Mistress of the Vatican (2 page)

Envied, admired, and despised, Olimpia was a baroque rock star, belting out her song loudly on a stage of epic exaggeration. Seventeenth-century Rome boasted the world’s most glorious art and glittering pageants but also suffered terrors of apocalyptic proportions. Buildings spontaneously collapsed. Floods rolled through the streets, sweeping

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away horses and carriages. Swarms of locusts blocked out the sun and devoured the crops, bringing grinding starvation in their wake. Citizens burst out in black boils as plague culled its grisly harvest. Demons invaded the faithful, who writhed and hissed. Healed by saints’ bones, the sick tossed away their crutches and danced in the churches.

Olimpia lived in an age of corruption and flagrant nepotism. Hers was a kleptocratic society, where everyone from the lowliest servant up to the pope’s august relatives unblushingly stole as much as they possibly could. It was a time when dead pontiffs were left naked on the Vatican floor because their servants had pilfered the bed and swiped the clothes off the corpse. In this society theft was accepted, even admired, as long as the thieves were men.

Though Olimpia’s tale was acted out larger than life on the international stage, there was an intimate, personal story behind it. Olim-pia never recovered psychologically from her father’s efforts to force her into a convent as a child. For the rest of her life she remained terrified of being locked up by men. An Italian Scarlett O’Hara, Olim-pia vowed she would never be poor and powerless again. To avoid being crushed by men, she would have to acquire enough wealth and power to crush
them,
if need be. But how much was enough? In her efforts to find safety in a man’s world, Olimpia made powerful enemies, which spurred her on to acquire even more to protect herself.

Unlike the story of the mythical ninth-century Pope Joan, patched together from rumor and fantasy centuries after she supposedly lived, that of Pope Olimpia has been attested to by numerous contemporary sources. Most touching are the personal letters of the Pamphili family kept in the Doria Pamphilj Archives in Rome, although there are, unfortunately, only a handful from Olimpia and the pope. Olimpia’s legal papers—her wills and dowry documents—can be found in the Doria Pamphilj Archives as well as in the Archivio Storico di Roma.

Diplomatic dispatches reveal detailed information about Olimpia. A labyrinth of intrigue and corruption, Rome was the most difficult embassy posting, to which nations sent their ablest diplomats. Nothing was out of bounds in their weekly reports—even the pope’s bowel movements were analyzed. As the pope’s most influential advisor, Olimpia

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was carefully studied by the envoys of Catholic nations. Unfortunately, Protestant nations—England, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and parts of Germany—had no ambassadors in Rome to titillate us with scandalous observations.

The most reliable source for Olimpia’s story is Giacinto Gigli (1594–1671), who kept a diary from the age of fourteen until blindness in old age forced him to give it up. In recording the weather, politics, harvests, processions, murders, fires, and saintly miracles, he is a font of firsthand information for anyone wanting to understand life in seventeenth-century Rome. Gigli, who served on Rome’s city council several times, and whose brother-in-law worked in the most important Vatican office, was well positioned to learn about the politics and scandal of the pope and his sister-in-law.

Another excellent source is Sforza Pallavicino
(
1607–1667), who became cardinal in 1658. A friend of Innocent’s secretary of state, Cardinal Fabio Chigi, Pallavicino in 1665 wrote Chigi’s biography, chock-full of Olimpia stories, which he either witnessed firsthand or heard about from Chigi, who had witnessed them.

The early seventeenth century saw the advent of the first newspapers.
Avvisi
—which meant “notices”—were handwritten news sheets of two to eight pages, consisting of small paragraphs in chronological order with no headlines. An
avvisi
writer sold subscriptions to foreign courts, banking houses, and wealthy individuals. From 1640 to 1650 the Vatican lawyer Teodoro Amayden (1586–1656) penned weekly
avvisi
to the court of Spain and Spanish embassies throughout Europe. A neigh-bor of Olimpia’s who knew her and the pope well, Amayden included in his newsletters numerous stories about the pope’s controversial sister-in-law.

Gregorio Leti (1630–1701), who wrote the first biography of Olimpia just a few years after her death, lived in Rome during her reign and enjoyed high-level Vatican connections. Normally, a contemporary biography like Leti’s would be the best possible source, but unfortunately, Leti was biased against the Catholic Church in general and against Olimpia in particular. A convert to that rabidly anti-Catholic branch of Protestantism, Calvinism, Leti is accused by some Catholic scholars of

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making up his stories out of whole cloth. Yet most of his anecdotes are confirmed by the devout Catholic chroniclers of the time—Amayden, Gigli, Pallavicino, and the foreign ambassadors. In quoting Leti, however, we must bear in mind that he wrote for comic effect and exaggerated his stories to sell books.

Seventeenth-century Italians were extremely creative with their spelling of names, sometimes spelling the same name several different ways in the same letter. Pamphili is spelled Panfili, Panfilj, Pamphilj, and Pamphilio. Maidalchini is spelled Maldachino and Maidalchino. Cardinal Panciroli was also known as Cardinal Panzirolo. The reader is therefore warned of shifting Italian names in contemporary sources and is requested not to blame the copy editor or author.

Most sources disliked Olimpia’s interference in Vatican affairs—she was far smarter than almost all the men in her environment, and it hurt. But some fair-minded ambassadors praised her for her intelligence, dignity, and financial acumen. The French ambassador Bali de Valençais admired Olimpia, informing Louis XIV that she was, without doubt, a “great lady.”
⁷
Even Cardinal Pallavicino, who detested Olimpia, gave her grudging approval for her “intellect of great worth in economic government” and her “capacity for the highest affairs.”
⁸

While most men loathed her, and a few praised her, we don’t have a single line from another woman discussing Olimpia. We do, however, have reports of Olimpia fan clubs—women who camped outside her palace for days just to get a glimpse of her, women who cheered for her. They were fascinated that a female from a modest background had, in the face of all social, legal, and church restrictions, acquired wealth and power and told the pope and cardinals what to do.

