Monsignore Cristoforo Cenci, who died about the year 1562, was in holy orders, yet not a priest.

One of the clerks of the Apostolic Camera, a Canon of S.Peter's, the titular incumbent of a Roman parish, and an occupant of minor offices about the Papal Court and Curia, he represented an epicene species, neither churchman nor layman, which the circumstances of ecclesiastical sovereignty rendered indispensable.

Cristoforo belonged to a good family among that secondary Roman aristocracy which ranked beneath the princely feudatories and the Papal bastards.

He accumulated large sums of money by maladministration of his official trusts, inherited the estates of two uncles, and bequeathed a colossal fortune to his son Francesco.

This youth was the offspring of an illicit connection carried on between Monsignore Cenci and Beatrice Amias during the lifetime of that lady's husband.