ons of men being decapitated or hanging
on the gallows.

See also the articles BURIAL AND BURIAL ACTS; CREMATION; FUNERAL
RITES; CHURCHYARD.

CENCI, BEATRICE (1577-1599), a Roman woman, famous for her tragic story;
poetic fancy has woven a halo of romance about her, which modern
historic research has to a large extent destroyed. Born at Rome, she was
the daughter of Francesco Cenci (1549-1598), the bastard son of a
priest, and a man of great wealth but dissolute habits and violent
temper. He seems to have been guilty of various offences and to have got
off with short terms of imprisonment by bribery; but the monstrous
cruelty which popular tradition has attributed to him is purely
legendary. His first wife, Ersilia Santa Croce, bore him twelve
children, and nine years after her death he married Lucrezia Petroni, a
widow with three daughters, by whom he had no offspring. He was very
quarrelsome and lived on the worst possible terms with his children,
who, however, were all of them more or less disreputable. He kept
various mistresses and was even prosecuted for unnatural vice, but his
sons were equally dissolute. His harsh treatment of his daughter
Beatrice was probably due to his discovery that she had had an
illegitimate child as the result of an intrigue with one of his stewards
(A. Bertolotti, in his _Francesco Cenci_, publishes Beatrice's will in
which she provides for this child), but there is no evidence that he
tried to commit incest with her, as has been alleged. The eldest son
Giacomo was a riotous, dishonest young scoundrel, who cheated his own
father and even attempted to murder him (1595). Two other sons, Rocco
and Cristoforo, both of them notorious rakes, were killed in brawls.
Finally Francesco's wife Lucrezia and his children Giacomo, Bernardo and
Beatrice, assisted by a certain Monsignor Guerra, plotted to murder him.
Two bravos were hired (one of them named Olimpio, according to
Bertolotti, was probably Beatrice's lover), and Francesco was
assassinated while asleep in his castle of Petrella in the kingdom of
Naples (1598). Giacomo afterwards had one of the bravos murdered, but
the other was arrested by the Neapolitan authorities and confessed
everything. Information having been communicated to Rome, the whole of
the Cenci family were arrested early in 1599; but the story of the
hardships they underwent in prison is greatly exaggerated. Guerra
escaped; Lucrezia, Giacomo and Bernardo confessed