Mistress of the Vatican (49 page)

Whenever Olimpia was upset, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work, and in San Martino there was still much to do that she had not been able to attend to while living in Rome. She hired architects to build more houses and bring new families to the town, and continued decorating her palazzo and the church.

Olimpia’s native land was refreshing, relaxing, and it must have soothed her to be away from the turmoil of Rome. Yet she must have hoped that Innocent would find himself adrift without her, the clever captain who

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had guided his ship for nearly forty years. Plagued by indecision, mistrustful of the men who now advised him, surely the pope would eventually call for her.

It is almost certain that she had spies in Rome—and in the Vatican itself—sending her frequent reports. Her friends, and she still had many of them, would have kept in close contact. Cardinals and ambassadors would have informed her of the pope’s doings, his moods, and any word he dropped about her. But the best spies were servants, those who could peer through keyholes, listen at doors, and fish letters out of the trash. Many servants earned several times their official salary for their spying activities.

Letters sent to her at San Martino would have been written partly in code, or with invisible lemon-juice ink, or in invisible ink
and
in code, and burned immediately after being read. Codes such as these were changed regularly to confuse the spies of enemies.

In a heap of miscellaneous family papers in the Doria Pamphilj Archives, there is a code cipher from Innocent’s pontificate that, given the strong, clear handwriting, could have been written by Olimpia:

Pope

100

Panzirole 101
Cherubino 102 [Cardinal Francesco Cherubini] Maidalchini 103 [Cardinal Francesco Maidalchini] Brancaici 104 [Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio] Olimpia 105
Prince Camillo 106
Giustiniani 107
Ludovisio 108
Rome 109
Viterbo 110

a b c d e f g h i l m n o p q r s 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 t u y z
23 24 25 26
¹

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In early June 1651, Olimpia’s correspondents would have told her that the Four Rivers Fountain in the Piazza Navona was finally completed after four years of design and construction. Spewing sour grapes, Francesco Borromini looked at his enemy’s masterpiece and declared it would never shoot out water. Gian Lorenzo Bernini heard his rival’s prediction and decided to play a little trick.

On June 8, when the pope visited the fountain in a great cavalcade, he walked around it for half an hour, admiring it from all angles. Innocent then asked Bernini where the water was, and the sculptor hung his head and shamefacedly admitted that it wasn’t yet ready to flow. The pope was a bit disappointed and said that without water Bernini’s masterpiece was not a fountain, it was a statue. As the pope was leaving the Piazza Navona, Bernini opened the faucets and the sound of rushing water filled the square. The pope raced back and marveled at the water dancing over the sculpted figures.

Proved wrong about the water, Borromini next spread word that the obelisk was in danger of toppling and crushing those beneath it. Ber-nini had done a terrible engineering job with Saint Peter’s bell towers, he bellowed, and now he had done a terrible job with the Four Rivers obelisk. One day in a heavy wind, as passersby eyed the obelisk with concern, Bernini’s carriage stopped. The sculptor got out and squinted at the obelisk, scratching his head. A crowd gathered around him, all nervously staring at the obelisk.

Then Bernini suddenly seemed to get an idea. He went into his carriage and pulled out some string. Then he climbed up onto the fountain and wrapped it around the obelisk, attaching the ends to iron torch hooks on the houses on either side of the piazza. With a satisfied nod, he got into his carriage and rode off, as all the spectators had a hearty laugh. It was a brilliant move; Borromini’s nasty rumors had been laughed to death.

The new fountain was the talk of Europe. All the kings requested drawings of it, and the fountains of Versailles would be based on it. But Olimpia, whose idea it had been, had not been invited to its inauguration.

Though Olimpia was being pointedly ignored by many former

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friends, the wily Jesuits understood that she could jump back into power at any time and corresponded cheerfully with her. In the summer of 1651, the Jesuit Father Albergati invited her to a magnificent celebration hon-oring Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the Roman College. Her reply was bitter; they should invite the queen—the princess of Rossano—and not the poor exile. The Jesuit replied cheerfully that the queen had also been invited, along with all the nephews and nieces of His Holiness.

Olimpia loved Jesuit services and very much wanted to go. Yet she couldn’t imagine herself sitting in the same church with the princess of Rossano exulting in a more honorable chair. She decided to attend after the evening bell when most people hastened home. “And I will go, too,” she wrote, “but privately and after the Ave Maria.”
²
That way her enemies could not gloat over her defeat.

q

After Olimpia’s fall, Cardinal Panciroli had hoped to be the sole advisor to the pope, with Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili working as his assistant. He envisioned that at a certain point years in the future when he died or retired, he would leave his position to the new cardinal nephew. But very soon after the young man’s promotion, Astalli-Pamphili’s manner went from ingratiating to haughty. Panciroli realized that his protégé was not a helpmeet but a rival. He had nourished a viper in the breast.

His sudden elevation had gone to Camillo Astalli-Pamphili’s head. He was deified by courtiers and lauded by ambassadors; he received magnificent gifts from kings. Why should a prelate as great as he sit still and listen to the boring instructions of a sick old man? Cardinal Panciroli complained bitterly to the pope about the rash, ungrateful Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, and Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili complained bitterly to the pope about the jealous old Cardinal Panciroli.

