Mistress of the Vatican (34 page)

The first week of January 1647, Innocent crawled out of bed and went to the Piazza Navona to have lunch with Olimpia and a long talk about what to do with Camillo. By this point, the cardinal nephew’s very public agitation to get married had created a huge international scandal. Over lunch, the two must have decided to put the matter to bed, literally—allow Camillo to marry but privately, not in a big wedding in the Sistine Chapel. Let the world see that the pope was concerned for the dignity of the church and quickly get Camillo out of the limelight where he could make trouble. Let the new couple live in quiet exile outside Rome.

Given the spirited natures of the two women, clearly the city was only big enough for one Olimpia at a time. But perhaps there was an added reason for the exile; a year or two earlier Camillo had tried to convince the pope to lock up his mother in a convent, an unforgivable suggestion that still rankled deeply. Now she would lock up Camillo in the country and see how he liked that.

On January 7, news flew around Rome that the cardinal nephew would renounce his hat in the next consistory, an important meeting to which the pope called all his cardinals. The
avvisi
of January 26 reported, “Finally in the consistory of this past Monday [January 21], Cardinal Pamphilio renounced his hat. . . . His Holiness cried with tenderness and showed far greater emotion on this occasion than when he made him cardinal.”
⁹
But perhaps the pope was crying less out of avuncular tenderness than because of the mess he was in.

As the marriage negotiations inched forward, Olimpia was horrified to learn that the pope had received a list of conditions from the princess of Rossano. In his diary entry of February 3, Giacinto Gigli detailed them. “Everyone is waiting to hear news of the marriage of Don Camillo with the princess of Rossano,” he wrote, “and for many days we heard nothing more of it. Then it was said that there were many difficulties,

[ 205 ]

Eleanor Herman

and the princess who had had a husband and had tasted what it was like to have a mother-in-law . . . did not want to subject herself again, and therefore sent a letter to the pope with many requests. One of them was that she be married by the pope himself in the [Sistine] chapel as the wife of the pope’s nephew. Also that she wanted to be the mistress of her own wardrobe without being subject to anyone.” The “anyone,” we can presume, was her future mother-in-law.

Gigli continued, “That she did not want to live with Donna Olimpia, her mother-in-law, but in her own palaces. That Donna Olimpia her mother-in-law promise Don Camillo that at her death she would leave him all her possessions. That the pope would let her pick a future cardinal whoever it might be.”
¹⁰
These requests were not likely to meet with Olimpia’s favor. She had already made a will leaving all her money to her little granddaughter, Olimpiuccia, and
she
controlled the list of cardinals.

Gigli wrote, “This lady, becoming the wife of the pope’s nephew, showed spirit and desire to dominate, which would not seem at all to be pleasing to the pope’s sister-in-law Donna Olimpia, who truly in this pontificate is the only dominatrix. I could easily believe that this induced Camillo to renounce his hat and take a wife, because even if he was a cardinal and the pope’s nephew . . . , he was not allowed to do a favor for anyone. Whoever asked him for one, he had to excuse himself, and could not do it without his signora mother.”
¹¹

Surprisingly, although the pope did not agree to meet a single one of the princess’s conditions, she married Camillo anyway. According to a letter written by a wedding guest, on the morning of February 10, the bride left the Borghese Palace in Prince Ludovisi’s carriage, accompanied by Olimpia’s daughters and their husbands. When the princess arrived at her country estate, the Castello di Torrenova, Camillo was standing in the courtyard. Watching her descend, he “was overcome by excesses of ardor, and stupefied, but finally, animated by these princes [his brothers-in-law], he embraced the loved one, offered her as a pledge a kiss, which from fear he did not let pass the confines of the neck. . . . Monsignor Vice Regent celebrated the Mass and married them in the name of His Holiness, and afterward they went to table sumptuously laid out.”
¹²

[ 206 ]

M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n

While the bride and groom had assembled a group of illustrious guests, the two most important relatives were conspicuous for their absence. Olimpia, however, did have the good taste to send the bride a nice pair of earrings. An
avvisi
records that on that same day, a Sunday, the pope went to visit the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, as if making a public gesture that his health was good enough for a short journey, and he could have attended the wedding had he so chosen.

Teodoro Amayden expressed his shock that the couple did not return to Rome to kiss the pope’s feet. “I know that His Holiness tenderly loves his nephew, but seeing that Signora Donna Olimpia did not have satisfaction with this marriage, and believing that between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law there would be great disgust, he prudently wanted to prevent the gossip of the common people. . . . The pope is upset with his nephew who wanted more than anything in the world to become a cardinal and then, to the pope’s disgust, tossed aside the hat.”
¹³

The princess of Rossano and Camillo honeymooned in the sumptuous Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, thirteen miles outside Rome. Once the wedding festivities had ended and the scandal and romance had died down, the bride was suddenly struck by the fact that she could not return to her beloved Rome, the center of power and politics. Because of her nasty mother-in-law, the magnificent princess of Rossano was stuck in the country mud.

Prodded by his wife’s nonstop needling to get the exile lifted, Ca-millo secretly went to Rome in a plain carriage to ask his cardinal friends to intervene on his behalf with the pope. But when Cardinals Panciroli, Federico Sforza, and many others broached the delicate subject, according to Amayden, the pope abruptly interrupted and said “that they should not speak to him about it and should mind their own business.”
¹⁴

Back in the country, while the princess of Rossano connived and manipulated at getting the exile lifted, Camillo made plans for his Bel Respiro villa. The exterior had been completed in the fall of 1646, and now he was eager to decorate the interior with stucco reliefs and frescoes of mythological heroes and ancient Roman emperors. Though the

[ 207 ]

Eleanor Herman

pope wouldn’t let him visit the villa to work with his architect, Ales-sandro Algardi, Camillo and the artist traded letters with plans and sketches.

