Mistress of the Vatican (44 page)

On the afternoon of December 24, 1649, four cavalcades wound their way to the four basilicas. Penitents beat their breasts and whipped themselves as they walked. Some of the pious crept forward on their knees. Most pilgrims walked, some barefoot, while the better-off rode on mules or horses. The majority were Catholic, though each procession included several Protestants and a handful of Muslims and Jews who just wanted to see a good show.

Olimpia was itching to get her hands on the holy medals. Luckily, the archpriest of Saint John Lateran, Cardinal Girolamo Colonna, was a friend of hers. He opened the door with due dignity and took the heavy chest of Urban VIII’s 1625 jubilee medals. Without opening it, he gave it to a soldier, who wrapped it in his cloak and took it posthaste to Olimpia.

Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the archpriest of Saint Peter’s, would not open his holy door, as that honor was saved for the pope. But as archpriest, Francesco was entitled to the medals. Since Olimpia had recalled his family from exile and returned most of their property to them, he agreed to give her his medals. He instructed the masons to have a wheelbarrow placed behind the holy door so that the moment the masonry collapsed, the box of medals would fall into the wheelbarrow, which would be covered with a canvas and carted off to Olimpia. But it was not carted off quickly enough, as it was noticed by many of the faithful, including Giacinto Gigli, who recorded it in his diary.

[ 261 ]

Eleanor Herman

While these two ceremonies went off without a hitch, the others did not. Over at Saint Paul’s Basilica, when eighty-eight-year-old Cardinal Marcello Lante arrived to open the holy door, he found it already open. The masons waiting behind it, unable to see outside, had thought they heard the cardinal tapping and pulled down the door. Some two hundred pilgrims were inside the church milling around and gawking at the decorations.

Seeing the mess that awaited him, Cardinal Lante had the church cleared out and instructed the masons to pile up the bricks as best they could. He then ceremonially tapped on the dusty heap, declaring the church open for pilgrims. The box of medals was already gone, but it was not in Olimpia’s hands. The dean of the basilica, knowing she wanted it, had locked it up in Saint Paul’s treasury.

The archpriest of the fourth jubilee church, Saint Mary Major, was none other than Cardinal Antonio Barberini, but he was still huffing and puffing in self-imposed exile in France. Cardinal Alderano Cibo was next in line to perform the ceremony, but Olimpia insisted that her nephew Cardinal Maidalchini do the honors. She specifically instructed him to get the medals as quickly as possible and bring them to her.

Upon hearing that Cardinal Maidalchini had been chosen to replace Antonio Barberini for the job, Cardinal Federico Sforza raced to the pope to explain that this was a poor choice. The clumsy Cardinal Maidalchini could not represent the holy Catholic Church at such a crucial ceremony with thousands of spectators from around the world, some of them heretics. Another cardinal, Sforza begged, must do the honors. But the pope had already promised Olimpia. And when he told her about Sforza’s plea, she had the popular cardinal exiled to his bishopric on the east coast of Italy.

Cardinal Sforza’s prediction was accurate. The crowds of pilgrims murmured at the sight of the ungainly pimple-faced boy who seemed not to know how to hold the holy hammer. Nervous church officials suggested maybe they should call in another cardinal. But somehow Maidalchini figured out which end was up and managed to tap on the door, and the bricks promptly fell.

The young cardinal reached inside to grab the casket of holy medals,

[ 262 ]

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

but the church canons, expecting such a move, were waiting behind the door and tried to yank the box out of his hands. The medals, they declared, belonged to them, and not to Cardinal Maidalchini, who was not the archpriest or even a proper substitute. Cardinal Maidalchini, terrified of Aunt Olimpia’s fury, got into a brawl with the canons over possession of the box.

The spectators were furious at Cardinal Maidalchini for several reasons. First of all, he was ugly. Second, he had botched the sacred ceremony. Third, he was trying to steal the holy medals. The crowd rushed him, almost crushing him against the wall of the church. The little cardinal somehow wriggled out of their clutches and in the confusion raced out of the church clutching the box of medals. He jumped into his coach and galloped to the Piazza Navona palace with his mission accomplished.