The pope, for his part, had grown tired of Cardinal Panciroli and preferred speaking to this young, charming man instead. Innocent began to distance himself from his old friend. But he soon realized that the third cardinal nephew was not all he thought he would be. “Cardinal [Astalli] Pamphili,” wrote the French ambassador de Valençais, “was adopted into the pope’s family, and it would have been good for him if

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together with his red hat they had been able to also give him a brain. . . . There were no stellar qualities in him, and certainly he had greater proclivities for pastimes than for work.”
³

The new cardinal nephew was not only inexperienced in international diplomacy, he was vain, shallow, and lazy. He loved the honor and wealth of the job, the sumptuous palaces and gardens, and the gorgeous carriages pulled by splendid horses wearing ostrich-feather hats. He loved having the seat of honor at all the best parties. But he wasn’t up to the work. Oddly, the first Cardinal Nephew, Camillo Pamphili and the second Cardinal Nephew, Camillo Pamphili were quite similar— all swashbuckling swagger, swirls of red robes, and little else.

In addition to Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s increasingly apparent uselessness, Innocent was experiencing family problems. As long as Olim-pia had ruled in Rome, she had reined in her children and their families to prevent them from badgering the pope. Now the Giustinianis, Lu-dovisis, and Pamphilis hammered him incessantly with requests for honors, titles, and incomes, sometimes pointing fingers at one another as being unworthy of the same. Nor did he have the strength to ban them from the papal palace. According to the Venetian ambassador, Innocent “will never know how to free himself of this, by refusing to admit his relatives who visit him so frequently.”
⁴
As always when under stress, Innocent became ill. On July 20, he grew extremely feverish from a bladder infection.

At least Olimpia’s family members could agree on one thing: they hated Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili. Camillo in particular loathed him for taking over his pleasure villa, Bel Respiro. Like Olimpia, her son saw Cardinal Panciroli as the architect of Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s meteoric rise and passionately despised him. Camillo soon wreaked his revenge. When Cardinal Panciroli went to visit the recovering pope on August 4, Camillo barred his path. It would only disturb Innocent to see him, he said. It would not be good to stress His Holiness.

It was a deadly insult to the old cardinal, who had been instrumental in Innocent’s election, had harmed his health shouldering the pope’s workload, and had lost papal favor to the inept Cardinal Astalli-Pam-phili. Gigli reported that Panciroli “returned to his apartments with a

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bitterness and a pain in his heart so great that reaching the door he could go no further but entered into the room of his servant and threw himself facedown on the bed where he stayed a long while and then he was carried into his room and put in his own bed.”
⁵
He would not rise from it.

At 7 p.m. on September 3, Cardinal Giangiacomo Panciroli died at the age of sixty-four, disillusioned by his change of fortune. In his last days he had repeatedly called for the pope, but Innocent did not come. Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, perhaps afraid of what Panciroli would say about him, told the pope that the disease was contagious. Innocent was, however, greatly saddened by his death, and “went into deep mourning for several days without being able to console himself.”
⁶

Olimpia did not mourn. She viewed Cardinal Panciroli as the author of her downfall. It was he who had convinced Innocent to create a new cardinal nephew and cut his ties with her. It was he who was responsible for the ruinous collapse of everything she had built. And it was he, four years earlier, who had engineered Camillo’s marriage to the despicable princess of Rossano. Hearing the news that Cardinal Panciroli was no more, she replied with bitter satisfaction, “He is dead, but I am alive.”
⁷

The timing of Cardinal Panciroli’s death was unfortunate. For months the French ambassador had been planning a grand celebration to mark the thirteenth birthday and official coming of age of King Louis XIV on September 5. When the fireworks blasted off, lighting up the night sky in jubilation, many Romans thought the French were celebrating Cardinal Panciroli’s demise two days earlier, as he had always been partial to Spain.

Now that Panciroli was dead, there was only Cardinal Astalli-Pam-phili to help Innocent with the workload. Those who liked the fake nephew politely remarked that he was still young and inexperienced in the ways of diplomacy. Those who disliked him called him a blithering dunderhead. Cardinal Pallavicino wrote that “the pope, full of years, was leaning on an inexperienced and unknown crutch.”
⁸
Though Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili wanted to have all the powers of a secretary of state, Innocent knew that would be disastrous. He must replace Cardinal Panciroli.

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The pope had, by this point, given up on the idea of bringing in a family member to assist him. The only man who had ever helped him run the Vatican had been Cardinal Panciroli, who had not been related in any way, shape, or form. The successful candidate for secretary of state should be an older man with extensive international diplomatic and legal experience.

Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili was frightened as to who might be chosen as his new boss. A truly brilliant man would recognize his defects and point them out to the pope. A mediocre man would be better for him, or at least someone he could call a friend and who would cover for him. He proposed his cousin, Francesco Gaetani, and received a crisp papal refusal. He next suggested the clever young cleric Decio Azzolini, his friend, but he was equally inexperienced.

The subdatary, Francesco Mascambruno, who continued to be in the pope’s favor, pushed himself forward for the job. But Innocent knew that despite his legal knowledge Mascambruno had no diplomatic experience. Besides, the pope had a surprise in store for Mascambruno. He would make him a cardinal in the next creation. Unaware of the forthcoming honor, Mascambruno was deeply stung by Innocent’s refusal to make him secretary of state. After everything he had done for Innocent and his family, the subdatary felt cheated.

Cardinal Bernardino Spada suggested that Innocent consider Monsignor Fabio Chigi, apostolic nuncio to Münster, Germany. This suggestion received the pope’s immediate consent. Though Innocent had never met Chigi, he had received his weekly dispatches since 1644 and had them copied in larger handwriting so that he could read them personally. “This is a man of purpose!” the pope said to Cardinal Panciroli after reading his correspondence, and told everyone that there had never been a better nuncio than Fabio Chigi.
⁹
Though the Thirty Year’s War had ended in 1648, Chigi remained in Germany to hammer out secondary treaties with the still-squabbling parties.