5895. RB to John Simeon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 195–196.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
Apr. 23. ’67.
My dear Sir John,
I am very much obliged to you for the little book, [1] —most interesting I find it in every way. I have no doubt it is the first and fullest of the accounts: the others are the same retold, as seemed best to the teller, with rather suppressions than variations. Shelley’s translation (a loosish one) [2] goes on for a while parallel with this,—diverging at the end as if the narrator were tired. I observe that the last words & speeches are quite different, a thing I have remarked in other documents of the same nature,—perhaps the alteration is with a view to edification. Your conjecture about the reason of the failure of the defence is no doubt the true one, and I will extract from my book [3] (the strange one I told you of) a passage which may interest you—of course unpublished hitherto.
The Advocate (De Arcangeli) [4] is arguing “ut mitiùs cum eo [& Socijs] ageretur, attento quod causa honoris est sufficientissima ad leniendam pœnam.” [5] He then cites Farinacci [6] as having been of this opinion, though “nimis inconstantem se præbuit” [7] —in such & such a place. “Quamobrem de hujusmodi inconstantiâ admonitus se excusando asseruit in d. cons. 141. sub num. 16—(of his famous book “Quæstiones”)—Beatricem, pro qua scripserat, in cons. 66. fuisse capite obtruncatam, quasi quod hujusmodi rigorosa sententia in practica servetur: sed parcat mihi tam eximius Doctor, nimis incongruè respondit, oblitus quæ in fine d. consilii 66. scripta reliquerat, hoc est, fuisse punitam Beatricem pœnâ ultimi supplicii non quia ex intervallo occidi mandavit [insidiantem] suo honori sed quia ejus exceptionem non probauit ibi—‘Prout, et idem firmitèr sperabatur de sorore Beatrice si propositam excusationem probasset, prout non probavit.’ [8] (These are Farinacci’s own words!)
I think you will find that being “accomodato sul curro per esser tenagliato” means, placed there to be torn with pincers in his passage thro’ the streets, which was done with more or less severity according to the nature of the crime punished.
I remember that Sir George Bowyer printed Farinacci’s pleading, some five & twenty years ago: [9] I fancy he told me last year that he had not got a copy left.
Farinacci in the aforesaid Quæstiones, when on the subject of Tortures, declares the Tormentum Vigiliarum (or Corda) [10] to have been the severest of all—lasting from 7 to 10 hours—so that out of 100 cases he had never known more than 4. “martyrs”, nor less than 96. “confessors.” [11]
But this is getting too ghastly, & it is by a very pleasant reaction that I find myself assuring you
I am, my dear Sir John, ever yours
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Contemporaneous Narrative of the Trial and Execution of the Cenci, ed. John Simeon ([1858]). RB’s copy sold in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2133).
2. i.e., Shelley’s verse tragedy, The Cenci (1819).
3. The “old yellow book”; see letter 5112, note 8.
4. Giacinto Arcangeli, one of two defense lawyers representing Guido Franceschini.
5. “That he and his fellows be dealt with more mildly, if we bear in mind that causa honoris is quite sufficient for the moderating of this penalty” (The Old Yellow Book: Source of Browning’s The Ring and the Book, ed. and trans. Charles W. Hodell, Washington, D.C., 1908, p. 85).
6. Prospero Farinacci (1554–1618), lawyer who defended Beatrice Cenci and her brothers against the charge of murdering their father and her husband in Rome, 1599.
7. “He shows that he is very changeable” (Hodell, p. 85).
8. “Therefore, when his attention was called to this changeableness, in excusing himself, he asserted, in the said cons. 141, under No. 16, that Beatrice, in behalf of whom he had written in cons. 66, had been beheaded; as if this kind of rigorous sentence should be followed in practice. And may this distinguished authority pardon me, but he responds inconsistently, having forgotten what he had written in the end of cons. 66: that is, that Beatrice was put to death not because she, after an interval, had commanded that one be put to death who was plotting against her honor, but because she did not prove her right to this latter exception, where he says: ‘So also there was strong hope for the sister Beatrice, if she had proved the excuse she offered, as she did not prove it’” (Hodell, pp. 85–86).
9. A Dissertation on the Statutes of the Cities of Italy; and a Translation of the Pleading of Prospero Farinacio in Defence of Beatrice Cenci and her relatives (1838) by George Bowyer (1811–83); see letter 5507, note 2.
10. “Torture of sleeplessness (or the cord).”
11. As the editors of The Poems of Robert Browning point out, in annotating The Ring and the Book, VIII, 328–345, RB’s source is Farinacci’s Praxis et Theorica criminalis (1606), “which is divided into ‘Questions’; the passage occurs in Question 38, no. 71” (see Vol. 6, ed. John Woolford et al., London and New York, 2022, pp. 834–835).
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