Among these may be classed a practice which was substantially an appeal to God to regulate the amount of punishment requisite for the expiation of a crime. One or more bands of iron were not infrequently fastened around the neck or arm of a murderer, who was banished until by pilgrimage and prayer his reconciliation and pardon should be manifested by the miraculous loosening of the fetter, showing that soul and body were both released from their bonds.[1190] A case is related of a Pole thus wandering with a circlet tightly clasped to each arm. One fell before the intercession of St. Adalbert, the apostle of Prussia, but the other retained its hold until the sinner came to the shrine of St. Hidulf near Toul. There, joining in the worship of the holy monks, the remaining band flew off with such force that it bounded against the opposite wall, while the pardoned criminal fell fainting to the ground, the blood pouring from his liberated arm: a miracle gratefully recorded by the spiritual children of the saint.[1191] Equally melodramatic in its details is a similar instance of an inhabitant of Prunay near Orléans, laden with three iron bands for fratricide. His weary pilgrimage was lightened of two by the intercession of St. Peter at Rome, and the third released itself in the most demonstrative manner through the merits of St. Bertin and St. Omer.[1192] If the legend of St. Emeric of Hungary be true, the pope himself did not disdain to prescribe this ordeal to the criminal whose miraculous release caused the immediate canonization of the saint by a synod in 1073.[1193] In France at one time we are told that this penance or punishment was habitual in cases of parricide or fratricide, when the rings or chains were wrought from the sword with which the crime had been committed.[1194] Repentant sinners also frequently bound themselves with iron rings and chains by way of penance, and the spontaneous disruption of these, which sometimes occurred, was regarded as a sign that God had pardoned the penitent.[1195] The shrine of St. Nicetius at Lyons had a special reputation in these cases, and the pile of broken rings and chains exhibited there in the sixth century testified to the power of the saint’s intercession.[1196]