HE first part of this paper describes the background and appearance of a penitential procession which I witnessed in Spain in I954.2 The second part deals with two penitential processions in the American Southwest. My data on one of these-a procession of the Penitente brotherhoods of New Mexico and Coloradohave been assembled from published accounts extending over the past sixty years.3 The data on the other-that of a Yaqui Indian village-are drawn in part from my own field notes of a procession witnessed in Arizona in I955.4 In the third and concluding part of this paper I shall attempt to account for some of the differences which have arisen in the form, function, and meaning of these processions since their first manifestation in Spain about four centuries ago. I. Spanish Penitential Processions. Each spring during Holy Week in such Spanish cities as Seville, Toledo, Madrid, Barcelona, Valladolid, Cuenca, and Granada, members of the lay religious brotherhoods known as hermandades and cofradias take part in street processions as penitential rites in commemoration of Christ's Passion. In these processions the members of each brotherhood carry a religious image which portrays some aspect of the Passion and which they venerate as the likeness of their patron deity or saint. Each image has a permanent home in a church or other holy institution whose governing priest advises the related brotherhood in its devotional work. In addition to their Lenten activities, many of the brotherhoods function throughout the year as auxiliary organizations of the parish. Following is a brief description of a penitential procession of the Brotherhood of the Christ of the Expiration in the city of Toledo, Spain, in the pre-dawn of Good Friday I954, as witnessed by the writer and James D. Edwards: Arriving at the small plaza in front of the Church of the Capuchin Nuns shortly before 3:00 A.M., we found about forty men and women, presumably all Toledanos, standing in little groups outside the sixteenth century stone church. All seemed to be in holiday mood, laughing, talking, calling to each other, and offering no sign of being disturbed either by the lateness or the earliness of the hour. At 3:I5 A.M. the atmosphere of the square underwent a sudden change. A shaft of light shone from behind the church door, and simultaneously there was a dead silence as all those outside stopped talking. The great door was now flung wide, and there staggered forth a black-robed and hooded figure, bent almost double by the weight of the life-sized wooden cross on his back. Behind him, in parallel files, followed about thirty men, similarly robed and hooded, each carrying a lighted farol or long candle. Finally, borne on the shoulders of eight of the brothers, came a lighted paso or float on which had been mounted for all to see the brotherhood's patron-a sculptured likeness of the expiring Christ on the Cross. Hardly had the image reached the outside of the church when a deep voice was heard proclaiming primera estaci6n, the first Station of the Cross. As if they had