immense relief of the members of the confraternity gathered around him. They took him back to the prison to confess and receive the last sacrament, after which he was again brought out, carefully dressed, and marched through the streets, singing a penitential psalm until he arrived at the scaffold. These confraternities were corporate bodies with both religious and civil functions. Thus the Confraternita della Trinita lodged and fed gratuitously for three days all the pilgrims who came to Rome; the Confraternita della Morte attended to the sick in the vast Agro Romano; the Confraternita di St. Giovanni Decollato devoted itself to prisoners condemned to death; the Santissima Annunziata gave dowries to poor and deserving Roman maidens; the brethren of the Stigmata of St. Francis prostrated themselves to kiss the ground and were therefore called in Roman slang _bacia mattoni_;[2] those of St. Girolamo della Carita begged alms for the prisoners; the Agonizzanti affixed the placards or _tavolozze_ on the walls which bore the names of malefactors sentenced to death; they besought the prayers of the pious and exposed the sacrament until the last penalty of the law was carried out. Among the many privileges enjoyed by these confraternities till a much later date was one hardly in accordance with our modern idea of civil justice, “the right of liberating from the galleys, and even from sentence of death, any malefactors other than thieves.” When negotiations had been entered into with the governor of Rome, and the pope’s consent had been gained to the release of the offender, a day was fixed upon for the confraternity to march in solemn procession from its church to the prison, where the criminal was handed over and conducted in triumph round the city, dressed in the attire of the brotherhood and crowned with laurel, as in a Roman triumph. This custom was definitely abolished by Leo XII. All these liberations, however, cost money, and in time there came to be an official tariff, varying according to the nature of the crime. Thus we read in a report of the Austrian legation that forty scudi sufficed to free a man who had been condemned to the galleys for ten years. The last criminal released by the Compagnia di S. Girolamo was a murderer named Checco sentenced to death in 1824. The company went in solemn procession to fetch him from the Carceri Nuove and conduct him to their church in the Via Monserrato. Here, after assisting at mass, he was arrayed in the habit of the confraternity, crowned with laurel and escorted in another triumphal procession round the church.