Ponte Sant'Angelo — Beatrice Cenci, 11 September 1599

OVERVIEW

Beatrice Cenci (6 February 1577 – 11 September 1599) was a Roman noblewoman, daughter of Count Francesco Cenci, 'a man of great wealth but dissolute habits and violent temper'. The family lived in the Palazzo Cenci in the rione Regola and owned a castle at Petrella Salto in the Abruzzi mountains.

HISTORY

According to the account that became legend, Francesco abused his first wife and his sons and repeatedly raped Beatrice; jailed for other crimes, he was freed early for his rank, and when he learned she had reported him he shut her and her stepmother Lucrezia away in the castle at Petrella. In 1598 Beatrice, her brothers Giacomo and Bernardo and Lucrezia, helped by two vassals, drugged him, bludgeoned him to death with a hammer and threw the body from a balcony to fake an accident. The papal police uncovered the plot; the accused were tortured into confessions at Pope Clement VIII's direction and condemned. The people of Rome protested and won a short delay, but the Pope, fearing a wave of family murders, refused mercy. At dawn on 11 September 1599 they were taken to the Sant'Angelo bridge, where the scaffold was usually set up: Giacomo was tortured in the cart, killed with a mallet and quartered; Lucrezia and then Beatrice were beheaded. Twelve-year-old Bernardo was made to watch. Beatrice was buried in San Pietro in Montorio.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Beatrice became, for the people of Rome, a symbol of resistance to an arrogant aristocracy. It is said that every year, on the night before the anniversary of her death, she returns to the Sant'Angelo bridge where she was executed, carrying her severed head in her hands. Her story was taken up by Shelley (The Cenci), Stendhal, Hawthorne, Stefan Zweig and Antonin Artaud, among many others.

VISITING

The bridge is a pedestrian crossing of the Tiber in the centre of Rome, below Castel Sant'Angelo.