s sometimes used for a state of repentance, and sometimes for the act of repenting. It is also used for a discipline or punishment attending repentance, more usually called penance. Besides, it gives title to several religious orders, consisting either of converted baudheuses and reformed prostitutes, or of persons who devote themselves to the office of reclaiming them. Of this latter kind is the Order of Penitence of St Magdalen, established about the year 1272 by one Bernard, a citizen of Marseilles, who devoted himself to the work of converting the courtezans of that city. Bernard was seconded by several others, who, having formed a kind of society, were at length erected into a religious order by Pope Nicholas III. under the rule of St Augustin. F. Gesnay says that they also constituted a religious order of the penitents, or women they converted, giving them the same rules and observances which they themselves followed.