postponement of the execution. Pope Clement VIII, however, fearing a spate of familial murders (the Countess of Santa Croce had recently been murdered by her son for financial gain), showed no mercy. At dawn on 11 September 1599, they were taken to Sant'Angelo Bridge, where the scaffold was usually built. In the cart to the scaffold, Giacomo was subjected to continual torture. On reaching the scaffold, his head was smashed with a mallet. His corpse was then quartered. The public spectacle continued with the executions of Lucrezia and then Beatrice. Both took their turns on the block to be beheaded with a small axe. Only the 12-year-old Bernardo was spared, but he was led to the scaffold and forced to witness the execution of his relatives before returning to prison and having his properties confiscated (to be given to the Pope's own family). It was decreed that Bernardo should then become a galley slave for the remainder of his life. However, he was released a year later. Beatrice was buried in the church of San Pietro in Montorio. The legend Beatrice has become a symbol to the people of Rome of resistance against the arrogant aristocracy. It is related that every year on the night before the anniversary of her death, she comes back to the Sant'Angelo Bridge where she was executed, carrying her severed head. Influence on literature and the arts Beatrice Cenci has been the subject of a number of literary and musical works: Philip Massinger's play The Unnatural Combat (c.1619) contains specific echoes of the case and antedates the Romantic revival of Beatrice by 200 years Percy Bysshe Shelley's verse drama The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts (composed at Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, May–5 August 1819, published spring 1820 by C. & J. Ollier, London, 1819) "Les Cenci", a short story by Stendhal (1837) Béatrix Cenci, a verse drama (1839), by Polish poet, Juliusz Słowacki Beatrice Cenci, a novel by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (1854) "Beatrice Cenci (In a City Shop-Window)" (1871), a poem by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, American poet Béatrix Cenci, by Astolphe de Custine Nemesis, tragedy by Alfred Nobel Beatrice Cenci, a play by Alberto Moravia (1958), trans. Angus Davidson (1965)) Beatriz Cenci, a verse drama by Gonçalves Dias Beatrix Cenci, opera by Alberto Ginastera, based on the Shelley play Beatrice Cenci, opera by Berthold Goldschmidt, based on the Shelley play