Flogging the Abbé
Posted by Haron on 10 May 2008 at 08:18 am | Tagged as: Historical Punishments
Browsing the archive of the “Time” Magazine, we hit upon a report of an interesting 1926 court-case:
Curious spectators crowded into a courtroom at Melun, last week, as two men and ten women, all members of the Sadistic Bordeaux cult of Notre Dame des Pleurs (Our Lady of Tears) were arraigned on a charge of having stripped and flogged the Abbé des Noyers at Bombon.
The Abbé appeared in court, although still suffering from the strokes which had been administered to him with knotted rope ends by his Bordeaux assailants.
The article goes on to talk about the testimony of the assailants, and why they thought their abbot deserved a whipping. (Something to do with him being the Devil.)
But wait. What? There was a sadistic cult in Bordeaux? What was that about?..
“Time” doesn’t give any details about the cult itself; it’s like everybody in 1926 is supposed to know what a sadistic cult might be up to. I did some googling, but all the sites I can find are in French.
Oh, well, I’ll just have to make up all the details myself…
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And I am sure those details will surely surpass the reality.
I reckon we all need to go on a giant sadism-research trip to France, to discover these elusive details. School trip, anyone?
That makes me think of a poem by Swinburne…
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? Men touch them, and change in a trice
The lilies and languors of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice;
Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
These crown and caress thee and chain,
O splendid and sterile Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
There are sins it may be to discover,
There are deeds it may be to delight.
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
What new passions for daytime or night?
What spells that they know not a word of
Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
Unwritten, unknown?
( http://swinburnearchive.indiana.edu/swinburne/view?docId=pb1dolrs00&query=&brand=swinburne )
Anyway, if anyone was going to join a French sadistic cult, it would have been Swinburne!
Oooh, that’s exquisite, Zille! Tortures undreamt of, indeed…
Having studied Swinburne all year I cannot belive that *anyone* could make him interesting… But Zille suceeded. D’you think I could write that poem in my Philosophy A-level?