And so, on the evening of December 24, 1649, Olimpia was the proud possessor of three of the four boxes of holy medals. It wasn’t a bad take, but still, it could have been better.

On January 8, 1650, Innocent, irritated at tourists smoking pipes in the sacred space of Saint Peter’s, became perhaps the first person ever to set up a no-smoking sign. All smokers would be excommunicated immediately and, without the sacraments of the church, would go to hell. Smoking stopped.

On January 9, Olimpia made a pompous cavalcade to the four jubilee churches. She had in her carriage her daughter Maria, Princess Gius-tiniani, and a retinue of many noble ladies followed in their own carriages. They rode first to Saint John Lateran, where on their knees, they climbed the holy stair, which was believed to have come from the Jeru-salem palace of Pontius Pilate, and down which Jesus was said to have walked carrying the cross. Spots of miraculously indelible blood could still be seen on certain stairs. Saying a Hail Mary or an Our Father on each step, they made the painful ascent. It must have been agonizing for Olimpia, whose knees swelled and ached with arthritis.

Olimpia and other wealthy Catholics made the rounds of the four churches in comfortable carriages. For most people, however, the exhausting journey in all kinds of weather was done on foot. The entire

[ 263 ]

Eleanor Herman

circuit was twenty-five miles, since Saint Paul’s was a few miles outside Rome. Innocent had decreed that pilgrims coming from afar were required to make the rounds of the four churches fifteen times to obtain the indulgence, while Romans, who hadn’t already made a long trip to get to Rome, were required to visit all four churches thirty times.

Traditionally, with the pope’s permission sick people could obtain the indulgence with fewer visits than required from the healthy. And historically most popes smiled, gave a benediction, and granted the indulgence to any incommoded person who asked for it. But Innocent, ever the strict jurist, was not quick to grant it to those who hadn’t made even one round of the churches, and he inquired carefully into their efforts.

Giacinto Gigli thought the pontiff a bit stingy. “A gentlewoman sick to death begged the pope to give her the indulgence without going to the churches,” he recounted. “The pope asked how many times she had gone and she said none, and he said what did she expect if she didn’t go? She said she hoped to go in the month of May in warmer weather and the pope replied that in May we will give you the indulgence. Similarly other people who were ready to die sent to ask for the indulgence and it was asked how many times they had visited the churches and if they had never gone it was not conceded to them.”
³

Strict though he was, when the pope visited the churches he showed willingness to listen to all those pilgrims who wanted to talk to him. As a canon lawyer he had always listened to petitioners with compassion and patience, and in this way he was no different as pope.

The pope had forbidden Carnival, as the Holy Year was no time for Jews and prostitutes to race down the Corso. The parade of nude hunchbacks was canceled, as was the procession of farters carrying the King of the Defecators on a toilet chair. Those who wished to produce rowdy comedies had to do so in their private palaces outside the gates of Rome. Plays of a sacred nature were, of course, permitted.

The high point of every Holy Year was Easter, and this Easter the number of pilgrims swelled to sixty thousand. During Holy Week the pope several times washed the feet of poor pilgrims, in imitation of Je-sus washing his disciples’ feet. But Olimpia, it was noted, was never seen to wash a single poor foot.

[ 264 ]

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

As Easter dawned on April 17, the Spanish confraternity of the Holy Resurrection marched into the Piazza Navona holding aloft the Holy Sacrament. The architect Carlo Rainaldi had transformed the piazza into a peristyle of columns, creating 116 arches, surrounded by vines that flickered with the light of 1,600 candles. At each end of the piazza was a magnificent arch and cupola that seemed to be of heavy colored marble but was really made of flimsy painted wood. Inside one was the risen Christ, and inside the other was his Virgin Mother.

