Mistress of the Vatican (46 page)

As Innocent became more and more uneasy with Olimpia’s image in the Holy Year, he was struck by a bitter blow. On April 25 his sister Prudenzia died suddenly in her Convent of Saint Marta. According to Gigli, “The pope in the first years of his reign went sometimes to visit her and his sister Agatha in the Tor di’ Specchi. But after these nuns favored and welcomed the princess of Rossano who married Don Ca-millo against the will of Donna Olimpia, the pope stopped going to see them, and the one parted and the other remained with rancor.”
¹¹
Because of Olimpia, Innocent had not spoken to his sister in three years, and now she was dead.

One morning, as the devout flocked to the Church of Saint John Lateran, they saw that the wall inscription innocent x, pontifex max-imus had been partially covered with a banner that some enterprising soul had hung in the night. “Olimpia I, Pontifex Maximus,” it said.
¹²
Others started sprouting overnight in various churches, including, “Olimpia, the first female pope.”
¹³

Innocent’s small, suspicious eyes alighted on her, and he decided some changes were in order. Unbeknownst to Olimpia, on June 20, 1650, he made a new will, in which he revoked the total freedom to dispose of all her possessions that he had given her in his will of 1644. The new will specified that everything she had, and everything she would yet acquire, would be left to Camillo.

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18

Crisis of Conscience

q

We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury
of a disappointed woman,—scorned, slighted, dismissed without a parting pang.

—Colley Cibber nnocent, who usually agonized over every little decision, had been putting off a big one. Ever since Francesco Maidalchini became cardinal nephew in the fall of 1647, the pope had known that he was completely unfit for the job. None of the burden of work had been removed from the pontiff ’s elderly shoulders. Cardinal Maid-alchini’s tasks were shifted upward to where they had been while Ca-millo played at the office—to Cardinal Panciroli and to the pope himself.

But now the stalwart workhorse Panciroli was sick, and
all
the work devolved upon the aged pontiff. Innocent could not keep up with it, especially in a jubilee year when daily public ceremonies crammed his schedule. With Panciroli in bed for days at a time, ambassadors, cardinals, and municipal officials sometimes waited fuming in an antechamber for hours until the pope could see them.

An efficient cardinal nephew would solve all the problems. “The responsibilities of a cardinal nephew,” Leti explained, “. . . included being

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obliged, when the pope was indisposed or if he wanted some repose, to give audience to the ambassadors with whom he could negotiate. . . . One handles business with him as if he were the pope. Until then Innocent had not had this relief which was so necessary at his advanced age and which caused much anger to the ambassadors who had affairs to negotiate with him.”
¹

Cardinal Maidalchini compounded the problem of his uselessness by diminishing the dignity of the Catholic Church. Though Innocent had politely ignored his ridiculous charade as cardinal nephew, he could not forgive his very public disgrace at the opening of the holy door when he had not been able to figure out what to do with the holy hammer and the angry crowd had mashed him against the wall. The heretics were laughing, and the Catholics were ashamed, and it was all Olimpia’s fault for pushing her idiot nephew into the position and then insisting he open the door to grab the medals.

It was clear that Innocent must name a new cardinal nephew. But no matter whom he chose, Olimpia would be outraged. Though the crowds of favor seekers had stopped coming by her house to call on Cardinal Maidalchini, at least the cardinal nephew did not take power
away
from her. Olimpia would never stand for an ambitious young prelate helping the pope run the Vatican, leaving her twiddling her thumbs on the sidelines. Innocent had been studying the young clerics at the papal court for some time. The families that Olimpia’s two haughty daughters had married into—the Ludovisi and Giustiniani clans—were aware of the need for a new nephew and were quietly pushing forward several grinning relatives. But the pope wasn’t interested.

Cardinal Panciroli, with whom the pope often discussed his dilemma, pointed out to him a promising young man named Camillo Astalli. Cardinal Pallavicino described Astalli, a darkly handsome thirty-year-old, as “a prelate of noble Roman family, who seemed to him a youth of merit and expectations. . . . The pope brooded on this plan and was pulled by his liking for Astalli, so that when he saw him he had a violent commotion of the heart.”
²

The pope, readily attracted to good-looking people, imagined that Astalli would add luster to the papal throne by simply standing next to

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it. Leti wrote that Innocent began to “have great contentment in the good grace of this young man and discussed the means of relieving His Holiness in the administration of great affairs during which he found no one among his family who was capable of filling the post of nephew other than those he disliked.”
³

Olimpia did not have an inkling of what the pope was planning. But when she, as matchmaker for the rich and famous of the Papal States, was looking for a wife for Camillo Astalli’s brother, the pope insisted loudly that she arrange a match with one of her own nieces, a daughter of Andrea Maidalchini. Olimpia must have been surprised. Innocent had never before evinced much interest in the marriages of the nobility, matches that so fascinated her. Mystified, Olimpia complied, and Tibe-rio Astalli duly married Caterina Maidalchini. It was a clever move. When the pope finally proclaimed Camillo Astalli the new nephew, no one could say he was not related to the pope.

The pope trod carefully in his preparations; he knew that as soon as Olimpia got wind of his plan, she would make a huge squawk about it and quite possibly derail the whole thing. She would find out only when it had already been done, and then she could squawk all she wanted and it would be too late to stop it. In mid-September 1650 the pope confided to the French ambassador that within the next few days he would do something to amaze everyone. The ambassador spread the word, and all of Rome watched with bated breath. It was not long in coming.

