Flagellants are practitioners of a form of mortification of the flesh by whipping their skin with various instruments of penance. Many Christian confraternities of penitents have flagellants, who beat themselves, both in the privacy of their dwellings and in public processions, in order to repent of sins and share in the Passion of Jesus. In the 14th century, a movement within Western Christianity known as Flagellantism became popular and adherents "began beating their flesh in a public penitential ritual in response to war, famine, plague and fear engendered by millenarianism." Though this movement withered away, the practices of public repentance and promoting peace were adopted by the flagellants in Christian, especially Roman Catholic, confraternities of penitents that exist to the present-day. History Flagellation (from Latin flagellare, to whip) was quite a common practice amongst the more fervently religious throughout antiquity. Christianity has formed a permanent tradition surrounding the doctrine of mortification of the flesh, ranging from self-denial, wearing hairshirts and chains, fasting and self-flagellation using the discipline. Those who practice self-flagellation claim that St. Paul’s statement in the Bible ‘I chastise my body’ refers to self-inflicted bodily scourging (). There are prominent Christians who have practiced self-flagellation. Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, self-flagellated among other ascetic practices during his early years as an Augustinian monk (although he later condemned such practices). Likewise, the Congregationalist writer Sarah Osborn also practiced self-flagellation in order "to remind her of her continued sin, depravity, and vileness in the eyes of God". It became "quite common" for members of the Tractarian movement within the Anglican Communion to practice self-flagellation using a discipline. Historically speaking, in the 11th century, Peter Damian, a Benedictine Christian monk in the Roman Catholic tradition, taught that spirituality should manifest itself in physical discipline; he admonished those who sought to follow Christ to practice self-flagellation for the duration of the time it takes one to recite forty Psalms, increasing the number of flagellations on holy days of the liturgical calendar. For Damian, only those who shared in the sufferings of Christ could be saved. Throughout Christian history, the mortification of the flesh, wherein one denies themselves physical pleasures, has been commonly followed by members of the clergy, especially in Christian monasteries and convents; the 11th-century Dominicus Loricatus repeated the entire Psalter twenty times in one week, accompanying each psalm with a hundred lash-strokes to his back. The distinction of the Flagellants