Documented for the first time in 1509 but certainly already active in the Medieval age, the Confraternity of Battuti ran a hospice for the care of travellers and the ill within the suburb of Pez, known as Domus Dei.
The hospital was served by a church called Santa Maria Nuova, destroyed by a fire at the start of the 1800s and never reconstructed.
During the Medieval age growing popular religious devotion encouraged lay people and the clergy to unite in prayer groups and organize liturgical services, processions, and funeral corteges. These associations, traditionally known as confraternities, gathered together the faithful inspired by the need to share in the practice of faith, while often also fulflling the commandment of charity by offering the most needy members of society spititual, social, and sometimes even economic support.
