CENCI, BEATRICE. — Born in Rome on 6 February 1577 to Francesco, a violent and avaricious man who, seeing his considerable fortune diminish because of the continual fines imposed for the crimes he committed, moved to the Colonna castle of Rocca Petrella near Rieti (1597), where two years earlier he had confined his second wife, Lucrezia Petroni, and his children. Life at the Rocca must have been harsh and sad, since the two sons, Giacomo and Bernardo, fled with the complicity of Olimpio Calvetti, castellan of the Colonna family and in love with B. The discovery of this love and the news of Giacomo’s marriage made Francesco furious. The consequence was that the family members plotted the crime. On 9 September 1598, in B.’s presence and with Lucrezia’s complicity, Francesco was killed and then thrown from the balcony to make it appear an accident. The two women returned to Rome, but the truth soon came to light, and everyone was arrested.
The trial began on 14 January 1599, and despite the defense of the celebrated lawyer Prospero Farinaccio, B., Lucrezia, and Giacomo were found guilty and sentenced to death; only Bernardo received a sentence of life imprisonment. On 11 September, in the square of Ponte S. Angelo, in the presence of a multitude of people, B. and Lucrezia were beheaded, while Giacomo was killed with a club and quartered. B.
died courageously and left a series of pious dispositions; the people accompanied her remains to S. Pietro in Montorio and made her a kind of heroine.
The enemies of the Holy See raised the accusation that Pope Clement VIII had a sentence so severe carried out in order to take possession of the family’s considerable fortune; the sentence, however, is justified by the need to set an example at a time when the recurrence of similar crimes was continually disturbing public order, and when the duty of moral reform was imperative.