Mistress of the Vatican (63 page)

One day shortly before the coronation, as she sat in her sitting room

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overlooking her little town and the medieval church, Olimpia was handed a letter bearing, for a change, extremely good news. On April 12 her beloved granddaughter, Olimpiuccia, had given birth to her first child, a month before her fourteenth birthday. The labor was fairly easy, and both mother and daughter were healthy. She called her baby Costanza, after her aunt and the little girl Olimpia had lost as a young woman in Viterbo.

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Upon hearing the news of Cardinal Chigi’s election, Romans tried to learn more about his family, whom they expected to come racing to Rome. Did he have nephews of the appropriate age to become cardinals and help him run the church? What secular relatives would be made princes and princesses? How greedy were they? Were there any women in the family who might try to take over?

The new pope had a brother in Siena, sixty-year-old Mario Chigi, a man whose means were far more modest than his ambitions. When a messenger raced to Siena with the glorious news of the election, Mario was beside himself with joy. He had just won the billion-dollar papal lottery. Leti observed, “Without so much as putting on new clothes, as his Wife would have had him, he caused a Horse to be saddled, and with two servants took his journey towards Rome, having first receiv’d from one and the other a number of submissive complements, not without the title of Excellence.”
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But Pope Alexander VII refused to embark on the slippery slope of nepotism and sent a messenger to Siena. Before Mario had ridden many miles from town, he was met by “a gentleman from the Pope with Letters to him, in which his Holiness did most strictly command that neither he, nor any of his Relations should stir from Siena to go towards Rome, under pain of incurring their brothers indignation for ever.”
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Reading the letter, “poor Don Mario was as if he had been thunderstruck. . . . All his blood retired to his heart, and left him pale, like a Ghost, though otherwise corpulent enough. . . . He resolv’d to return by night to Siena, being asham’d to enter the City by day.”
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Mario returned home dejected, but his spirits rose when the duke

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of Tuscany sent him expensive gifts, and when cardinals and princes lavished him with congratulations and silverware. He was elated when the Venetian senate sent him a solemn embassy with letters patent declaring him a nobleman of the most serene republic. But when the French ambassador was ready to set out from Rome to congratulate Mario personally, word came from the pope to stay put.

Undeterred, Mario wrote to Monsignor Scotti, the pope’s majordomo, expressing his heartfelt desire to come to Rome and kiss the pope’s feet. If, however, he was not allowed to do so, he would like Monsignor Scotti to kiss the pope’s feet for him. When Monsignor Scotti read the letter to Alexander, the pontiff proffered his foot and said, “Kiss it.”
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Several cardinals asked the pope when he would bring his family to Rome and which positions they would fill. Alexander replied that Fabio Chigi had had relatives, but Alexander VII had no family other than the church. If anyone cared to look in the baptismal register of Siena, he would find no person by the name of Alexander VII. The cardinals were shocked at this reply and warned him that if he didn’t show affection for his family, he would look pusillanimous, selfish, and cheap. How could a pope be expected to take care of tens of millions of Chris-tians if he wasn’t willing to take care of his own family?

The ambassadors were also greatly displeased at the new pontiff ’s stubborn opposition to nepotism. The Venetian ambassador stated that the republic would not send the traditional
obbedienza
parade if it would be dishonored by a lack of papal nephews. Besides, he said, the more a pope spent on his family, the less money he would have to make war on other Italian kingdoms and stir up trouble.

The Spanish ambassador explained to the pope that papal relatives were required to take part in the ostentatious cavalcade for the presentation of the
chinea
each June 28. If no papal relatives marched in the parade, Spain would be dishonored and would not give the white horse at all. Spain insisted on having a cardinal nephew with whom the ambassador could negotiate, as the pope was often too busy. Moreover, Spain was ready to hand over rich possessions in the kingdom of Na-ples to the pope’s secular nephews, along with fat pensions and noble Spanish brides with generous dowries. How could they influence the

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new pope if they were not permitted to bestow their munificence on his nephews?

France and Tuscany found themselves in a similar perplexity. Knowing that the new pontiff was incorruptible, Cardinal Mazarin and the Medici duke had amassed large amounts of gold to bribe the pope’s family members to influence him. Now they had sacks of gold sitting around their embassies collecting dust, and they didn’t know what to do with them.

The relatives of past popes—the Ludovisis, Borgheses, Barberinis, and Pamphilis—were aghast that this new incorrupt system made them all look like crooks. If Alexander refused to enrich his relatives at the expense of the poor, what did that say about
them
? Plus, if the new pope didn’t bring his relatives to Rome, there would be no marriages to bind them all together so he couldn’t throw them in jail.

Many prelates looking to rise in the church were disturbed at having to do so on merit alone; bribes and personal connections were so much easier. Minor courtiers hoping to serve in the households of papal relatives as secretaries, masters of ceremonies, and gentlemen-in-waiting were furious at the lack of new job openings.

Rome’s service industries were also unhappy at the shocking news that the pope was keeping his family firmly in Siena. Papal relatives bought carriages, furniture, jewels, and clothing; they hired servants, architects, painters, sculptors, and gardeners. They threw elaborate parties to the delight of bakers, butchers, and grocers. They held opera performances to the benefit of actors, singers, and stage-set designers. Nepotism provided an important boost to the Roman economy.

But Cardinal Girolamo Grimaldi, for one, was delighted that the new pope was opposed to nepotism. He had done some calculations and found that there were only enough church properties left for two more papal families to steal.

