CENACLE, the term applied to the eating-room of a Roman house in which the supper (cena) or latest meal was taken. It was sometimes placed in an upper storey. The Last Supper in the New Testament was taken in the cenacle, in the "large upper room" cited in St. Mark (xiv. I 5) and St. Luke (xxii. 12) . CENCI, BEATRICE (chen'che) 0577-1599), a Roman woman, famous for her tragic history, was born on Feb. 6, 1577, in the Cenci palace in Rome. She was the daughter, by his first wife, of Francesco Cenci (1549-1598), a vicious man of great wealth. He was tried in 1J94 for sodomy, but was released on payment of a fine of Ioo,000 scudi. Cenci had 12 children by his first wife ; his second wife, Lucrezia Petroni, a widow with three daughters, brought him no children. He was embroiled with his sons and after the trial he decided to remove his wife Lucrezia, with Beatrice, to La Petrella, a lonely castle on the road to Naples which he obtained from Marzio Colonna. There in he shut up his wife and daughter in the upper rooms of the castle, and there he visited them from time to time treating them, especially Beatrice, with great brutality. There is no evidence for the charge of attempted incest with his daughter, but the details of life at La Petrella, as given in the subsequent trial, were revolting, and might well have given colour to the accusation. Beatrice seems to have found refuge in a liaison with the keeper of the castle, Olimpio Calvetti. At intervals the two younger Cenci children, Bernardo and Paolo, visited La Petrella. Olimpio was expelled by Colonna from the castle at the demand of Fran cesco Cenci, who does not, however, seem to have known of his relations with Beatrice. At length, Beatrice, with her stepmother and with her brother Giacomo and Bernardo, decided to secure the murder of their father. He was killed in his bed (Sept. 9, 1J98) by Olimpio and a hired assassin named Marzio.
Information having been communicated to Rome, the whole of the Cenci family were arrested early in 2599. Lucrezia, Giacomo and Bernardo confessed the crime; and Beatrice, who at first denied everything, even under torture, also ended by confessing. Great efforts were made to obtain mercy for the accused, but the pope (Clement VIII.) refused to grant a pardon; on Sept. 11, 1599, Beatrice and Lucrezia were beheaded, and Giacomo, after having been tortured with red-hot pincers, was killed with a mace, drawn and quartered. Bernardo's penalty, on account of his youth, was commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and after a year's confinement he was pardoned. The property of the family was confiscated. There is a study by Guido Reni or Guercino in the Palazzo Barberini said to represent Beatrice, but it is unlikely that. Reni saw her.
The history of the Cenci family has been the subject of poems, dramas and novels. Shelley found in it material for his great tragedy. The most famous of the novels is F. D. Guerrazzi's Beatrice Cenci (Milan, 1872). The first attempt to deal with the subject on documentary evidence is A. Bertolotti's Francesco Cenci e la sua famiglia (2nd ed., Florence, 1879), containing a number of interesting documents which place the events in their true light ; cf. Labruzzi's article in the Nuova Antologia, 1879, vol. xiv., and another in the Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1879. See also C. Ricci, Beatrice Cenci, 2 vols. (1923), where new docu ments and new information are to be found.