At this point, organized flagellation had become something of a craze. It began in Italian cities around 1260, in the midst of a fraught period of hunger and destructive warfare between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The practice subsequently caught on in Germany and northwest Europe. Flagellants sought to atone for their own sins, and those of mankind at large, through organized self-harm.22 Besides being an interesting reversal of the crusading imperative to hurt other people in the name of Christ, flagellation was also tailor-made for the Black Death, which seemed certain proof that God was
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