He was also interested in improving his wife’s Roman palaces, adding to her magnificent art collection, and designing new gardens. To think, people had made fun of him for sketching flower beds and statues. Now Camillo would use those skills as a wealthy art connoisseur— that is, if only his mother would let him come back to Rome.

[ 208 ]

14

The Imbecile Cardinals

q

The ship of Peter is shaken by the waves, the fisherman’s net is broke, the serenity of peace turns to clouds.

—Sacred College to Pope Clement V n average, most Italian noblewomen who survived childbirth lived to their late fifties or early sixties. Of the many fatal illnesses that struck women, ovarian cancer was the worst;

it announced itself with a slight pang in the abdomen that gradually became bone-shattering pain as it slowly ate out the surrounding organs. Breast cancer was almost as bad. Sometimes doctors sliced breast tumors off with a knife without benefit of painkiller, but this never slowed the disease, as the medical profession knew nothing of lymph nodes spreading invisible cancer cells throughout the body.

As bad as suffering got, suicide was never an option, as it was considered a direct route to eternal damnation. Far more enviable than any lingering malady was a fatal bout of dysentery or fever. But best of all was a massive stroke or heart attack, provided the individual had freshly confessed her sins.

At the age of fifty-six, taking a frank look at what was probably her near future, Olimpia decided to build her tomb. It was not an unusual or macabre plan, this preparation of a grave while one was still healthy.

O

Eleanor Herman

Most wealthy people did it, working with their favorite artist to design sculptures and picking out the colored marbles and Bible phrases with the eagerness of a modern housewife designing a new kitchen. It was, after all, the only way people could make sure they had the tomb they wanted, especially when they couldn’t count on their cheap nasty relatives.

Olimpia would not build her tomb in Rome where it would be lost among the throng of marble monuments competing for attention. She would be laid to rest in the Church of San Martino, in the principality where she had done so much for dowerless girls. Unfortunately, the four-hundred-year-old church was in a sad state of decay. Olimpia commissioned Francesco Borromini to shore up the sagging structure, refurbish the interior, and replace the crumbling bell towers with majestic new ones in the medieval style. As the finishing touch, he would design her tomb. They would bury her at the high altar, beneath a simple yet elegant pavement of gold and red marble, with a black border around it and the white Pamphili dove holding the green olive sprig in its mouth. In the upper corners were ghastly huge yellow skulls with red eyes and ragged hair that could only have been designed by the mournful Bor-romini. The slab was about twenty feet square, and each of the four corners was adorned with the gold eight-pointed Maidalchini star.

The text reads:

Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphili

Princess of San Martino
Aware of human mortality

Anticipating the last day

With the thought of spiritual immortality Here chose to erect her sepulcher
As religious piety suggested to her
To feel she was protected in life as in death

By the eternal aid of the Holy Spirit

And to ask at the same time
Abundant prayers and intercession with the Lord

From the inhabitants of her feud

[ 210 ]

M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n

Who are asked to remember her by this monument

And among whom she lived
To the increasing and greater dignity of the town

With the loving care of

Universally bestowed charity
She wishes to establish
A lasting testimony of affection

1647

The date of death would be filled in later. It is interesting that Olim-pia used the term “to feel she was protected in life.” Clearly, she felt
unprotected,
unsafe, as though something awful was waiting for her just around the corner.

Because it was not an elaborate tomb with numerous marble and bronze statues such as many Roman nobles commissioned, it was completed quickly. Now Olimpia could die at any time and have a fitting resting place ready to receive her.

q

Ice was melting off the relationship between France and the Papal States. Mazarin had stopped playing war games and was sending friendly letters to the pope. As the thaw set in, he hoped that soon his dearest wish would become a reality—a cardinal’s hat for his idiot brother. And now he knew exactly who could get it for him.

At the end of May 1647, the new French ambassador, the marquis de Fontenay, arrived in Rome with a most brilliant suite—twenty-four pages, forty valets, and three hundred men, the entire retinue and their horses dazzlingly attired to outshine the rather tarnished glory of Spain. The marquis called first on Innocent in the Vatican. Next, his train of carriages made their way to a more important meeting at the Piazza Navona. To receive the ambassador, Olimpia had created a kind of court with herself as queen and numerous ladies-in-waiting hovering attentively nearby. The marquis respectfully saluted her, noting that she “was accompanied by ten principal ladies of Rome, richly dressed.”
¹

Fontenay was dumbfounded by the dignity of a woman whom he

[ 211 ]

Eleanor Herman

had heard to be a yokel from Viterbo. In a letter to Mazarin he gushed, “The Queen [Anne of Austria, queen mother of France] has not demonstrated more gravity and majesty than this lady on that occasion.”
²

Mazarin wrote back, “We must do favors for the signora Donna Olimpia, and it must go beyond everything His Holiness could desire for her.”
³
The prime minister now considered Olimpia his best friend. Indeed, the two were remarkably similar; born to nothing, they had both scrambled up to the pinnacle of wealth and power because of their street smarts. Gazing at each other from either side of the Alps, each saw the other as a useful pawn on the chessboard of power; it is also likely that they greatly admired each other.