From this time forth the castle of St. Angelo ceased to be a courtly residence, but it was still valued as a strong place of arms, with fortifications to be jealously guarded, improved and kept in good repair. It was also applied to baser uses as a prison-house to receive the many law-breakers and criminals constantly committed to safe custody by the watchful guardians of good order and the merciless agents of a severe penal code. The popes, secure in their authority, their power no longer challenged, held the turbulent people in stern subjection and enforced the law with a strong hand. Good order was strictly maintained and offenders were promptly brought to punishment. Crime was extraordinarily prevalent and called for pitiless repressive and coercive measures. It has been said that the determining factor in the execution of the Cenci was the occurrence of another murder of the same description. Paolo, a son of the Princess Santa Croce, had vainly sought to persuade his mother to make him her heir, but she had steadfastly refused, and in his rage and disappointment he resolved to kill her. He first wrote to a brother, Onofrio, accusing her of disgracing the family by her debauched life, obviously a false charge, for she was already more than sixty years of age. Onofrio replied that the honour of the family must be preserved at all costs. Whereupon Paolo stabbed his mother to the heart. Rome was convulsed, and Paolo fled for his life, but Onofrio was seized, put on his trial, convicted and executed on the bridge of St. Angelo in 1601. A strange crime is recorded in the account of the beheading of a certain Giacinto Centini, who was a nephew of the most excellent and reverend Signor Cardinal d’Ascoli, and “who had caused a statue of wax to be made of Urban VIII, in order that its dissolution might insure that of the pope and so allow his uncle a chance of becoming pontiff at the next conclave.” Included with this is the story of the recantation and death of his accomplices in the Campo di Fiore. It was on Sunday, April 22, 1636, that the recantation took place in St. Peter’s in the presence of about twenty thousand persons. A platform ten spans high had been erected in the middle of the church, and the accused were made to mount upon it and listen to an account of the charges against them, which were read aloud from a neighbouring pulpit. Centini and one of his confederates, Fra Cherubino d’Ancona, heard in silence, but another, Fra Bernardino the Hermit protested so loudly that he was innocent and caused such scandal among the congregation that he was gagged to prevent further utterance. The two unhappy monks were then hurried to the Transpontina, where they were publicly stripped of their habit in the presence of a large crowd which attended them, hooting and shouting, and taken back to the Corte Savella where Centini had already arrived.