Mistress of the Vatican (55 page)

Glowing with good health and high spirits, when the pope arrived in Rome he went first to Saint Peter’s, then to the Palazzo Pamphili, and then to the Quirinal, insisting at each stop that he get out of his chair and go up the stairs on foot. People marveled at his firm step, bright eyes, and easy smile.

While all were agreed on the pope’s miraculous regeneration, not everyone believed this was a good thing. One
avvisi
writer told of the general disappointment that the voyage had probably given the pontiff another ten years of life.

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The Sudden Disgrace of Cardinal Astalli

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He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to
a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

—Niccolò Machiavelli t was not long before the old stresses and strains of Rome took their toll on Innocent. There was, for instance, the perplexing dilemma of what to do about the recalcitrant Olimpiuccia, who still refused to move in with her husband. The Barberinis began to wonder if this wasn’t another one of Olimpia’s tricks—she had, after all, promised them Camillo back in 1644, and everyone knew how disastrous that had been.

Aware of their suspicions, Olimpia began to panic. This marriage had been crafted to win them as her friends, not to make them fiercer enemies than ever before. She simply had to figure out how to get Olim-piuccia into Maffeo Barberini’s bed.

Given the girl’s professed piety, Olimpia called in a priest to convince her to do her duty to her family, an ironic parallel to Sforza Maidalchi-ni’s action back in 1606. Perhaps Olimpia truly could not see that what

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she was doing to a twelve-year-old was what Sforza had done to a fifteen-year-old; her father had tried to drag her into a convent, while she kicked and screamed that she wanted to marry, and now Olimpia was dragging her granddaughter into a marriage, while she kicked and screamed that she wanted to become a nun. Olimpia, as cruel as Ag-amemnon himself, was sacrificing her own little Iphigenia on the altar of family loyalty. The priest duly arrived and spoke solemnly with Olimpiuccia about the grave sin she was committing by not obeying her family. The little girl shrugged.

Finally, Olimpia had enough. One evening, after five months of putting up with her granddaughter’s stubborn refusal to consummate her illustrious marriage, she dragged her into a carriage and took her to Palazzo Barberini herself. There she shoved her into the arms of Ma-ffeo. An
avvisi
sent to Paris on November 24, 1653, stated, “Olimpiuccia was carried to the palace of the Four Fountains to the great relief of the pope.”
¹
The ambassador of Mantua wrote, “The grandmother took her there almost violently one evening.”
²

Shortly thereafter, the marriage was consummated. Olimpia heaved a loud sigh of relief. On January 6, 1654, Innocent X ordered the Vati-can treasury to wipe out all remaining Barberini debts. The Barberini cardinals were no longer required to restore the money they had stolen, and now they were in an excellent position to start stealing afresh. Poor Lucrezia Barberini, dangling like rancid meat on the marriage market for a decade, was married to the widowed duke of Modena and became a duchess.

After ten years shuttered in darkness, the three-thousand-seat Bar-berini theater was opened for a musical comedy. Costly gifts flowed in from all over the world as recognition of the family’s return to power. And now that their interests were the same, the Barberini cardinals worked hand in hand with Olimpia in running the Vatican. “Having not yet forgotten their former custom of amassing money,” Gregorio Leti wrote, “they tried everything possible to obtain it for themselves and for Donna Olimpia, to whom they taught new methods of squeezing money from all sides.”
³

On January 4 Olimpia changed her will, albeit reluctantly. Leti

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explained, “The pope was heard to say several times to Donna Olim-pia, in promising to return her to all her former authority, which he absolutely wanted, that she should give all or at least the greater part of the wealth she had amassed to Don Camillo. . . . He had been well informed that she doted more on her daughters than on her son and he found it strange that she was thinking of leaving her wealth not to those in the direct line of Pamfili, of whom his nephew was the only one left. . . . Donna Olimpia had great repugnance to consenting to do this.”
⁴

Since her birth in 1641, Olimpiuccia had been Olimpia’s primary heir, but now she was eminently provided for as a Barberini princess. Obeying the pope, Olimpia made Camillo her heir, though it must have irked her to leave her money, in effect, to the princess of Rossano. But it would eventually descend to Olimpia’s grandchildren, and the fruitful princess had by now considerately provided four of them, two boys and two girls.

Olimpia further stated in her will that she wanted two thousand Masses to be said for her soul in San Martino, and another two thousand in Viterbo, and two thousand more in Rome. Surely these Masses, winging their way to heaven, would help clear that wide path necessary for her ascent. In addition, she gave dowries to seven poor girls in San Martino who otherwise would not be able to marry. In a touching tribute to her immured sister, Olimpia stipulated that for twenty years after her death, seven poor women would receive a nice dress on the Feast of Saint Orsola, Ortensia’s patron saint.

Olimpia left Olimpiuccia a diamond watch and the right to choose whatever other objects she wanted from the Pamphili legacy. Prince Ludovisi and Costanza also had a daughter named Olimpia, who would be given a valuable tiara to wear on her wedding day. Olimpia’s daughters, Maria and Costanza, who had already received their dowries, would each inherit one thousand scudi in cash and the same amount in silver plate.

In 1650 Olimpia had purchased a garden in Ripagrande, on the banks of the Tiber in Trastevere, where she sometimes liked to take the air. Now she was building a house there. This property she bequeathed

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to her little grandson Gianbattista Pamphili. She left Francesco Maidal-chini five hundred scudi, a rather slender sum, and her servants received legacies. As for her state bonds, they were to be sold and the money given to charity. The rest of her estate was to be given to her primary heir, Camillo.

