The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

170 HISTORY OF THE POPES.
he appeared, accompanied b}- torchbearers, in the antechamber
of the Cardinal's cell, he was told that the prisoner was asleep.
When the Captain declared that, in spite of this, he must enter,
the door was opened. Carafa awoke, raised himself, and asked
what was wanted. The sentence of death had already been
announced to him on the previous day, but he did not beheve
that it would ever be carried out. When he now learned that
there was no longer any hope, he repeated more than ten times :
" I am to die ! The Pope wishes that I should die ! " Gas-
in the Capponi Library, now in the National Lib., Florence {cf.
Reumont, Beitrage, L, 518) ; in the Royal Librarj^ Berlin,
Inf. polit., II., 517 seq. (in Spanish, the same in Urb. 853, p. 464
seq.). One of these reports was already published in Phil.
HoNORii Thesaur. polit., II., 134 seq. ; Cristofori has printed
three (I., 102 seq., 145 seq., 149 seq.), a fourth is in Gori, Arch., II.,
302 seq. ; a fifth (which only refers to the execution of the Cardinal)
is in Barb. lat. 5674, pp. 170-1, Vatican Library (used by Ancfx.
Disgrace, 153 n.). All these accounts, which were followed by
Bromato, by the editor of Nores (Arch. .stor. Ital., XII., 344)
and also by Ranke (Papste, P., 209) are more or less highly
coloured, in part even romantically so. The most authentic
account was hitherto unknown ; I found it in the Gonzaga
Archives, Mantua, and it is a *letter of Fr. Tonina, to whom
Gasparino de Melis himself described the proceedings at the
execution, and is dated Rome, March 8, 1561 (see Appendix
No. 17). Good accounts are also given in a letter from Rome
of March 8, 1 561 , which is given in the above mentioned ' Sentence,'
the report of Tiepolo in Narducct, Cat. I., 322, the *report of
Mula of March 7, 1561, Papal Secret Archives (see Appendix
No. 16), the letter of Sfrondato of March 15 in Arch. stor. Lomb.,
XXX. (1903), 358, the ' Letra de Roma '
of March 7, 1561 in
DoLLiNGER, Beitrage, I., 354 seq., the *Avviso di Roma of March 8,
Vatican Library (see Appendix No. 16), and lastly the interesting
letter which the Dominican Timoteo da Perugia sent on March 9,
1 561, to his brethren at Florence, published by H. Geisenheimer,
Sulla morte del card. Carafa (Estr. dal Rosario), 6 seq., Florence,
1907 (here too is given the name of the Cardinal's confessor,
Francesco d' Arezzo). Cf. also Massarelli in Merkle, II., 352
seq. ]• BoNDONUS, 540. It is uncertain in what part of the Castle
of St. Angelo the execution took place ;
see Borgatti, 134 seq.