Mistress of the Vatican (16 page)

In addition to their work in the congregations, cardinals had duties of a ceremonial nature. For instance, all cardinals were expected to ride with their train of gaily bedecked horses and servants to the Porta del Popolo to give a formal welcome to new ambassadors, foreign princes, and their

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relatives. Having greeted the exalted visitor, they would hop into their carriages and follow him to the Vatican in a colorful cavalcade.

But the most impressive cavalcade was that of the
obbedienza
ambassador, a special emissary sent by an old king to a new pope, or by a new king to the old pope, as a sign of obedience to the pontiff. An
obbedi-enza
procession was a kind of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, sometimes complete with camels and elephants. It had its roots in the imperial Roman past, when victorious legions marched in triumph through the streets of Rome carting booty and slaves captured in foreign countries. In the more civilized days of the Renaissance, foreign countries began sending their own booty, gifts designed to amaze the Romans and bring honor to their donors.

When the new king Ladislas of Poland sent Prince Jerzy Ossolinski as his
obbedienza
ambassador in 1632, he instructed him to carry out his mission to rival or even surpass the cavalcades of the king of France. “Where the French had silver he was to take gold; where they had gold he was to have precious stones; and where they had precious stones he was to use diamonds.”

Ten camels carried the ambassador’s luggage, and according to a contemporary report, “the astonishment of the Romans was specially roused by six Turkish horses which followed, whose trappings were studded with emeralds and rubies whilst harness, stirrups and even the shoes were of pure gold. The members of the embassy, too, were resplendent in cloaks set with diamonds. Ossolinski’s
zupan
(Polish coat) of black cloth shot with gold, glittered with diamonds; his sword, set with precious stones, was valued at 20,000 scudi.”
¹³

If the Polish
obbedienza
amazed the Roman people, it is likely that some cardinals watched it while stifling yawns. A cardinal’s lifestyle was just as regal. The glory of the church was reflected in the glory of her princes, in their gilded carriages, marble palaces, and sumptuous banquets. A cardinal needed to have a minimum of forty horses in his stables—though many had three times this amount—and rich velvet trappings for each animal to match the color of his robes.

The cardinal’s apartments on the
piano nobile
of his palace consisted of a series of antechambers culminating in his bedroom in the corner of

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the building. The closer the visitor got to the bedroom, the more hon-ored he was. In the audience chamber the cardinal’s throne was placed on a raised platform under a canopy, or baldachino. When the cardinal was not in residence, the throne was turned to face the wall.

Cardinals drew income from owning benefices, or church lands. Though canon law decreed that each churchman could own only one benefice and must reside there to look after it, this decree was blithely ignored when it came to cardinals “to assist them to bear the burden of expense which their office imposed on them,” according to a 1507 bull.
¹⁴
In 1503 the church declared that “having to perform higher duties so ought they to enjoy greater privileges than the other servants of Christ.”
¹⁵

In addition to these revenues, some cardinals were lucky enough to be named “cardinal protector” of a particular realm, a kind of in-house lobbyist paid to look out for the interests of a nation and send back secret reports of Vatican intrigues. The pope’s nephews were given the plum assignments of aiding France and Spain, of course, but the king of Poland, aware of Cardinal Pamphili’s intelligence, sobriety, and hard work, appointed him his cardinal protector. Poland couldn’t pay as much as France and Spain, but it was a great honor.

A new cardinal required several sets of cardinal’s robes and was, indeed, never again to be permitted any other wardrobe unless he was elevated to the papacy. Rustling in layers of dark red satin, with just a touch of lace, the cardinal presented a majestic and powerful figure. Cardinals had not always worn special robes but had dressed as regular priests until the reign of Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254), who invented the impressive red cap as a mark of distinction.

By the reign of Boniface IX (1389–1404), cardinals usually wore red robes as a sign of their willingness to be martyred for the church, though by the seventeenth century the color was mostly appreciated for its ability to conceal wine stains. On days of mourning—the forty days of Lent, All Saints’ Day, and the ten days immediately following the death of a pope—cardinals wore fuchsia. On two feast days a year—the third Sunday in Advent right before Christmas and the fourth Sunday of Lent—they wore rose.

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Cardinals first put on a
sottana,
a long, tight-fitting robe. Then they put on the rochet, a long-sleeved white shirt of finely woven linen adorned with lace, falling somewhere between the thighs and knees, and resembling a bridal negligee. In an era when most men wore ribbons, bows, high heels with pom-poms, ruffs, and puffs, the gorgeous rochet was the only concession to frivolity in a cardinal’s costume. Over the rochet went the mozzetta, or elbow-length cape. The
sottana
and mozzetta were always of the same color—red, fuchsia, or rose.

The cardinal could choose between hats in the same color as his robes. Etiquette rigidly prescribed when it was appropriate to wear which one. For travel in the sun and rain there was a wide-brimmed felt hat tied under the chin with gold cords. The official cardinal’s hat was the three-peaked biretta, used for formal wear, and for daily wear the small flat red
zucchetto—
what we would call a beanie—which was very similar to a yarmulke.

