showing
Saint Dominic with a discipline in his hand, kneeling before a
crucifix in Italy mortifying the flesh with disciplines in a seven-hour procession;
capirote are worn by penitents so that attention is not drawn towards themselves as they repent. In the
Bible,
Saint Paul writes: "I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27
NRSV). they also "inflict agony on themselves in order to suffer as Christ and the
martyrs suffered." In antiquity and during the
Middle Ages, when Christian monastics would mortify the flesh as a
spiritual discipline, the name of the object that they used to practice this also became known as the discipline. By the 11th century, the use of the discipline for Christians who sought to practice the mortification of the flesh became ubiquitous throughout
Christendom. The
Capuchins have a ritual observed thrice a week, in which the
psalms and are recited as the friars flagellate themselves with a discipline.
Saints such as
Dominic Loricatus,
Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi,
among others, have used the discipline on themselves to aid in their
sanctification.
Votarists of some
Lutheran religious orders and
Anglican religious orders practice self-flagellation with a discipline.
Martin Luther, the German
Reformer, practiced mortification of the flesh through
fasting and
self-flagellation while still a monk, even sleeping in a stone cell without a blanket. Within Anglicanism, the use of the discipline became "quite common" among many members of the
Tractarian movement. == See also ==