San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1926-01-10

of the SaIntS Head.
~ the morning of September II,
1899, the lovely head of Beatrice
Cenci, daughter of a rich and
noble Italian family that traced its descent
back to the founders of Rome, was Topped
from her shoulders by the axe of the pub
lie executioner. With her died her step
mother, Lucrezia, and her brother, Gia-
como, the latter after the torturers had
plucked out the muscles and tendons of
his chest and arms with red-hot pincers.
A second brother, Bernardo, was con-
demned to look on, and then was sent to
the galleys for life.
Beatrice, with the others, had been
found guilty of numbering her father,
Francesca. But the elder Cenci's evil rep
utation, his brutalities and bestialities and
Beatrice's youth and beauty and the pro-
longed torments it was know she had I'M
dergone in order to force her to confess
had turned popular sympathy toward her.
Most powerfully had it been so turned
by the reported provocation for her crime
-Ltldl slit ildu DetIl dtbdhNhNdy
by that same father.
During the more than three hundred
years since her death on the scaffold, the
controversy about Beatrice Cenci and her
tragedy has gone on. Father and daugh-
ter have each been ''whitewashed" in turn,
and each held up as monster of wicked
ness.
But now Professor Corrado Ricci, for
mer Minister of Fine Arts in the Italian
Cabinet, has unearthed the actual truth
about the unhappy Beatrice and her IA
Their. Given permission by the Pope to
examine the proceedings of the trial i'm
pounded in the secret archives of the Vati-
can, Professor Ricci, after years of study,
has reconstructed the historic drama as it
really occurred in his two volumes, "Bea-
trice Cenci," published in America by
Boni & Liveright.
Beatrice had many good reasons for
hating her father, Professor Ricci finds,
but she did not have the outstanding one
of the legend. He had beaten her, kept
her under lock and key, humiliated her,
and would neither let her marry nor go
into a Runnery. But he had not debauched
her. -
On the other hand, Beatrice was not
the shrinking dove of the English poet
Shelley's play She managed 10 carry on
a love affair with the CASTELAR,, or Gus
todan of the lonely castle of La Petrella,
one of the strongholds of the Cencis. He
was an ex-bandit named OLYMPIC Calvettl,
and she had child by him.
That Reafricp Was extraordinarily beau
tiful, Professor Rcci finds TO be true.
And he reveals, for the very first time,
what the almost incredible tortures she
underwent were. II does not seem possible
that anv human being, and particularly
girl of Beatrice's age and delicacy, could
have withstood them. For weeks. day
after day. she ran the gamut Of their
fendish ingenuity. Agony could not break
her spirit, and il was only after her allies
in the murder, weaker willed than she. had
confessed in full, that, seeing the useless
ness Of further resistance, she confirmed
their stories and stoically accepted her
punishment.
Beatrice was condemned both to the
Ordinary and extraordinary question"
The "ordinary question" comprised com
paratively mild forms Of torture. The
extraordinary question: as ITS name I'M
plies, took in every form Of torture that
WOulO DIOuuEE Vic AAkiNiIf mint VI d-tNs
TO the victim
Among these devices was that called
"the torture By the cord This consisted
of a rope attached to pulley in the cell
ing of the torture chamber and running
over that pulley, usually to a wheel which
was turned by two of the torturers When
the accused was TO be questioned
strong cord was bound around his wrists,
and this cord was attached TO the rope
rom the ceiling. When the torturers
urned the wheel, the poor wretch was
fled up from the floor, all his weight
mon the bound wrists.
But sometimes the arms, instead Of be-
ing brought up naturally, were first bound
behind the back and the rope attached to
the cord. Almost everyone knows the
well-nigh unbesrsble pain that comes
from having an arm twisted backward and
up in this fashion; mischievOus boys some
times Try It on their companions.
m was this form Of the torture by the
cord that was decreed for the unfortunate
beatrice, and there exists the actual re-
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