Mistress of the Vatican (23 page)

On September 15, as the sun rose over the Vatican, cardinals rubbing the sleep from their eyes stumbled into the Sistine Chapel. According to the diary of one
conclavista,
Gianbattista had not slept at all, “partly out of happiness and partly out of fear.”
²²
Now he bounced up and down nervously on his seat. “All your cardinals, are they there?” he asked the Spanish cardinal, Albornoz, who sat next to him. “Yes, they are there,” was the reply. “Your Eminence must have good courage.”
²³

One by one, the cardinals marched up to the altar and cast their votes into the chalice. When the votes were tallied, there was an overwhelming majority for Gianbattista. With one cardinal dead and two others sick at home, he had only needed thirty-six votes to win, but forty-eight of the fifty-three cardinals left in conclave had voted for him. Five cardinals, including the fulminating Cardinal Bichi, had voted against him.

Having counted the votes, the distinguished theologian Cardinal Juan de Lugo rose to his feet and said in a loud voice, “
Benedictus Domi-nus Noster, habemus cardinalem Pamphilium Pontifecum
.” Our Blessed Lord, we have Cardinal Pamphili as pope.
²⁴

Appalled at the choice of new pontiff, Cardinal Bichi raced back to his cell and fired off a letter to the court of France. “Gentlemen,” he thundered, “we have just elected a female pope!”
²⁵

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Part Two

THE FEMALE POPE

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9

The Vicar of Christ

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Here I am at the end of the road and the top of the heap.

—Pope John XXIII pon hearing that Cardinal Gianbattista Pamphili was their new pope, all the other cardinals fell to their knees in adoration while their
conclavistas
rushed to his cubicle to sack it. Clothing, books, inkwells, quill pens, chamber pots and cook pots, sheets and pillows—everything was stripped bare in a matter of moments.

Cardinal Bernardino Spada asked Gianbattista which name he would like to take, and the new pontiff thoughtfully replied he would like to be called Pope Eugenio. But some of the cardinals reminded him that the last Pope Eugenio had been chased out of Rome in 1434 by angry citizens who threw rocks at his rowboat from the Tiber bridges. To avoid being stoned, the Vicar of Christ had to crawl under a shield in the bottom of the boat. Eugenio was, perhaps, an inauspicious name.

Gianbattista then proposed the name that his friend Cardinal Pan-ciroli had suggested the night before—Innocent, Innocenzo in Ital-ian. It was thought that he had selected this name because in the 1480s his ancestors had risen in prestige by serving Pope Innocent

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VIII. But Roman wits would say he wanted to pretend he was innocent of sexual relations with his sister-in-law.

The canopies over the cardinals’ stalls were lowered, and only that of the new pope remained aloft. He was conducted behind the Sistine Chapel altar to take off his cardinal’s robes and put on the robes of a pope. While cardinals usually wore a red robe, the
sottana,
since the thirteenth century popes had worn a bright white one, the color of holiness and resurrection. Like cardinals, the pope wore a magnificent white shirt of finest linen edged with lace, the rochet, over the
sottana
. When Innocent went behind the altar, he found
sottanas
and rochets in various sizes laid out for him to choose from.

The cardinals placed a red satin elbow-length capelet, the mozzetta, over Innocent’s white robe. In winter, the mozzetta would be red velvet, lined with ermine. A red satin hat, the
camauro,
was placed on his head. It was not like the three-peaked biretta of the cardinal but fit tightly at the hairline and rose straight up for several inches.

Innocent emerged from behind the high altar in full pontifical dignity and sat on the papal throne. Members of the Sistine Chapel choir, who had been waiting in the wings for precisely this moment, filed in as their angelic voices filled the sacred space. One by one the cardinals knelt before Pope Innocent X to kiss his feet and right hand. He bid each one to rise and gave the ancient Christian kiss of peace on both cheeks.

In Saint Peter’s Square, a crowd had been waiting expectantly for weeks, crammed into a piazza half its current width and ringed by a jumble of barracks. There were two signs that a pope had been elected— the bells of Saint Peter’s would ring out in jubilation, and carpenters would demolish the masonry that blocked the windows of the loggia overlooking Saint Peter’s Square. The tradition of sending smoke out of the Sistine Chapel chimney after each scrutiny—black for an unsuccessful vote, white for a successful one—was not instituted until 1903.

The bells began to ring, followed by the sounds of carpenters tearing out the boards. It was the task of the senior cardinal deacon to appear at the loggia of benediction to announce the great news to the expectant crowd below. But Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici was writhing in

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such throbbing pain from a gouty toe that he was unable to perform the coveted duty. The second deacon, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, had recovered from his mild bout with malaria and would make the announcement.

But before he arrived, one of the workmen opening up the windows poked his head outside and grinned at the crowd.

“Who is it?” the people demanded.
“Innocenzo,” he replied.

But the roar of the crowd and the ringing of bells muffled the carpenter’s reply. Some people thought he had said “Crescenzio.” Many of them raced to Cardinal Pier Paolo Crescenzi’s palace and sacked it thoroughly, to the great delight of his family, who took this as proof that he had been made pope. Others, seeing boards pried free of Vatican entrances, raced into the palace to sack the cardinals’ cells and brawled with the
conclavistas
guarding them.

At 1 p.m. Cardinal Francesco and Signor Domenico Belli, the papal master of ceremonies, singing “Ecclesiasticus Sacerdus Magnus,” preceded the pope to the loggia of benediction. The bells ceased. The crowd waited breathlessly as silence pulsated. Cardinal Francesco appeared at the window and took a deep breath.

