In the Eternal City, the year had opened with the ceremony called L’Ubbedienza, in which the cardinals renew their vow of fidelity to the Pope, as, formerly, Roman Senators vowed fidelity to the Princeps on each New Year’s Day. A cardinal, who would omit this duty except for a valid reason, would cause precisely such a scandal as P. Thrasea Paetus caused to Tacitus by neglecting to swear to Nero. Notwithstanding this renewal of allegiance on the first of January, only three days later the Pope’s Holiness found reason to arrest Cardinal Giambattista Orsini, with Archbishop Alviano of Florence, and Don Giacomo Poplicola di Santacroce, Orsini’s partisans, being determined once for all to crush that House of incorrigible rebels. This Don Giacomo Poplicola di Santacroce had only himself to blame. His House, the most illustrious of all the sixty conscript families of Rome, had been outlawed in 1482 by the Lord Xystus P.P. IV by reason of the furious feud between Santacroce and Dellavalle which had turned the Eternal City for months together into shambles. He should have known better than to put his head in the lion’s mouth. Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, received an account of what had happened from the Pope’s Own mobile lips; and embodied the same in a dispatch to his government dated the fourth of January 1503. It appears to be perfectly logical on the part of the Pope’s Holiness, that, in view of the coming trial of the two Orsini whom Duke Cesare was bringing to Rome, evidence should be sought among the members of their faction. The behaviour of Orsini was impolitic and suspicious to the last degree. They were under the shadow. Two of their alleged accomplices had been executed at Sinigaglia. The cardinal was detained in the Mola of Hadrian. Don Paolo Orsini and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina were prisoners of Duke Cesare. Their circumstances required a patient policy of inaction pending coming trial, the result of which they needed not to fear supposing them to be innocent of conspiracy. On the contrary, they gave clear evidence of guilt, desperately maintaining an armed rebellion in pontifical territory, ravaging the Viterbo country, and continuing to make leagues with other rebels whether these were Roman barons or chiefs of independent banditti. The Orator of Venice wrote to his government on the seventeenth of January: “The Pontiff is much disturbed, and more than ever on his guard. They say that Colonna and Savelli and all the discontented barons have joined Orsini. This night there was a panic at the Vatican: no one knows the cause. The captain of the guard called out his troops and watched all night under arms.”