The same day, he generously paid the five hundred thousand ducats which his five partisans had lost.
It was under this pontificate, and during the seven months in which Rome, conquered by the Lutheran soldiers of the Constable of Bourbon, saw holy things subjected to the most frightful profanations, that Francesco Cenci was born.
He was the son of Monsignor Nicolo Cenci, afterwards apostolic treasurer during the pontificate of Pius V.

Under this venerable prelate, who occupied himself much more with the spiritual than the temporal administration of his kingdom, Nicolo Cenci took advantage of his spiritual head's abstraction of worldly matters to amass a net revenue of a hundred and sixty thousand piastres, about f32,000 of our money.
Francesco Cenci, who was his only son, inherited this fortune.
His youth was spent under popes so occupied with the schism of Luther that they had no time to think of anything else.

The result was, that Francesco Cenci, inheriting vicious instincts and master of an immense fortune which enabled him to purchase immunity, abandoned himself to all the evil passions of his fiery and passionate temperament.

Five times during his profligate career imprisoned for abominable crimes, he only succeeded in procuring his liberation by the payment of two hundred thousand piastres, or about one million francs.

It should be explained that popes at this time were in great need of money.
The lawless profligacy of Francesco Cenci first began seriously to attract public attention under the pontificate of Gregory XIII.