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Authors: Eleanor Herman
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Mistress of the Vatican
Mistress
VATICAN
The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini: The Secret Female Pope
Eleanor Herman
of the
This book is dedicated to
all women who refuse to
be locked up
Contents
v
Acknowledgments
1
1 The Convent
9
2 The Wealthy Landowner’s Wife
29
3 The Roman Noblewoman
38
4 The Brother-in-Law
52
5 The Papal Nuncio
66
6 Cardinals
78
98
117
137
10 Celebrations
149
Contents
11 Women in the Vatican
161
12 Vengeance on the Barberinis
179
13 The Despised Daughter-in-Law
196
209
15 Birth, Famine, and Bitter Peace
223
16 The Shoulder of Saint Francesca
237
17 The Holy Jubilee Year
257
274
19 Honor and Dishonor
293
20 Olimpia’s Triumphant Return
311
21 The Sudden Disgrace of Cardinal Astalli
331
22 Death of the Dove
348
365
24 Pope Alexander VII
372
25 The Two Queens of Rome
384
409
Notes
421
Bibliography
433
Index
439
[
] iv
One day in August 2004 I was speaking to Michele Giacalone of the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., about setting up a lecture on Italian royal mistresses to promote my first book,
Sex with Kings
. Michele asked me, “Since you enjoy writing about controversial women, why don’t you write a book on Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphili?”
And I said, “Olimpia
who
?”
Delving into the story of this forgotten woman, I was quickly fascinated and soon obsessed. My heartfelt thanks to Michele Giacalone, who heard Olimpia stories during his childhood in Rome. But for his timely suggestion,
I
would never have heard of her.
Nor would this book have been possible without the dauntless detective work of my assistant in Rome, Nancy Meiman, an American-born, Italian-spewing Sherlock Holmes of history, who tirelessly dug up places and sources related to Olimpia.
I am very thankful to Alessandra Mercantini and the staff of the Doria Pamphilj Archives in Rome for permitting me to peruse Olim-pia’s family letters. These letters allow Olimpia and her relatives to speak for themselves, and bring to life their daily vexations, hopes, and fears.
I would like to thank His Excellency Adhemar Gabriel Bahadian, Brazil’s ambassador to Italy, who generously opened up his embassy and residence on the Piazza Navona, the palace Olimpia built. He gave Nancy and me a fascinating tour and permitted us to wander around
Acknowledgments
for hours to puzzle out the location of ancient stables, kitchens, and servants’ quarters. Many thanks to Fernando de Mello, the embassy’s cultural attaché, who made this visit possible.
Francesco Colalucci of the Presidential Ceremonial Office was extremely generous with his time and knowledge by giving us a three-hour tour of the Quirinal, the papal palace, where Pope Innocent X spent the last six years of his life, and where he died.
I am especially grateful to Carlo Finazzi and Andrea Donatiello of the Council of Ministers for permitting me access to Bel Respiro, Olim-pia’s hilltop villa, despite the fact that renovations have resulted in the closing of the site to most visitors.
Don Gianni, rector of Saint Agnes Church, allowed us to enter the normally off-limits crypt, location of the ancient chapel built into an arch of the Domitian Stadium. And many thanks to the friendly custodian, Eraldo Sboro, who unlocked the doors for our voyage down a staircase that descended through time itself.
Vicenzo Ceniti, counsel of the Touring Club of Viterbo, took me to Il Barco, the hunting lodge of Olimpia’s brother, and pointed out Olim-pia’s birthplace in Viterbo. My heartfelt thanks go to Alessandro Taddei and his wife, Elena Savini, for allowing me into their beautiful home to gaze at the gold eight-pointed Maidalchini stars still gracing their ceiling.
Mara Bastianelli gave me an in-depth tour of San Martino, including Olimpia’s palace and church, and answered endless questions. Her husband, Colombo Bastianelli, has provided me with invaluable documents not found in any other sources, and gave generously of his in-depth knowledge of Olimpia’s extraordinary life. It is Colombo Bastianelli who keeps Olimpia alive in her town of San Martino today.
My gratitude goes to Margherita Carletti Camilli-Mangani for allowing me to visit her beautiful seventeenth-century hunting lodge just outside the walls of Viterbo, which is associated with Olimpia’s youth.
In touring the castles Olimpia bought in Umbria, I was welcomed and assisted by numerous individuals. Aleandro Tommasi and his wife, Irene Fabi, invited me to coffee in their home, the ancient hilltop for-
[
] vi
Acknowledgments
tress of Guardea owned by Olimpia. Nazario Sauro Santi, the mayor of Alviano, took me on a tour of Olimpia’s jewel of a town. Roberta Proi-etti shared with me her thesis on Olimpia’s feud of Attigliano.
