism that they spread across Central Europe, a fanaticism that induced the mass murder and expulsion of Jews.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 20:56:08 +0000
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