“The very saddest picture ever painted or conceived,” says Nathaniel Hawthorne. Accused of complicity in the murder of a brutal father, Beatrice Cenci endured horrible torture in St. Angelo with heroic fortitude rivalling that of strong men, and never really confessed the crime. She was beheaded in front of the Castle of St. Angelo.
sorrow and a desolate earthly helplessness remained.”
Again, Nathaniel Hawthorne has written:—“The picture of Beatrice Cenci is the very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involves an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which comes to the observer by a sort of intuition. She knows that her sorrow is so strange and immense that she ought to be solitary for ever, both for the world’s sake and her own; and this is the reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet her glance and to know that nothing can be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better than we do. She is a fallen angel—fallen and yet sinless.”
Further additions were made to St. Angelo in the seventeenth century, in improving its interior and strengthening its defences. Urban VIII in 1623 built the bastions, still standing, and restricted the bed of the Tiber so as to put an end to the inundations that so often had done great damage to this part of the city. The pope also improved the armament of the castle and cast many pieces of cannon with the bronze he removed from the roof of the Pantheon. He was of the Barberini family, whose crest is a bee, and a contemporary writer, the Jesuit Donato, paid Urban the compliment of saying that “bees not only make honey but possess stings to be used in self-defence.” The expenditure on the new guns amounted to 67,260 scudi; there were 110 pieces in all, described as “Colubrini, cannoni, falconetti, petardi ed altri stromenti.” It was in carrying out these works and excavating a new ditch that the Barberini or so-called “Sleeping Faun” was unearthed from the spot where it had lain since the sixth century.
Pope Urban VIII also improved the long corridor or passage that connected the Vatican with the castle. Arches had been added by Pius IV in 1559, and then Urban roofed it in. This gallery had two stories, the lower enclosed and tunnel-like, lighted by loopholes and a perfectly secure passageway, and the upper a covered loggia of open arches, as it may be seen to this day. The keys of these vitally important passages have always been retained by the pope himself in his own keeping.
From this time forth the castle of St. Angelo ceased to be a courtly residence, but it was still valued as a strong place of arms, with fortifications to be jealously guarded, improved and kept in good repair. It was also applied to baser uses as a prison-house to receive the many law-breakers and criminals constantly committed to safe custody by the watchful guardians of good order and the merciless agents of a severe penal code. The popes, secure in their authority, their power no longer challenged, held the turbulent people in stern subjection and enforced the law with a strong hand. Good order was strictly maintained and offenders were promptly brought to punishment. Crime was extraordinarily prevalent and called for pitiless repressive and coercive measures.
It has been said that the determining factor in the execution of the Cenci was the occurrence of another murder of the same description. Paolo, a son of the Princess Santa Croce, had vainly sought to persuade his mother to make him her heir, but she had steadfastly refused, and in his rage and disappointment he resolved to kill her. He first wrote to a brother, Onofrio, accusing her of disgracing the family by her debauched life, obviously a false charge, for she was already more than sixty years of age. Onofrio replied that the honour of the family must be preserved at all costs. Whereupon Paolo stabbed his mother to the heart. Rome was convulsed, and Paolo fled for his life, but Onofrio was seized, put on his trial, convicted and executed on the bridge of St. Angelo in 1601.
A strange crime is recorded in the account of the beheading of a certain Giacinto Centini, who was a nephew of the most excellent and reverend Signor Cardinal d’Ascoli, and “who had caused a statue of wax to be made of Urban VIII, in order that its dissolution might insure that of the pope and so allow his uncle a chance of becoming pontiff at the next conclave.” Included with this is the story of the recantation and death of his accomplices in the Campo di Fiore. It was on Sunday, April 22, 1636, that the recantation took place in St. Peter’s in the presence of about twenty thousand persons. A platform ten spans high had been erected in the middle of the church, and the accused were made to mount upon it and listen to an account of the charges against them, which were read aloud from a neighbouring pulpit. Centini and one of his confederates, Fra Cherubino d’Ancona, heard in silence, but another, Fra Bernardino the Hermit protested so loudly that he was innocent and caused such scandal among the congregation that he was gagged to prevent further utterance. The two unhappy monks were then hurried to the Transpontina, where they were publicly stripped of their habit in the presence of a large crowd which attended them, hooting and shouting, and taken back to the Corte Savella where Centini had already arrived.
The execution was to take place in the Campo di Fiore and here the block and axes, and a stake firmly planted in the ground, and surrounded with straw and faggots, had been duly prepared. Long before dawn the square began to fill with people, and about eight in the morning the officers of justice left the prison with their victims, and after making a long tour through the city, reached the piazza. The pile was lighted immediately, and commenced to burn with such fury that the crowd drew back appalled from the consuming flames and the showers of sparks which darted from it. The ex-monks were in a state of abject terror and one of them fell to the ground in a dead faint. Centini was beheaded first, then the two monks were hanged, and the bodies of all three were flung into the flames. They died with satisfactory signs of penitence and Cherubino especially, remarks the old chronicler, “made a most edifying end and left behind a good hope of his salvation.”