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Sword of justice
A sword of justice dating from the sixteenth century, found on the bank of the Tiber during the excavation work carried out in the 1890s to canalize the river, at the point where the scaffold rose up, from which the storerooms where the executioner’s “tools” were kept could be reached.
The sword is almost certainly the one with which Beatrice Cenci and Lucrezia Petroni were beheaded. The blade is 101 cm long, 5 cm wide at the tip and 7 cm wide at the hilt. The wooden handle is 39 cm long.
Provenance: Rome, Museo di Palazzo Venezia, 1934
“And here comes Lucrezia, being carried. The executioner, Alessandro Bracca, a huge man, is waiting impassively by the block, holding with both hands the large sword resting on his right shoulder. That sword still exists. Two prints from the time of Pius IV, signed by Du Perrac and Claudio Duchetti, depict Castel Sant’Angelo with the bridge and the square (…) and they both show, on the side with the statue of St Paul, but set slightly apart from it, the enclosure in which the scaffold was erected (…). Well, during the excavation work that was carried out less than forty years ago to canalize the Tiber, a sixteenth-century “sword of justice” came to light at the exact point where the scaffold, which has such bad associations, stood. The sword has a rather broad and thin blade that is rounded at the end, which is 1.01 m long, 5 cm wide at the tip and 7.5 cm at the hilt. The hilt is joined to a rustic handle not unlike a thick stick, which is 39 cm long. In all probability the heads of Beatrice and Lucrezia were severed by this blade.” (G. B. Colonna, E. Chiorando, Il processo Cenci, 1934)
