The flagrum, a whip of two or three thongs with small lead pellets attached, was wielded by a torturer who moved round his victim, or by two torturers, one of whom struck from behind. Jesus lost a great deal of Blood, for a reason only mentioned by Saint Luke, "with the unsurpassable precision of a medical doctor", writes Barbet; perhaps because he had questioned Saint John, the beloved disciple who did not fall asleep on the Mount of Olives:
"And being in an agony, He prayed all the more earnestly. And His sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground." (Lk 22.44)
Fr. Benedict Groeschel appeared on EWTN's program Mother Angelica Live, the other night. He mentioned the shroud, in connection with the crucifixion and burial of Christ. Of course, Fr. Groeschel has a style all his own. Pointing to all the famous artwork we have seen over the years, and the artist's depiction of the crucifixion, he reminded viewers that artists approach their subjects much like a photographer. These are "tableaux". Each person present at the crucifixion has a certain place "in the tableau". In reality, he said, the actual crucifixion of Jesus was something far more barbaric and brutal than any artist would care to render.
He went on to speak about a good friend, a priest, who has a parish in Rhode Island. When his friends parish was condemned by the city council in order to run a highway through that property, this priest set about building a new church. For the "corpus" on the crucifix, he contacted the group that had done the 3D imaging of the Shroud of Turin. He then went on to say that they have now been able to count the number of whiplashes on the man of the shroud - 110! Fr. Groeschel noted, in his inimitable style, that it was miracle enough that this "man of the shroud" was able to walk the Via Dolorosa carrying a crossbar, with his skin tattered into shreds by that number of blows. The normal punishment, according to all public records handed down from that period, would have been 30.