Bernini’s fountain of the Four Rivers was still being constructed behind scaffolding. For Holy Week the artist surrounded the fountain with a crenellated wooden enclosure resembling a medieval castle, hung with beautiful religious paintings. On each corner he built a castle tower, on top of which musicians played. Lit by colored lights, the obelisk rose above the construction and at times shot off fireworks.

q

The jubilee year was a time of frequent miracles. Miracles occurred throughout Italy even in non-jubilee years, of course, but the hysteria of the Holy Year seemed to cause swarms of them. Prayers were answered. Crutches were left at altars. The moribund rose from their deathbeds and danced in the streets. Looking at these miracles from a modern perspective, we are unsure whether they were caused by mind over matter, natural healing, trickery, or divine intervention.

Innocent and Olimpia were kept closely informed of any miracles that took place in the Papal States. It was important, from both a church and governmental point of view, to determine the source of the miracles. Some of them were found to be real, caused by God and his saints to boost faith in the true church. Others were no less real but caused by Satan and his demons to fool the devout, and these had to be driven out by exorcists. The clearest sign of demonic possession was a gyrating pelvis. Anyone caught doing a seventeenth-century version of Elvis Presley—no matter how many cripples he healed—would have been drenched with holy water immediately and would, most likely, have responded with hisses and howls. Alas, most miracles were faked, caused by men and women hoping to defraud the pious.

[ 265 ]

Eleanor Herman

Throughout Innocent’s reign, the most fascinating case was that of Joseph of Cupertino. Known as “the Flying Friar,” Joseph would go into a trance and then, with a shriek, fly up into the air. His superiors forbade him to meditate in the monastery gardens as his brothers were tired of hauling out the ladder and plucking him out of trees. Joseph was also forbidden to attend Mass in church, as he would go crashing through the air and knock into the high altar, screaming as the candles burned him, or land atop a column, sending the entire service into disorder. Nor was Joseph allowed to eat in the refectory with the other monks; he tended to launch himself airborne while holding a tray of hot soup, spilling it on those below. On some occasions as Joseph started to soar he grabbed hold of a fellow friar and carried the horrified monk into the air with him. Joseph was confined to a low cell, where he could do no flying. At one point he was reportedly brought to the Vatican so Urban VIII could meet him, and he duly soared upward, arms and legs gesticulating wildly, and landed at the pope’s feet with a loud thud.

In 1650 the staunchly Lutheran duke of Brunswick, Johann Friedrich, traveled to Rome to experience the jubilee. On his way, he stopped off at Joseph’s monastery in Assisi to see the Flying Friar. Whatever he saw amazed him so much that he immediately declared he would convert to Catholicism.

While most who witnessed Joseph’s amazing feats were certain they were caused by God, the Inquisition was not so sure. To make sure his levitation was not the work of the devil, Innocent’s chief inquisitor of miracles kept a firm eye on Joseph until his death in 1663. In 1767, Pope Clement XIII decided it had been the hand of God that lifted him up, and he canonized him. Church officials of the twentieth century—no strangers to things flying through the air—have since declared Joseph the patron saint of aviation. As for us, we can offer no explanation and must, for the moment, leave the case of Saint Joseph of Cupertino up in the air.

Not all miracles were as inexplicable as the Flying Friar. In May 1650 a group of Florentines brought to Rome a miraculous cross—which was said to fly from church to church of its own accord—and placed it in the Church of Saint John of the Florentines. Praying before the cross on his

[ 266 ]

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

knees, a poor crippled Florentine suddenly jumped up and threw away his crutches. A woman possessed of a demon was healed, and another woman threw away her crutches. As a large crowd thronged the church to gape at the miracles unfolding before their very eyes, the vice-regent of Rome marched in to maintain order. He took the cross to the Inquisition so that investigations could be conducted on its healing power. Interrogations revealed that the crippled Florentine who threw away his crutches was a charlatan, hoping to draw excited crowds who in their religious fervor wouldn’t notice when his associates picked their pockets.

Giacinto Gigli wrote, “Every day things get more confusing because no one knows if the miracles are truly done by God, or are false and lies.”
⁴