The execution was to take place in the Campo di Fiore and here the block and axes, and a stake firmly planted in the ground, and surrounded with straw and faggots, had been duly prepared. Long before dawn the square began to fill with people, and about eight in the morning the officers of justice left the prison with their victims, and after making a long tour through the city, reached the piazza. The pile was lighted immediately, and commenced to burn with such fury that the crowd drew back appalled from the consuming flames and the showers of sparks which darted from it. The ex-monks were in a state of abject terror and one of them fell to the ground in a dead faint. Centini was beheaded first, then the two monks were hanged, and the bodies of all three were flung into the flames. They died with satisfactory signs of penitence and Cherubino especially, remarks the old chronicler, “made a most edifying end and left behind a good hope of his salvation.” No pains were spared to induce criminals about to die to seek reconciliation with Mother Church. An account is preserved of the last days of the “most illustrious and excellent Signor Protomedico Giovanno Tomasini,” during the pontificate of Alexander VII in 1666. Together with a certain Camillo Nicoli, he had committed murder, and they lay under sentence of death in the Carceri Nuovi of Florence. Certain members of the Compagnia della Misericordia, a religious confraternity vowed to good works, were despatched to minister to the condemned men and attend them to the scaffold. Nicoli showed satisfactory signs of repentance, but Tomasini’s heart was “as hard as the nether millstone” and he refused to prepare himself for death. He would not open his lips except to complain of the injustice of his sentence and nothing would move him, neither prayers, exhortations, litanies nor the telling of beads. Tomasini swore he would please himself and go to perdition his own way. The brethren in attendance wrestled with him, wept and kissed his feet, but failed utterly; others replaced them and were equally unsuccessful; the execution was postponed to allow two eloquent Capuchin fathers assisted by two Carmelite friars to effect his conversion. Being still obdurate he was taken to hear mass; the priest who officiated especially addressed himself to Tomasini, but the celebrated physician remained as hardened as ever; he refused to kneel but sat himself astride of the bench and would not even turn his eyes to the altar. At last, exasperated beyond measure, the priests and the monks and brethren of the confraternity, attacked him, hustled him, abused him and hit him with no more result than that of creating a scandal in the Church. The executioner’s assistants then gagged him and placed a rope round his neck, after which he heard another mass and was exorcised as though he had the devil inside him. All at once he heaved a deep sigh, tore the gag from his mouth and recanted his errors, to the