Cornelius Adriaensen
Cornelius Adriaensen was a 16th-century Dutch Franciscan priest. He was born at Dordrecht (South Holland) in ✦ 1521 and joined the order of "Frères Mineurs". He died in † 1581.
Adriaensen's secret order in Bruges
Adriaensen moved to Bruges (West Flanders, today in Belgium) where he founded a secret order among the women of Bruges, who were persuaded to meet him in secret, undress, and be chastised for their sins. The order was eventually betrayed to the local authorities by two unwilling novices, Betteken Maes and Celleken Pieters. Adriaensen fled Bruges in 1563 and died in Ypres (West Flanders) in 1581.
Historia flagellantium
Adriaensen's exploits were still making the rounds as late as 1688, when he appeared as the anti-hero of the ballad "The Lusty Fryar of Flanders".
The story of Adriaensen was mostly drawn to the attention of the public through the book Historia flagellantium (History of flagellation) by Abbé Jacques Boileau, which was published in 1700. The book described in detail how Cornelius Adriaensen would take pleasure in whipping young female acolytes for penance, and tenderly touch their naked buttocks and thighs with his rods of willow and birch.
This was cited as one of many examples, and Boileau even claimed that flagellation was, by its nature, erotically ambivalent and deliberately so. This book, which was put on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books by 1703, signals a turn of tides: From 1700 forward, the whip would be identified less with piety or penance than with sexual arousal.
See also
- Flagellation and the Flagellants
- Corporal punishment in religious institutions
- Spanking and religion
- Religious authority figure
- Pater Achatius
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