In fact, the similarities between the
zucchetto
and the yarmulke caused problems when, in 1636, the cardinal of Lyons, who was aged and shortsighted, was traveling through the streets of Rome in his carriage and saw a Jew wearing a red yarmulke. The cardinal, mistaking the Jew for a fellow member of the Sacred College, leaned out of the window and saluted him reverently in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as “Your Eminence.” The horrified Jew scuttled away, but the ridiculous gaffe was witnessed by many. The story, being just too exquisite to keep quiet, leaped into the Vatican within the hour. The pope was so distraught about a Jew’s being mistaken for a prince of the Holy Roman Church that he issued a new edict. Jews, he decreed, could no longer wear red yarmulkes. They would have to wear yellow.

Etiquette regarding the princes of the church was extremely exacting down to the most minor detail. Cardinals had to be seated in identical chairs. It would have been a gross insult to the church for one cardinal to have a lower seat than his colleague, or for one to have the honor of arms on his chair and the other to be dishonored by a chair with no arms. And it would have been unthinkable for one cardinal to sit disconsolately on a cushion with mere silver tassels while his counterpart exulted in a cushion tasseled in gold.

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When the coaches of two cardinals met, there was also a rigorous protocol. According to Gregorio Leti’s book on cardinals and their etiquette, “A Cardinal stops his Coach to another that is his Senior,” and by this he meant not the older cardinal but the one who had been created first. “For it is to be taken notice of, that the most antient Cardinal is the last always that stops and the first that goes forward.”
¹⁶
This rule was, of course, ignored when the cardinals were mad at each other, in which case they pretended not to see each other and galloped on by.

The position of the chairs in an audience chamber was also an important determiner of rank, since those facing the door were more prestigious. This custom had taken root in the Dark Ages when it was always possible that murderers could burst through the doors waving knives and those facing the door had a better chance of surviving.

Once, when the grand duke of Tuscany visited Cardinal Francesco Barberini, he found both chairs facing each other with their sides parallel to the door. The grand duke, a modest soul, moved his own chair a bit so as to place his back more toward the door, giving the cardinal the greater honor. The cardinal, equally polite, did the same. By the end of the conversation, both illustrious gentlemen had their backs to the door and were seated next to each other looking straight ahead, as if they were watching a movie. All that was lacking was the popcorn.

Diplomatic etiquette became so increasingly difficult over the course of the seventeenth century that in 1698 Peter the Great of Russia and the emperor Leopold of Austria had to meet at a “tavern” set up by their protocol officers, where Peter played the innkeeper and Leopold the peasant. They didn’t need to worry about who sat on which chair and which direction the chairs faced, as one monarch cheerfully served beer and the other sat on a stool and drank it.

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Stiff and suspicious, Cardinal Pamphili did not make friends easily and occasionally made inveterate enemies. His manner often came across as brusque, sometimes even downright insulting. In 1636 he criticized the artist Guido Reni for some decorations he had made for Saint Peter’s Basilica. Reni was so offended that he decided to avenge himself in his

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next commission, a side chapel in the Church of Saint Mary of the Conception.

The artist painted the archangel Michael pushing the devil against a rock with the angel’s foot planted firmly on his head. The devil looked exactly like Cardinal Pamphili, with his bald pate, furrowed brow, and straggly beard. When Gianbattista saw the painting, he knew immediately that it was his face on the devil and raced to confront the artist. But after hearing the cardinal’s tirade, Reni merely shrugged. He explained that he had simply tried to paint the most horrible face imaginable on the devil. If Gianbattista Pamphili happened to look like that, it was not the fault of Guido Reni, it was the fault of the cardinal’s face.

In his report to the Venetian senate, Ambassador Alvise Contarini had only a slightly more flattering opinion than Guido Reni. He wrote, “His stature is tall and dry, his eyes small, his feet big, his beard sparse, his complexion olive-green and sunburned, his head bald and, in short, a nice complex of bones and nerves.”
¹⁷

Looks aside, and despite his sometimes surly demeanor, Cardinal Gianbattista Pamphili had many excellent qualities that were true assets to the Sacred College. He was genuinely devout, and his tall, spare figure lent an air of great dignity to the ecclesiastical rites in which he participated. He was cautious in his congregations, but once he finally rendered a decision, he backed it up with solid canon law. He could be sulky and suspicious, but he also had a great deal of kindness. Even the humblest petitioners could easily obtain audiences with him, during which the cardinal listened patiently. And if he found that an injustice had been committed, he was quick to correct it.

Gianbattista was thoughtful and hardworking, and he did not gossip, except, of course, with Olimpia. He was respected for his diligence; though he was a late riser, he worked into the wee hours, burning the midnight oil. Unlike many cardinals, he was known for the moderation of his personal life, rarely spending money on himself. According to Ambassador Contarini, Cardinal Pamphili was sparing with food and wine and enjoyed robust health, which he attributed to keeping as far away from doctors as possible.

But for all his assets, the one black mark against Cardinal Pamphili

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was his ill-concealed passion for Olimpia. Gregorio Leti asserted, “The good cardinal was an excellent master in the art of dissimulating everything perfectly, except for the love he had for his sister-in-law. In the congregations he appeared gentle, in conversation he was very humble, and in church he was admirably devout. But with all of his skill, it was impossible for him to hide his affection for Donna Olimpia.

“He loved her,” Leti continued, “he adored her, to tell the truth, in public and in private, and all the world was truly astonished that a Cardinal who had pretensions, although a long shot, to the Pontificate, worked so openly to win the good graces of a woman, and his sister-in-law at that.”
¹⁸

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7

The Black Widow

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Who in widow-weeds appears,

Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse?

—Robert Burns