Penance is the voluntary self-punishment inflected
as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong. It is also a
Christian sacrament in which a member of the church confesses sins to a priest
and is given absolution. The old world form of penance is still practiced in
some remote places, but it is slowly passing away with other ancient religious
practices.
A strange and curious cult once practiced their rituals
in the back country of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains during
the forty days of Lent. The Sangre de Cristo is a sub-range of the Rocky
Mountains located in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.
In the old days the penitents were devoted to the
belief that “without physical suffering there can be no salvation.” They believed that because most sins are flesh
inspired they must be exorcized by way of the flesh. For that reason they used whips to make
themselves suffer, bleed, and sometimes to die. There were also other devices
of torture, some of which were mechanical. For example, there was the Caretta del Muerto, the cart of death.
It was a heavy plank and timber carrier set on wooden axles and equipped with
wobbly, wooden wheels. Representing
death, it was built low and close to the ground. It carried an effigy serving
as a black shrouded skeleton with a mask on its face, and bony hands that gripped
a bow and arrow that was aimed toward its willing victim who was one of the penitents. It was believed that God will honor the suffering
and understand the heartfelt sorrow for the sins. The pain administered by the
cart of death with its arrow is symbolic of every human who must die. The
torture is inflicted by a rope affixed to the cart and which passes around the bare
chest of the penitent. The cart loaded with stones, is the burden the seeker drags
behind him as he trudges barefooted through the hills. With bruised feet and bleeding breast he
constantly laments and pleads “Penitencial!
Penitencial!”
It is a cry echoing back through time and vibrating
to the same ancient key found in most of the world’s religions. In 13th
century Europe, Christianity had its men and women who scourged themselves for
real or imagined misdeeds.
There were public processions in those days,
particularly in Italy, in which the marchers furiously whipped one another as
they proceeded to a church or a shrine. The practice later developed into a
religious order, a brotherhood of masochistic sufferers called Flagellants, whose
symbol was the whip and whose rite was self-castigation.
They did penance for the sins of the world, which in
their minds, were replicas of Christ.
The members of the Roman Catholic Church frowned on such actions and
sought to put an end to such practices by Papal decree. While penance could be
understood and the infusion of a grace was recommended, the idea that ordinary
men should torture themselves was beyond the purview of common sense. The action
may be condoned in a saint, but such self-torture was never recommended to the laity
by church, or state.
The Flagellants believed that tragic visitations were
the acts of God. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and storms were manifestations
of heaven’s wrath which demanded penitence. At no time was this clearly demonstrated than
during the 14th century when the Black Death ravaged Europe and
parts of Asia. In England the plague ran its course for more than a year. The
plague was, to the Flagellants, either a judgment of God or a momentary triumph
of the devil. But in either case, it was an indication the humanity needed to
appease the One or shame the other.
Penance was one of the sacraments believed needed to
be involved with the suffering of Christ.
Physical torture for repentance was practiced in some lay orders in
Catholicism, called tertiaries, which consisted of people who, although living
in the world, were seeking to be as devout as priests or monks or nuns. The Third
Order of Saint Francis was such a group, and it was this Order that brought
flagellation into the American southwest in1598, when the conquistador Don Juan
de Onate, with his soldiers and friars, protected with the sword and cross,
marched up from Old Mexico. In the wake of considerable slaughter of the
natives, Don Juan built the first Christian churches in New Mexico. He blessed
rivers, and christened villages with the names of saints. As he subjugated the
heathen, he gave God the credit for overcoming the enemy who were equipped only
with spears. His friars recited their rosaries amid the plundered villages and
augmented the kingdom of heaven by great numbers of war-stunned prisoners and
tortured slaves.
It was on a night during Holy Week, at the height on
conquest, that Don Juan proclaimed a period of fasting and prayer to show the
Lord that he was indebted to Him for past victories and to invoke His aid for
future conquests. It was near Good Friday, when the wages of sin were usually
expected to be paid that Don felt forced to set his own conscience free.
While the soldiers and Franciscan friars knew of
Onate’s valor, only he knew his sins. Even in the midst of his conquests, Don
Juan longed for the scourge, even when his spirit was being lifted up, he vowed
to discipline the flesh. Remarkably, he went out from the camp with only his
captain, Gaspar de Villagra, into the moonlit dessert where he fashioned a whip
from the cactus and the fiber of the aloe and stripped his body to the waist.
Clutching the flagellum in both hands , he struck himself first over his right
shoulder and then over his left, whipping and weeping and crying out to God for
mercy as he shed his own blood for the remission of his sins.
The Franciscans, when they heard his moaning
supplications and cries, went to where he was. They made crowns of cactus and
pressed them down on their heads so that they, also, might show their leader
how greatly they sympathized with him. They threw off their mantles and bagged
for the lash as they chanted and wept. Then
the soldiers came and lacerated themselves. It was said that the women and
children walked barefoot over the cactus-covered ground and Captain de Villagra
after observing the others, fiercely laid the whip upon his own back. All their
cries, mingling in a single word, “Penitencia!” rose as an offering of their
pain.
The last of the flagellentes traced their history
back to the Third Order and Don Juan who were known as Los Hermanos Penitentes (the Brothers Penitent). They were found in
towns along the Rio Grande between Santa Fe and Taos.
It’s been recorded that “the Penitentes are good
Catholics, but they have their own peculiar emphasis on worship during lent.”
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