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25

The Two Queens of Rome

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Alas! I am a woman, friendless, hopeless!

—Queen Katharine of Aragon, Shakespeare,
Henry VIII

he moment the new pontiff climbed onto the throne of Saint Peter there was much for him to do. There was the bread supply to deal with—lately the
pagnotta
had become darker and smaller and people were beginning to complain. There was the new conflict between Milan and Modena, and the war between France and Spain, which had been limping along for decades. There was heresy to suppress and missionary work to support across the globe. But in his first weeks in office, Alexander found that much of his time was spent on requests from citizens and church officials to punish Olimpia.

In fact, within weeks of his election Alexander received hundreds of petitions and letters denouncing her. Many of the claims were, no doubt, true; others were probably false, as everyone jumped on the bandwagon attacking the
woman
who had dared run the Vatican. Had she been a corrupt papal brother-in-law, popular resentment would have been tempered by admiration.

As it was, letters poured in to the pope every day accusing Olimpia of having sold offices to unworthy candidates, let violent criminals out of jail for a price, and hoarded grain while the Roman poor starved. Some

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even claimed that she had used butter knives to pry gems out of altarpieces in Saint Peter’s and other churches, and that she had stuffed the Holy Communion chalices into her pockets.

“The pope did not have a very good opinion of this woman,” Grego-rio Leti observed. “Yet he did not yet wish her to feel his violent anger, nor to suspect any resentment. The pope wanted to do everything with great prudence and good conduct.”
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As former secretary of state, Alexander was well versed in diplomacy and international law, but he had had very little to do with the datary. In his first weeks in office, he threw himself into learning how the da-tary was run and looking over financial reports. With each audit brought to him from Innocent’s reign, Alexander became more and more disturbed at how much money had gone missing and how much of it seemed to have landed in Olimpia’s lap.

Leti affirmed, “The pope found every day, whether in church affairs or political affairs, so many crimes and embezzlements that he had not only reason to mistreat her, but to put her in prison for life. He found only deceipt and corruption in the datary. He discovered only simony practiced by this woman, all the posts having been sold, the finances exhausted, and a thousand other things. . . . The pope had too much zeal for the good of the state to see so many crimes without at the same time building up resentment.”
²

It is likely that Alexander would have preferred to let the matter drop. Innocent had made him cardinal and secretary of state, putting him on the road to the papacy. He did not want to terrorize Innocent’s family or bring scandal to the church. Yet the scope of the embezzlement was such that Alexander, a stickler for justice, felt he could not turn a blind eye. If Olimpia was indeed guilty, she must be forced to disgorge her ill-gotten gains and return them to the Vatican treasury, where they could be used for the poor.

The pope called all his cardinals to consistory, where he announced that he would launch an investigation into Olimpia’s financial transactions under Innocent. He said the proceedings should be undertaken with prudence and caution, as he did not want to provoke new scandals but to clean up old ones. He appointed Cardinal Gualterio, a friend and

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relative of Olimpia’s, to devise a list of all property that she had owned before Gianbattista became pope, and all property that he had accumulated as pope and had legally given to his family. This property would not be subject to investigation and possible confiscation.

The pope appointed a group of cardinals to look into the charges against Olimpia and collect irrefutable proof of wrongdoing if such was available. Within a few weeks, they had amassed damning evidence, thousands of pages of incriminating documents, as well as dozens of witnesses willing to testify against her. Word on the street was that Olimpia would lose her head, just like Mascambruno and Beatrice Cenci, and have it impaled on a spear on the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge.

Olimpia’s Vatican friends kept her well informed of the investigation against her. Having returned to Rome, she must have been absolutely terrified. While her Piazza Navona palace had turned into a prison from which she had rarely, if ever, emerged since Innocent’s death, she certainly didn’t want to trade its comforts for a real cell with bars on the windows. That would have been much like a convent, but even worse.

Olimpia instructed Camillo to visit the pope again and ask him not to believe the slander being spread about by her enemies. She had entire confidence, Camillo said, in the goodness and justice of such a pope. But Alexander merely replied that Camillo should tell his mother that the pope would see justice done. Olimpia could not have found this reply very soothing.

Olimpia next conferred with Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who was highly respected by the pope, and begged him to speak to Alexander personally. After the cardinal finished his speech imploring the pope’s mercy, Alexander coolly replied, “We will be more merciful towards Donna Olimpia than she was to your family.”

“We pardoned her,” the cardinal reminded him.
“That was to your profit,” the pope retorted. “For us, such a pardon would only damage our conscience.”
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The commissioners, questioning the keepers of the Castel Sant’Angelo treasury, learned that on Innocent’s orders several chests of gold had been taken from the treasury to the Quirinal Palace. The gold had mys-

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teriously disappeared. But sedan-chair carriers who had taken Olim-pia to and from the Quirinal during Innocent’s last days told how much heavier Olimpia’s chair was at night than it had been in the morning.

The papal tax collector, Marchese Carlo Maria Lanci, who had held his position since 1639, testified that every year since Innocent became pope he had turned over 32 million scudi to the treasury and had dropped off another 5 million at the Palazzo Pamphili. From 1647 to 1650, he had also given 3 million a year to Cardinal Maidalchini at Olimpia’s insistence. Much of this money had come from the tax on salt and bread that particularly inconvenienced the poor.