Mistress of the Vatican (28 page)

The infamous Borgia pope, Alexander VI, invited prostitutes to the Vatican for orgies as a form of court entertainment, awarding prizes to those of his servants who made love to them the greatest number of times. In the wake of Martin Luther, most popes were stricter with prostitutes. Pius V (reigned 1566–1572) tried to banish them entirely, but the Roman senate begged him to reconsider. If amorous priests

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could not visit prostitutes, it was argued, they would seduce the wives and daughters of virtuous citizens. Other popes encouraged confraternities to reform the whores of Rome and give them dowries for marriage, which culled a few off the streets. Sumptuary laws were passed limiting the luxury of the clothing they wore in public and forbidding them to keep carriages.

Morals aside, the Roman civic government was concerned about prostitutes because of the illnesses they spread. The Hospital of Saint James, with beds for up to three hundred patients, specialized in treating syphilis. Every day the patients would be bled and administered a concoction that contained mercury. Although mercury diminished the symptoms of syphilis, it made the hair fall out, and eventually the teeth, and sometimes the mind would follow the hair and teeth as they rattled into oblivion.

Olimpia decided to take the prostitutes of Rome under her wing, evidently in return for a substantial donation. This transaction was not unusual as various groups in Rome paid an influential person to act on their behalf as a kind of lobbyist. Having won Olimpia’s official protection, prostitutes affixed her coat of arms over their doors, a warning sign to the police and church officials that they were under the personal protection of the pope’s most excellent sister-in-law. They were permitted to ride in carriages if they painted her coat of arms on the carriage door.

Teodoro Amayden was scandalized. He wrote in his
avvisi
of August 30, 1645, “The prostitutes parade in their carriages in the most solemn religious festivals, because Donna Olimpia, after having been given presents by the same, was content to take them under her protection, and permitted them to tack the arms of Her Excellency above their door and allowed them to go in carriages without any regard, as if they were honorable people.”
²

But there was more scandal to come. It was, indeed, an unusual sight for a woman reputed to be the pope’s mistress to go in a great cavalcade of carriages to the Vatican for political consultations. Olimpia alighted from her coach clutching stacks of petitions and requests for the pope, along with the replies she had already written for the pope to sign. She

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then stepped into a sedan chair, which was carried up to the pope’s private apartments. In meetings with Innocent and various cardinals, she told them exactly what she wanted them to do, as the pope nodded in agreement.

The Venetian ambassador wrote, “And she from time to time with masterly haughtiness is carried into the palace with a file of petitions, most of them her own decrees, and spends hours with His Holiness to discuss the matters. . . . The jokes that went about the court were hidden from the pope.”
³

The Mantuan ambassador stated that Olimpia clattered around Rome with such a staff of pages and retainers that her “magnificence rendered the sisters-in-law of the three prior popes almost modest.”
⁴
On February 11, 1645, the Florentine envoy reported, “Olimpia’s influence grows daily; she visits the Pope every other day and the whole world turns to her.”
⁵

Cardinal Pallavicino concluded, “So adding up the pope’s feelings toward her, the close affinity, obligation, esteem, the conformity of interests, and his popularity right after his election, there began to be verified the predictions of the court, that if Cardinal Pamfili would be pope, Olimpia would be the ruler.”
⁶

As pope, Innocent became more suspicious of men than ever, and the only churchman he completely trusted was his secretary of state, Cardinal Panciroli. But Olimpia trumped Panciroli, and the cardinal knew it. Though later events would show that he was irritated by her influence, to keep the pope’s friendship he paid court to her. Gregorio Leti wrote that Panciroli “was fain to go in person very often to wait upon her, and give her an account of all the secret negotiations of the court, and everything that passed through his hands, after which she would from time to time go to the Vatican, followed by a numerous company of coaches.”
⁷

In addition to Panciroli, many other cardinals had the good sense to fawn on Olimpia, flattering her, sending her presents, and asking her advice. They even hung her official portrait in their audience chambers, right next to the pope, as if she were a sovereign herself, or perhaps co-pope.

