Mistress of the Vatican (26 page)

Knowing his nephew’s difficulty in applying himself, Innocent did not give Camillo the impressive title of “cardinal
padrone,
” which Urban VIII’s nephew had held, but called him the “cardinal superintendent of important affairs.”
⁹
On October 24 the pope appointed his good friend Cardinal Panciroli secretary of state. In addition to doing most of the work, Panciroli was to instruct Camillo in foreign affairs.

On November 14, 1644, Innocent created Camillo cardinal. When Camillo approached the throne, his uncle was overcome with emotion. Innocent “seemed not able to speak, and ended his speech with some words concerning the affection of blood relatives.”
¹⁰

As cardinal nephew, Camillo enjoyed huge wealth. He received the income of the governor of the Papal States, along with the revenues from Avignon, the county of Venassino, and the priory of Capua, together with numerous benefices and posts he received from foreign nations eager for his support. Spain gave him the archdiocese of the metropolitan church of Toledo. The republic of Venice inscribed him among its own nobility.

Though furious at Camillo’s insistence on becoming cardinal nephew, Olimpia decided to make the best out of a bad deal. Knowing her son’s indolence, she initially believed that she could run the Vatican through him. She insisted—and the pope agreed—that Camillo continue to live with her in the Piazza Navona palace instead of taking up the cardinal nephew’s apartments in the Vatican, the very ones she had wanted for herself. Cardinal Panciroli moved into these. Nor would

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Camillo be allowed one of the chief privileges of his position—bestowing honors and incomes on his friends. Innocent made him first obtain his mother’s approval.

But as usual, Olimpia was doomed to be disappointed in her son. Each evening, when his gilded carriage returning from the Vatican clomped into her courtyard, she pumped her son for information on his daily activities and made suggestions on how to handle business. But Camillo, sweeping past in his crimson robes, rebuffed her.

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Wednesday, November 23, was the date of the pope’s
possesso,
the ceremony in which Innocent officially took possession of the pope’s titular church, Saint John Lateran. This was the greatest of all the celebrations for the new pontiff, and the colorful procession, winding its way across Rome, lasted for hours. The day had started off windy and cold with a driving rain, but by the time the parade left the Vatican at noon the clouds had parted and the sun warmed the tens of thousands waiting to watch the show. The government had spent the eye-popping sum of twelve thousand scudi on the costumes and decorations, and no one wanted to miss it.

Mounted on horses, the
sbirri
—the municipal police force—pushed the spectators back toward the buildings to keep a clear path for the procession. Faces crowded each window; bodies filled every doorway and balcony and crammed onto every roof. The buildings were alive with the devout, the sneering, and the curious.

All the streets along the procession route had been thoroughly cleaned of dirt—animal droppings, vegetable peels, and night soil—no mean feat. Holes had been filled in, loose stones replaced, and the pavement swept and scrubbed. Flags bearing noble family crests were placed on the roofs and façades of palaces and snapped joyfully in the breeze. Saints’ relics and sacred images were placed in the windows of houses and displayed in front of churches. The season’s last flowers were strewn on the streets.

Precious tapestries, removed from drawing room walls, were hung from windows and balconies. Those who could not afford the

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outrageously expensive hand-embroidered tapestries hung bolts of cloth, even bedspreads or drapes. The important thing was to have a brightly colored something hanging out of the window. Those items within reach of the crowds below were firmly secured as thieves were known to grab the precious objects, run off with them in the throng, and sell them later to the used-furniture dealers in the flea markets.

John Evelyn, a young Protestant gentleman traveling in Europe to avoid the English civil war, was in Italy when he heard that Innocent’s
possesso
would soon take place. He raced to Rome and got himself a good observation point at the top of the high steps of the Church of Saint Mary of the Altar of Heaven. Armed with paper and pencil, he wrote down a detailed description of the parade: “Then came the Pope himselfe, carried in a litter or rather open chaire of crimson velvet richly embrodred, and borne by two stately mules; as he went he held up two fingers, blessing the multitude who were on their knees or looking out of their windows and houses, with loud
viva’s
and acclamations of felicity to their new Prince.”
¹¹

The parade climbed up to the Campidoglio, the civic heart of Roman government on the top of Capitoline Hill. Between two huge papier-mâché female statues—Rome the Peacemaker and Rome Triumphant— the cortège filed in. Other statues represented Wisdom, Vigilance, and Discipline. The procession marched under an enormous plaster arch with life-sized horses on top.

At the crest of the hill, three palaces framed a large square, in the middle of which stood the colossal bronze equestrian statue of a Roman emperor thought to be Constantine. Here the militia awaited Innocent. The senator of Rome, Orazio Albani, wearing a brocade robe embroidered with gold, got off his horse and marched up to the pope. Kneeling, he ceremonially placed the ivory scepter of state at the pope’s feet, which he kissed. Rising, he offered Innocent the keys of the Capitoline rock as trumpets blared and artillery crackled.

Olimpia, who had not taken part in the procession, watched Innocent receive the scepter and keys from the balcony of one of the three palaces overlooking the square. She had invited twenty-five of Rome’s most influential ladies to join her for the celebrations in the Palace of

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the Conservators, in a huge hall frescoed with scenes of ancient Roman legend. As the papal procession moved on, the ladies turned from the windows. It was time for Olimpia’s banquet to begin. And now, thirty-two years after she had come to Rome and been snubbed by the noblewomen, it was time for a buffet of revenge, served very cold, which was all that some of her guests would eat that day.

According to Giacinto Gigli, “When it was time to eat, she called eight of them, and led them with her to eat, and the others remained mortified at the windows without being invited.”
¹²
Evidently, the eight that Olimpia invited had been kind to her from the beginning. The other seventeen had offended her. It was payback time. And she must have been absolutely delighted.

