BROTHERS OP THE GOOD DEATH

New Zealand Tablet, 22 June 1911, Page 1169

BROTHERS OP THE GOOD DEATH

Had you stood in the gate of S. Lorenzo one day recently (says Home) , you would have seen a strange and edifying spectacle— a baud' of Roman gentlemen : pertaining to the confraternity called the ‘ Eratelli della Buona Morte inarching put into the Campagna, that dry waste which lies between Rome and Tivoli . They , were Brothers Ocelli (lawyer), Feliziani (editor of La Vera, Rome, a highclass illustrated weekly), Pietro Willy, Adolph Tibaldi (commercial), Enrico Grassi, and some others, accompanied by their chaplain, Don Carlo Gudin, and they wore the habit of their society, a loose over-all of rough material tied with a rope at the waist, and a hood over their heads and covering the faces completely. Two holes for the eyes and one through which to breathe completed this weird, attire. Information had been conveyed to them- that an. aged mendicant had died ait the roadside at some miles distance from Rome, and they were proceeding on foot to find the body and carry it to the Eternal City on the stretcher which they bore in their turn upon their shoulders. One of the rules of this confraternity of laymen in; Rome binds the members to search the Campagna and the banks of the Tiber occasionally for bodies, and to see that proper burial be given them. In no picture gallery of Europe have I seen a more touching painting than that in a certain house in Rome, representing the ‘Brothers.of the Good Death kneeling by a. bier at the Mulvian bridge at midnight. The picture, is a mere daub, but the details are truly pathetic. Kneeling round the body of a female just drawn from the river, with her hair dishevelled and misery written on her dead face, are a dozen members of the confraternity. The chaplain, in surplice and cassock, reads the prayers, for the dead by, the light of two torches carried by the Romans, and four members await the order to uplift the stretcher and bear it into Rome. By the covering they had thrown over the body, the past of the poor creature, whatever it was, seemed closed, and nothing but charity and pity prevailed. . ' As the hour fo„r each member comes to go to the tomb, his body is accompanied by its hooded brethren, all bearing torches and chanting psalms, through the Streets. He is buried with simplicity and a wealth of love, -for his own life was one of charity. '.I Though some of the members are the most wealthy and most representative men in Rome, all are buried with extreme austerity, and, I may say, severity. Everything savouring of pomp is avoided to such an extent that I have seen poor peasants buried with much more display than those earnest Roman gentlemen.