The exact nature of the relationship between Pope Innocent and his sister-in-law was the subject of intense speculation at home and abroad. Even while his brother, Olimpia’s husband, was alive, the two were known to be unusually close. Most people believed that a physical relationship had stopped by the time Gianbattista Pamphili became pope, that the dignity of their situation and their advanced age—he was seventy when elected, and Olimpia fifty-three—would have precluded it.

Yet people couldn’t help but notice that many days, as the sun slipped

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below the Seven Hills of Rome, Olimpia slipped into the papal palace. According to one source, “Donna Olimpia goes to the pope always through the garden, so that no one, not even the butler, knows when she comes and goes.”
⁹
Sometimes she sat alone with the pope behind locked doors for as long as six hours. This nocturnal secrecy led to speculations of steamy senior sex in the Vatican.

But even if the rumors were true, it would not have been the sex that upset so many cardinals and diplomats, but the annoying fact that a woman wielded the power. Moreover, Olimpia was not running a secular monarchy like France or England; she was running the Papal States and the Catholic Church, making her position all the more shocking. The all-male bark of Saint Peter, guided so carefully through the shoals of fortune for countless centuries, now had a woman at the helm.

By the end of the seventeenth century, with new popes and new hopes, the scandal of Olimpia, which had gripped all Europe, faded and disappeared. Long forgotten now is her bittersweet tale of power, greed, and the glory of God.

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Part One

THE GIRL FROM VITERBO

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1

The Convent

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O do not be born a woman, if you want your own way.

—Lucrezia de’ Medici n May 26, 1591, as his wife’s shrieks pierced the air, Sforza Maidalchini waited impatiently for the birth of his child. Everything depended on the child’s gender. It absolutely must be a boy.

Born around 1560, Sforza was a man of humble birth and grandiose dreams. He grew up in the central Italian town of Acquapendente in the Papal States, a nation of some 1.5 million inhabitants covering roughly the central third of the Italian peninsula and ruled by the pope as earthly monarch. Looking around the world of late-sixteenth-century Italy, Sforza saw the yawning chasm between rich and poor, between those who feasted and those who starved. Wealth, position, prestige—these were the only things that mattered.

As a young man the ambitious Sforza was offered a job in the tax department of Viterbo, the capital of the province. His task was to assess the property and income of farmers and livestock owners in the fertile fields outside the town walls. Everyone who was anyone in town owned property outside of it, bringing in their own fresh vegetables and meat rather than buying them at market. Sforza’s work put him in

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contact with the richest, most powerful and successful men in the region—Viterbo’s wealthy landowners, politicians, and merchants.

While in many towns the tax collector was probably not the most popular man, Sforza had a special talent for winning the friendship of influential people, of making himself charming and indispensable. Working indefatigably, bit by bit Sforza moved up the ladder. He squir-reled away money; he was promoted in his job. Over the years, his prestige increased in the community. In 1590 he was given the honorary title of castellan of Civita Castellana, an ancient fortress near Viterbo, and put in charge of the men-at-arms of the nearby towns of Sutri and Capranica.

His prestige was rising steadily, and the ambitious plan he had outlined for his life was unfolding perfectly. But what good was all this effort if he had no son to carry his legacy into the future? Only a son could make the mediocre name of Maidalchini resound through the centuries with greatness.

True, Sforza already had a son from his deceased first wife. Andrea, born in about 1581, was the focal point of his father’s dynastic ambitions. But one son was not enough to guarantee the family line in a society where approximately 50 percent of children died young. Sforza knew he must produce an understudy for the role of heir to the future family greatness.

And to do so, the up-and-coming widower needed to find a replacement wife.

He did not need to look far. Sforza’s boss, Giulio Gualtieri, was a nobleman of nearby Orvieto who had won the position of tax farmer of the province from the government of the Papal States in Rome. It is testimony to Sforza’s hard work, thrifty habits, and valuable connections that Gualtieri gave him his daughter Vittoria in marriage with a generous dowry.

To his great joy, Sforza was now married to a nobleman’s daughter with a comfortable pile of money in the bank. He moved into a home owned by Vittoria—perhaps part of her dowry—in the Piazza della Pace, the square outside the church of Saint Mary of Peace. It was not a grand nobleman’s palace but a comfortable town house for a successful

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burgher. Built in the fourteenth century around a charming courtyard with a garden and well, it had been renovated in the early sixteenth century. In the main room Sforza had the ceiling beams adorned with gold, eight-pointed stars—the heraldic symbol of the Maidalchini family.

Poised to found a great dynasty, Sforza now needed only the insurance policy of a second son. Sons brought a family increased prosperity, prestige, and good luck. Sons cost very little to educate, given the huge pool of scholars willing to work as tutors. If the oldest son was heir to the family property, a second son could go into the church, a third son into the military. Sons were easy to dispose of, and each one that married brought money into the family in the form of his bride’s dowry.

What Sforza greatly feared was a daughter. There was an Italian saying of the time—“to make a girl,” which meant failure, disaster, plans gone awry. There was a reason for this. Girls sucked dry the family fortune with the dowries they required to marry honorably. A daughter would lessen the patrimony Sforza had saved for Andrea, dispersing it to another family. A girl would flatten the fortune and prestige of the rising Maidalchini name.