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Comforter’s tunic
Among the confraternities that were founded from the fifteenth century onwards, those appointed to assist condemned prisoners played an important role. The brethren of the confraternity visited those sentenced to death during the last hours prior to execution and prepared them for a “peaceful death”.
Early in the morning the brethren visited the prisoner in his cell and, after confessing him and giving him communion, served him his last meal. Then ablutions were performed, which included cutting the prisoner’s hair if he was to be beheaded. Their last words to him were: “Take comfort, brother, for soon you will be with Christ in Paradise.”
The condemned prisoner was then taken from the prison and led into the street to the cart that was waiting to transport him to the gallows. The brethren, one of them carrying a crucifix, followed the procession the whole way.
The procession passed through the city followed by the crowd, who experienced an execution as a collective event.
When they arrived at the scaffold, the prisoner was handed over to the executioner, while the brethren collected offerings in zinc alms-boxes with an image of the beheaded St. John on them. If death was by hanging, the brothers picked up the rope and kept it. These confraternities of “peaceful death” were also responsible for removing the dead man’s corpse and burying it in a pauper’s grave.
Provenance: Confraternity of San Giovanni Decollato of Rome otherwise known as the Confraternity of Misericordia, 1933