The pope’s procession descended Capitoline Hill and marched past the ancient heart of Rome, the Forum, where cows grazed among the tops of arches and columns that stuck out like blackened bones from the dirt of a millennium. Along the route wooden posts had been erected and ropes strung between them. From these ropes hung posters specially painted for the ceremony by noble families, expatriate communities, and various charitable organizations.

As the cortège veered around the Colosseum, the pope saw that the Jewish community of Rome had hung sixty huge posters featuring beautiful paintings of Old Testament scenes inscribed with Bible quotes in Hebrew and Latin. At the end of the posters Innocent halted, and the chief rabbi handed him a magnificent jeweled Torah, imploring the new pontiff to be merciful to the Jews of Rome.

It was a straight shot from the eastern side of the Colosseum to the fourth-century Lateran basilica. Inside the church, the choir sang, candles burned, and incense filled the air with heady perfume. Innocent was seated on a magnificent red porphyry chair with lion legs, one of a matching pair. Dug out of ruined imperial baths in the eighth century, the chairs had been instantly recognized for their beauty and value. As the finest chairs in Rome, they had been drafted for papal coronations in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The chairs had an unusual feature—a keyhole-shaped opening in the seat. Though many thought the pope’s throne had once been used

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as a toilet chair, the reclining back makes this doubtful. Given that the chairs had been found in the imperial baths, it is probable that they had been used in the sauna. The sitter could lie back and relax as the sweat ran off his body and out the hole in the bottom of the seat. But the strange hole in the pope’s chair gave rise to the story that during his coronation each pope had his testicles felt by a cardinal to make sure that he was in fact a pope and not a popess. According to the tale, the cleric assigned the task knelt before the pope and, lifting the papal robes, put his hand under the seat. When he felt the pontifical balls, he cried, “He has testicles!” and the people replied with a heartfelt “God be praised!”
¹³

It was commonly believed that the testicle-feeling ceremony was instituted after an androgynous-looking woman had become pope in 855, Pope Joan. Her terrible secret was revealed three years later during a papal procession when she fell off her horse, gave birth in the street, and died. The problem with the Pope Joan story is that it was first reported almost four hundred years later by a Dominican monk. Another problem is that a pope named Benedict III reigned during those years. The story was most likely inspired by a real-life woman named Marozia, who ruled the Vatican behind the scenes in the tenth century and was the lover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother of popes. But the legend of a female pope was just too delicious for truth to get in the way.

The tale of Pope Joan and the testicle-feeling chair had become so widespread by 1513 that Leo X had the chairs moved from Saint Peter’s Basilica to the Lateran, where they were used for the
possesso
ceremonies. But the story stubbornly lingered. In describing Saint John Lat-eran, a 1543 book reported, “Nearby are two porphyry chairs where they check to see if the new pope has testicles, as they say.”
¹⁴

One Protestant Swedish gentleman, Lawrence Banck, actually stated in his 1644 book on his travels that he had seen Innocent X getting his testicles felt up. Perhaps this story was anti-Catholic propaganda, or perhaps the author, watching the cardinals crowd around the papal throne, couldn’t tell
what
they were doing.

A more reliable witness, John Evelyn, pencil in hand, had followed

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the procession all the way to the church but was, alas, unable to enter and report on testicle feeling or lack thereof. “What they did at St. John di Laterano I could not see by reason of the prodigious crowd,” he wrote in his diary, “so I spent most of the day in viewing the two triumphal arches which had been purposely erected a few days before.”
¹⁵

That evening all of Rome was illuminated by colored lanterns, torches, white wax candles, and fireworks. The magnificent dome of Saint Peter’s was once more glowing with a thousand torches. But the most impressive display was in the Piazza Navona, and we can assume that Olimpia had returned home from her chilly banquet in the Campi-doglio to watch the festivities from her drawing room window. A huge Noah’s ark had been built on top of an artificial mountain. Noah and his family were portrayed on deck in plaster of Paris, as elegantly sculpted elephants and giraffes poked their heads out of windows.

In the book of Genesis, God sent a white dove with an olive sprig in its beak to the ark as a sign that dry land was close at hand. And now, a large papier-mâché dove with a burning torch in its mouth was sent careening down a wire from the roof of Olimpia’s palace. When the dove reached the ark, it lit off a barrage of fireworks and firecrackers. Animals went flying out of the ark in a streak of sparks, and comets blasted from the hull into the night sky. The ark and its inhabitants sizzled and crackled and finally went up in a thunderous explosion of red smoke and orange flames. By the time the smoke had cleared, only the dove, still hanging by the wire, remained unscathed. Everything else was ashes. This was seen as an extremely good omen for the success of the new pope.

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11

Women in the Vatican

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Well-behaved women rarely make history.

—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich hough Olimpia was prevented from moving into the Vat-ican, she set about transforming her Piazza Navona palace into a papal showplace. Her first act was to finally have the pope ban the Wednesday-morning vegetable market. Grumbling, the vendors took their produce, flies, creaking wagons, and donkey droppings to another locale. Olimpia must have been overjoyed that after thirty-two years of the weekly din and mess, it was gone.

Her next step was to buy the two houses next door to the Palazzo Pamphili, the small de Rossi house and the large Palazzo Cibo, and incorporate them into her own. Back in 1634 Olimpia had tripled the size of the old Casa Pamphili to create a cardinal’s palace. With her 1644 purchases she doubled the house again, making it a palace worthy of a papal dynasty. With unlimited funds at her disposal, she could choose from among Rome’s top artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, and craftsmen to redesign her palazzo.