Annalisa Marinetti and Paola Bonifazzi, who live in apartments in Olimpia’s Viterban palaces, were kind enough to invite me in for coffee and permit me to poke around the gardens, former stables, and nooks and crannies of their beguiling buildings.
A surprising collection of Vatican letters and diplomatic dispatches from the pontificate of Innocent X has landed at the Folger Shake-speare Library in Washington, D.C. My heartfelt thanks go to the staff for their courtesy and assistance. Also stateside, Dr. Ken Gage of the Centers for Disease Control—known to his friends as “Dr. Plague”— kindly answered my questions about the bubonic plague that swept across Italy in 1656.
There are six biographies of Olimpia, all in Italian, and I am greatly indebted to their authors. Gregorio Leti wrote the first one in 1666. Ig-nazio Ciampi, relying heavily on Vatican archives, published his version in 1878. The twentieth century saw four more biographies, by Gustavo Brigante Colonna, Giuseppe Ciaffei, Donata Chiomenti Vassalli, and Alf io Cavoli. The research of these other biographers has been invaluable for this project.
Closer to home, I am grateful to Joseph John Jablonski, Jr., Esq., of Arlington, Virginia, for his help with certain Latin passages in Teodoro Amayden’s 1655
Elogia
, a description of Vatican personalities. And I am greatly indebted to Dr. Adi Shmueli, the renowned psychologist from Washington, D.C., for his insights, which helped bring to life a woman who has been dead for 350 years.
Finally, my thanks to my patient husband, Michael Dyment, and my encouraging sister, Christine Merrill, who have listened to my ceaseless Olimpia stories for three years.
vii
[ ]
It is an age of exhausted whoredom, groping for its god.
—James Joyce,
Ulysses
he oldest royal court in Europe, the Vatican is a place of ancient secrets. The voluminous archives, though stuffed to the rafters with theological decrees, official correspondence, and accounting transactions, do not reveal much of the private lives of long-ago popes. Many records indicate only the most tantalizing fragments of murder, megalomania, and—heaven forbid—anything to do with women. Those stories that scandalized for a time were quickly suppressed or denied and soon forgotten. To paraphrase a modern saying, what happens in the Vatican stays in the Vatican.
One of the most interesting forgotten stories is that of Donna Olimpia Maidalchini (“My-dal-keeny”) Pamphili—
donna
being the Italian title for “lady.” The widowed sister-in-law of the indecisive Pope Innocent X (reigned 1644–1655), Olimpia was presumed to be the pope’s mistress. Regardless of whether she was mistress of the pope, she certainly was mistress of the Vatican, appointing cardinals, negotiating with foreign powers, and raking in immense sums from the papal treasury. In a church that firmly excludes women from officiating as priests and even from marrying priests, Olimpia’s story is clearly a discomfiting one for the Vatican.
T
Eleanor Herman
The day that Cardinal Gianbattista Pamphili was elected pontiff, Cardinal Alessandro Bichi angrily declared, “We have just elected a female pope.”
1
Mischievous Romans hung banners in churches calling her “Pope Olimpia I.”
Olimpia’s contemporary, Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, bewailed the “monstrous power of a woman in the Vatican.”
2
He fumed, “The court’s predictions that if Cardinal Pamphili became pope, Olimpia would rule, came true. It was nauseating in a nation that excludes women from all participation, and it is much more abominable because she was not able to keep a lid on two female vices—those being ambition and greed. She fed her ambition by having her antechamber full of prelates and the principal ministers, who in their ceremony and etiquette recognized her almost as their boss, and it came to pass that even cardinals, in addition to their frequent visits, ran to ask for her intercession in their most serious business. One of these was not even ashamed to have her portrait hanging in his public rooms, as if she were a queen.”
3
Another contemporary chronicler huffed, “There has never before been heard of nor seen that the popes allowed themselves to be so absolutely governed by a woman. There was no more talk of the pope; all the discourse was of Donna Olimpia, many taking occasion to say,
That it were fit likewise to introduce the women to the administration of the Sacrament, since that Donna Olimpia was pope
.”
4
If someone broached a subject that the pope had not already discussed with his sister-in-law, he would ask, “What will Donna Olimpia say?”
5
Savvy diplomats were prepared to flatter and bribe her to obtain the pope’s favor. “If you cannot make a breach in the mind of the pope through our authority,” said one powerful prince to his envoy, “try to gain it through the authority of Donna Olimpia with our money.”
6