The pope could count himself fortunate that several irritating issues had been resolved to his satisfaction. Olimpia was back, soothing his doubts and worries and taking care of Vatican business. Olimpiuccia had finally consummated her marriage, and Olimpia had agreed to leave her estate to Camillo. But as age and illness tightened their grip, the pope grew cross and angry again.

In December Giacinto Gigli reported that “the pope fired his majordomo, his
maestro di casa
, the deacon of the grooms, and many other ministers, and made them all give an exact account of the money that they had spent and became suspicious and said that everyone was stealing from him.”
⁵
On January 20 the pope went to the Church of Saint Sebastian and hastily knelt to pray. He fell, and when the prior tried to help him up, the pope fired him.

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Olimpia was on a mission—to earn as much money as possible before the pope died. Though she was already an extremely wealthy woman, deep inside her lived the powerless little girl of Viterbo who was terrified of not having enough. But how much was enough? As soon as Innocent breathed his last, her income from office selling and influence peddling would dry up immediately. The relatives of the new pope would have their hands out for these transactions. Moreover, she might need large sums to bribe her enemies into leaving her alone.

Olimpia convinced the pope to involve himself less in political matters. He should conserve his health, she said. At his age, too much hard work could kill him, and only she truly looked after his best interests. Olimpia took over many of the pope’s duties.

“She did not content herself solely with giving orders for the political administration of the state, of the church, and of the court,” Leti wrote. “She wanted to govern the spiritual realm as well, as she had

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done before, so that she often convoked the congregations at her palace before their regular meetings.”
⁶
He added, “It was a marvel to see a woman some sixty years old work so hard day and night, treating and negotiating with all and sundry, coming and going, climbing and descending continually, without ever showing any signs of fatigue.”
⁷

Despite the return of the Barberini cardinals and Olimpia to help the pope run the church, Innocent still relied heavily on Cardinal Chigi, his secretary of state. Innocent wanted Chigi and Olimpia to become friends and work closely together. Otherwise, he would have to listen to Olim-pia’s constant complaints that Chigi did not respect her.

As a matter of fact, Chigi did
not
respect her, though he could not show it outright. He was appalled at a woman setting foot in papal offices, much less running them. And he was painfully aware of Olim-pia’s reputation as the pope’s mistress, a reputation that tarnished the entire church. When the pope encouraged Chigi to be nicer to Olimpia, the cardinal would duly “visit her on rare occasions which the law of common etiquette required,” Cardinal Pallavicino reported, “and then talk to her with serious words, and leave after a short time without having discussed any state business with her, and without giving a single instance of adulation to that idol of the court.

“She could not tolerate it that this man alone in all the palace treated her like this. And the more people talked of Chigi’s probity and sense, the more it seemed to her that he diminished her reputation.” Olimpia assumed he was on the side of the princess of Rossano. “But truly the cardinal stayed far away from both. He did as little with one as with the other.”
⁸

When Innocent suggested that Chigi give Olimpia a nice present, he immediately sent her a box of pastries—which we can assume didn’t go over too well. In December 1653, someone asked Cardinal Chigi what Christmas present he intended to give Olimpia. The irritated cardinal replied “that he had no gold to give her, nor did he want to offer her incense, and she was not grateful for myrrh, so he really couldn’t give her anything.”
⁹
This witticism became the talk of the court and winged its way quickly back to Olimpia, who repeated it to the pope using more scathing terms.

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“The pope, therefore, ulcerated by these complaints of hers against the cardinal, and not without a bit of contempt for so stubborn a contrariness of his against the pope’s desire and inclination, began to diminish his friendship and trust.”
¹⁰

Olimpia found a way to route important correspondence to the pope directly, bypassing Chigi. The papal secretary of briefs and ciphers, Monsignor Decio Azzolini, was a cunning, charming young man of aristocratic family whose great-uncle had been a cardinal. A Machiavel-lian courtier, he had an uncanny ability to decipher coded letters and to create new codes for the pope’s correspondence. All important letters came through his office, and after decoding them, he was supposed to hand them to Cardinal Chigi. But at Olimpia’s request, Azzolini began giving them directly to the pope.

Innocent did not object to bypassing Chigi on certain matters. In particular, he did not want him to see documents “pertaining to private advantages for the house of Pamphili, and not for the public service of the Apostolic See.”
¹¹
Chigi, however, knew very well what was going on and, far from being angered, was pleased that no one would be able to accuse him of raiding the church treasury for the Pamphili family.

One day Cardinal Chigi learned that his sister had come to Rome and wanted to see him. When he asked the pope’s permission to leave his office and visit her, Innocent graciously suggested that he invite her to the papal palace to meet with Chigi in his apartments. Waving his hands in horror, Chigi replied, “Oh no, Holy Father. This palace is not the place to have women come.”
¹²
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Though Olimpia was bit by bit, day by day, wreaking her revenge on the pope in terms of the money she was stealing from him, there was another individual who had yet to pay for what he had done to her— Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili. “The bitter memory of the pain she had suffered for so long did not move her so much to repentance as to the growing hatred against him who was the cause of the whole thing,” Cardinal Pallavicino explained.
¹³