Note 908 — Chapter VII · DOMESTIC ECONOMY.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
A thorough history of ‘flogging’ among the Germanic and Latin races treated with some psychological power, would be worth volumes of dispatches and negotiations. (A modest beginning has been made by Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften, v. 276-283.) When, and through what influence, did flogging become a daily practice in the German household? Not till after Walther sang: ‘Nieman kan mit gerten kindes zuht beherten.’
In Italy beating ceased early; Maffeo Vegio (d. 1458) recommends (De Educ. Liber. lib. i. c. 19) moderation in flogging, but adds: ‘Caedendos magis esse filios quam pestilentissmis blanditiis laetandos.’ At a later time a child of seven was no longer beaten. The little Roland (Orlandino, cap. vii. str. 42) lays down the principle:
‘Sol gli asini si ponno bastonare, Se una tal bestia fussi, patirei.’
The German humanists of the Renaissance, like Rudolf Agricola and Erasmus, speak decisively against flogging, which the elder schoolmasters regarded as an indispensable means of education. In the biographies of the Fahrenden Schüler at the close of the fifteenth century (Platter’s Lebensbeschriebung, ed. Fechter, Basel, 1840; Butzbach’s Wanderbuch, ed. Becher, Regensburg, 1869) there are gross examples of the corporal punishment of the time.