On Monday, September 19, 1650, without having said a word to anybody other than Cardinal Panciroli, who wholeheartedly approved of the choice, the pope announced the imminent creation of Camillo Ast-alli as cardinal. He would be the pope’s nephew operating as cardinal
padrone,
a position of authority that neither Camillo Pamphili nor Fran-cesco Maidalchini ever held. Furthermore, the pope bestowed upon Astalli the invaluable honor of using the Pamphili name and coat of arms. It was as if he had been adopted as the pope’s son.

This, however, created confusion. Innocent was now on his third cardinal nephew and all three were living, an unprecedented situation in the history of the papacy. And two of them had exactly the same name. Camillo Pamphili, Olimpia’s son and now no longer cardinal,

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was called Camillo Pamphili the real nephew. Camillo Pamphili, formerly Camillo Astalli and a new cardinal, was called Camillo Pamphili the fake nephew. And poor little Cardinal Maidalchini was dubbed the imbecile nephew. For the sake of clarity we will refer to the third nephew as Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili.

The new nephew was given the right to live in and control the Palazzo Pamphili in the Piazza Navona and the villa of Bel Respiro, and to have the use of all the furnishings, statues, silver, and tapestries in both residences. He was assigned the governance of the papal city of Fermo and the legation of Avignon. He received ten thousand scudi as a welcome gift, and an annual income of thirty thousand scudi. In a matter of days, Ca-millo Astalli-Pamphili had gone from an unimportant prelate to the second-highest-ranking position in the Papal States and Catholic Church.

We can imagine Olimpia’s shock. No sooner had she heard the news than this stranger was moving his baggage into her house, taking over the best rooms facing the Piazza Navona. The worst part of it was that Innocent, the man who had always asked her opinion about everything, was suddenly doing things behind her back. She must have been seized with a deep sense of panic. Certainly she was angry.

There is no report of her reaction until Thursday, September 22, three days after the pope’s announcement. On that morning Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili received his red hat from the hands of the pope at the Quirinal Palace and after the celebratory feast was planning to make his courtesy call on Olimpia. But according to Gigli, Olimpia knew “that she was losing her dominion and her control. She scorned him greatly, and entered into a great frenzy.” Olimpia intercepted the cardinal, sending a message that “she did not want to receive him, saying she had no other nephew than Cardinal Maidalchini, and she did not rec-ognize him as being of the house of Pamphili.”
⁴
She added that she was sick, and her daughters were sick, and all of their servants were sick, and it was better not to visit any of them.

Hearing this strange message, the new cardinal smiled and instructed his entourage to follow him “to the sick people.” Upon arriving at the Piazza Navona house, he found that Olimpia really was in bed ill. Her servants explained to him that she had just returned from visiting the

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pope, “lamenting and making the greatest noise” about Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, but the pope brusquely told her not to interfere. And she “returned home full of this mania and displeasure” and took to her bed.
⁵

Olimpia’s confrontation with the pope had, indeed, been an angry one. It was reported that she stomped into the Quirinal in high dudgeon, accusing Innocent of trying to ruin her. She said that if he did not demote and exile Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili immediately, she would create a great scandal by leaving the Piazza Navona house to avoid running into the new nephew. She would live with her son in the Villa Aldo-brandini in Frascati outside Rome, a threat that must have terrified both Camillo and the princess of Rossano. Though the pope had exiled Camillo at Olimpia’s instigation three years earlier, this time he would not do her bidding and started yelling back at her. It was no wonder she took to her bed.

When Rome and the international community heard about the meteoric rise of Camillo Astalli-Pamphili, they immediately assumed the promotion had been done at Olimpia’s instigation. After all, she had had a hand in everything the pope did, and the young man’s brother had married her niece. The two of them must have made a pact to jointly share power. But word leaked out that Olimpia had had nothing to do with it and was, in fact, furious about it. She confirmed the ru-mors by galloping out of Rome to Camillo’s villa in Frascati, where she stayed for several days.

Teodoro Amayden’s
avvisi
of October 1 reported, “The invention of the new Cardinal Pamfilio is due only to Cardinal Panzirolo, and Signora Donna Olimpia had no part in it, a thing that is difficult to believe. Because she went to Frascati, and they say she will leave the Piazza Navona and live with her son, and they say publicly that Cardinal Panzirolo is the author of this resolution. . . . Speaking of this signora, Cardinal Panzirolo said, ‘She is too ill-tempered and wants everything her own way.’ ”
⁶

What had changed Innocent from the docile, obedient man she had always known? Olimpia imagined it had been Cardinal Panciroli, the only other person the pope had ever listened to or confided in. One day Olimpia stormed into the Quirinal Palace and called Panciroli into the

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audience hall. When he arrived, she vented her fury, accusing him of masterminding Astalli’s promotion to ruin her and Cardinal Maidal-chini. She threatened him. She cursed him. But Cardinal Panciroli, who must have been delighted that for the first time in the six-year pontificate he would no longer have to share his power with Olimpia, gravely replied that “things did not, as she might think, depend upon his councels, but upon the Popes inclinations, who lov’d to do what he pleased, and nothing else.”
⁷

Olimpia stirred up her daughters’ families, both of whom had been hoping to have one of
their
relatives named the new nephew. Prince Ludovisi, who took all of his family disappointments out on his helpless wife, yelled at Costanza that the pope held the Maidalchini relatives in greater esteem than the Pamphilis. If he had married Olimpia’s niece, instead of the pope’s niece, his reward would have been far more honorable. Andrea Giustiniani believed the pope was going senile. How else could he choose as nephew his brother’s wife’s half-brother’s daughter’s husband’s brother, which was a stretch even for Italian concepts of family? Princes Giustiniani and Ludovisi galloped out of Rome in a huff.