“
Annuncio vobis gaudium magnum
,” he said, “
habemus Papam Emi-nentissimum et Reverendissimum, Don Iohannem Baptistum Pamphilium, qui sibi nomen imposuit Innocentium Decimum
.”
¹
We announce to you with great joy that we have a pope, the most eminent and most reverent Don Gianbattista Pamphili, who will take the name Innocent X.

The new pope appeared next to Cardinal Francesco and blessed the people gathered below. His gesture of benediction was greeted by a blare of trumpets and the cheers of the crowd. Across from Saint Peter’s, looming over the Tiber, was the Castel Sant’Angelo, built as the tomb of Emperor Hadrian (reigned a.d. 117–138) but converted by the early popes into an impregnable fortress. Now cannon poking out from the crenellated bastion blasted loud salutes, a signal to every church bell in Rome to peal its joy once more.

The crowd was pleased that the new pontiff was a Roman, one of them. They hated foreign popes and had had bad luck with them. The

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horrifying Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia terrified Italy as Pope Alexander VI from 1492 to 1503, carving out an empire for his psychopathic son, the murderer and rapist Cesare, who rode boldly to battle wearing a black velvet mask to hide the fact that syphilis had eaten away his nose. The cheap and boring Dutchman Adrian Florensz, elected Pope Adrian VI in 1522, cut back on pageants and festivities and had the nerve to insist that Romans comport themselves with Christian morals and that women cover up their bosoms. When he died after a reign of only twenty months, someone hung a sign on his doctor’s front door that read savior of the country.

Italian popes were all right—those from Genoa or Siena, Venice or Milan. But only Romans truly understood Rome. It was far preferable to have a pope born and bred in Rome, and Gianbattista Pamphili was certainly one of their own, born in the old house on the Piazza Navona where his family had lived since 1470.

But Giacinto Gigli wrote in his diary that evening, “When they heard that it was Pope Pamphilio, the crowd did not celebrate so much, because he was held to be a severe man, and not very liberal.”
²
Worse, he added, “It is believed that the widow called Olimpia, of the house of Maidalchini, will be the dominatrix of this pontificate.”
³

Olimpia was the true pope maker. She had made Gianbattista a nuncio, a cardinal, and now the Vicar of Christ. Without her he would probably still have been languishing in the Rota. Coming after thirty-two years of her hard work, his election must have been the sweetest victory of Olimpia’s life. Now the Roman noblewomen would have to wait outside for her carriage. But even better than that, perhaps for the first time ever Olimpia felt safe. Now she had enough power, and enough wealth, so that no one would ever push her around again or suggest she enter a convent.

When the looters realized that the new pope was not Cardinal Crescenzi but Cardinal Pamphili, they stashed their ill-gotten goods and raced to Olimpia’s house on the Piazza Navona. And it was Olim-pia herself who threw the bolt and swung open the twenty-foot double doors into her courtyard, smiling graciously and bidding the mob welcome.

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She could afford to be gracious because she had removed every stick of decent furniture, all the rich draperies and bed hangings, the priceless portraits and tapestries, and the silverware. It would have taken countless cartloads to transport her valuables to another location, perhaps to a neighbor’s house, and she must have sent them off early in the conclave, just in case.

“Her avarice was so great that she removed and hid the most beautiful and best furnishings,” Leti informs us.
⁴
The looters found only mediocre furniture, which Olimpia had possibly purchased at the weekly flea market, where Jews sold old rugs, wobbly chairs, and scratched tables. Carrying these disappointing items out into the Piazza Navona, the mob murmured, “The whore has cheated us.”
⁵
Leti wrote, “Since that time the people—who didn’t find anything good—began to conceive very bad sentiments for her and to esteem her extremely greedy.”
⁶

That evening, Olimpia and Camillo called on the pope. Protocol demanded that the first time a visitor was granted a papal audience, he or she kneel and kiss the pope’s red velvet slippers embossed with gold crosses. Olimpia knelt but started to guffaw as she kissed her brother-in-law’s feet. Innocent, for his part, was so overcome with emotion by what this woman had done for him that tears slid down his cheeks. He “received her with an extraordinary demonstration of love and affection.”
⁷

Olimpia then marched through the pope’s rooms as if she were the mistress of the household. She issued orders to the servants to move the furniture around. She even plopped down on the pope’s bed to “examine whether it was well made.”
⁸

A rush of visitors descended on the Palazzo Pamphili to congratulate Olimpia. She was now the first lady of Rome, and suddenly they called her Your Excellency and referred to her as
eccellentissima cognata,
“the most excellent sister-in-law.”

“Donna Olimpia received so many visits that it is almost impossible to believe,” Leti wrote. “One saw a crowd of ambassadors of the princes, cardinals, and grand noblemen approach her, and all the Roman ladies of quality. Initially, she gave the most obliging welcome possible to everyone, showing to each an agreeable face full of joy and

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giving everyone testimony of affection. But after only a few days she began to change her manner of dealing with people and to take on a proud and haughty air.”
⁹
After the initial tidal wave of joy had settled down, Olimpia realized there were old scores to settle.

The most shocking story Leti reported is that a few days after the election Olimpia swept into the Vatican and informed the pope and the cardinals meeting with him that she would take the apartments reserved for the cardinal nephew, which adjoined the pope’s apartments. Such living arrangements would have been nothing new for Innocent and Olimpia, who had inhabited connecting rooms most of the time since 1612. Using an inner door, unseen by servants or other family members, Olimpia could pop into her brother-in-law’s rooms to offer advice, and he could duck into hers to ask for it.