poison had ended the Pope's life, but the legend was as superfluous as it was familiar.[319] The rest of the Pope's administrative work must be briefly recorded before we pass to the consideration of his political activity. He attempted to restrict the prodigality of the Romans in dress, food, funeral and wedding expenses, etc., but this sumptuary legislation[320] was not enforced. He found general and disgraceful laxity in the convents of nuns, and enacted a death-penalty against offenders: the same penalty he, with his habitual truculence, imposed for cheating at cards or dice. He directed the police to cleanse Rome of prostitutes and astrologers, reformed the prisons,[321] made provision for widows and orphans, pressed the redemption of captives,[322] and constructed ten galleys for the defence of the Italian coast against the Turks and pirates. He cleared of debt the Roman University (Sapienza) and restored it to its full activity. He engaged Fontana to crown St. Peter's with its long-deferred cupola, and threw such energy into the work that he almost completed in twenty-two months a task which the builders expected to occupy ten years. He, with equal vigour, set up the obelisks in front of St. Peter's, reconstructed the Lateran Palace in part, and restored the columns of Trajan and Antoninus; though, in a naïve desire to express the triumph of Christianity over Paganism, he put statues of Peter and Paul on the ancient Roman pedestals.[323] He also set up a press in the Vatican Library, which he restored and decorated, and from this he issued the Latin version of the Bible which the Council of Trent had ordered, as well as the works of St. Ambrose and St. Bonaventure.