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Olimpia’s house became a second Vatican court. The Piazza Navona was crowded with the carriages of powerful churchmen and ambassadors who came to call on her. Cardinal Pallavicino wrote, “She fed her ambition by having her antechamber full of prelates and 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.”
⁸

In a document from 1651, Abbot Gianbattista Rinalducci wrote that Olimpia “had all the vices of a woman, and none of the virtues. She was avaricious, insatiable, haughty, scornful, implacable, arrogant, impetuous, sensual, and drunk with the financial prosperity of the papacy, which she alone absorbed.”
⁹

The French ambassador, Bali de Valençais, had a better opinion of Olimpia. In his instructions to his successor in Rome, he compared Olimpia to the mythical Pope Joan. “One cannot deny that Donna Olim-pia is a great lady,” he wrote. “Great, because she knows how to advance herself, to absent and present herself in the favor of the pope with such prudence that the court of Rome, which is used to marvels, is amazed. Being a woman, she appears to want to accumulate with too much industry, enjoys vendettas and, finally, makes a great show of her predominance. But I must repeat that she is a great lady, and if one pretends that a woman attained the papacy in former times, she would have had to have been as wise, shrewd and prudent as she. . . . Your Eminence must procure her affection, and this should not be so difficult seeing how she is the genius most adapted to want good for France rather than to please Spain.”
¹⁰

The Venetian ambassador, Nicolò Sagredo, wrote that Olimpia’s “judgment is truly of a marvelous quality. She knows how to satisfy all her desires with the authority of a minister.”
¹¹

Even Leti, who heartily hated Olimpia, gave her grudging kudos. “Truly this woman deserved all sorts of praise for her mind and judgment, even if some criticized her and called her avaricious and impious,” he declared. “It is certain that no one but Donna Olimpia could have governed even six months in those bad circumstances let alone six years.”
¹²

In addition to her political work, Olimpia had the more traditional re-

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sponsibilities as the pope’s official hostess and first lady of Rome. The liturgical calendar was crammed with saints’ feast days and processions, and every few months another foreign prince would send an
obbedienza
cavalcade. At these events Olimpia sat proudly in the seat of honor. Additionally, when the wives of new ambassadors or traveling princes arrived in Rome, they first called on Olimpia to pay their respects. She was then expected to accompany them to papal audiences for the supreme honor of kissing the pope’s holy feet. Visiting men, however, usually called on the pope first, and then on Olimpia.

As the sun set, Olimpia often returned to the Vatican for secret work sessions. She sat alone with the pope behind locked doors, sometimes for as long as six hours at a time. One anonymous source noted, “Donna Olimpia goes to the pope always through the garden, so that no one, not even the butler, knows when she comes and goes.”
¹³
People began to wonder why Olimpia sneaked into the Vatican at night, why she stayed so long, and what she and the pope were
doing
in there.

But Olimpia was, most likely, doing something infinitely more pleasurable than having sex with her brother-in-law—setting the Vatican finances in order, just as she had done with the Pamphili family finances. Gregorio Leti grumbled, “This woman made the pope retrench all expenses she deemed superfluous, obliging him to reduce wages and the appointments of officers . . . and finally putting him in the mood to see so great an economy even at his own table.”
¹⁴

“In everything one sees an exquisite slenderness,” Giacinto Gigli wrote in his diary.
¹⁵
So slender, in fact, that during the first anniversary celebrations of Innocent’s coronation, the bells of Rome’s churches remained stonily silent because Olimpia had fired the bell ringers.

Olimpia’s official monthly stipend as first lady of Rome was only 250 scudi, plus the 18 scudi a month for laundering the pope’s underwear. But she would make far more money by taking bribes for influence peddling.

The Mantuan ambassador wrote, “Having great authority with the pope, all recognize her to get honors, offices, and favors, purchasing her efficacious intercessions in the form of extravagant gifts, so that giving them becomes obligatory.”
¹⁶

According to the Venetian ambassador, “Donna Olimpia Maidalchini,

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sister-in-law of His Holiness, the only recipient of the favors of the pope, is a lady of intelligence and masculine spirit and only makes herself known as a woman through her haughtiness and avarice, from where it is necessary that the favor-seekers at court give her incessant obsequiousness and continual gifts.”
¹⁷

The ambassador of the republic of Lucca explained, “The signora Donna Olimpia, sister-in-law of His Holiness, governs absolutely the business of the house of Cardinal Pamphili her son. And at the age of 48 or thereabouts [she was 53], of singular valor and greatly esteemed by the pope, it is the universal opinion of the court and of all Rome that she is the most powerful and efficacious means to obtain graces and rewards from His Beatitude. She goes frequently to private audiences with His Holiness once or twice a week where she is always needed, and in this favorable environment she obtains commodious honors and great gifts.”
¹⁸

The culture of the time didn’t look at gift giving as corruption; bestowing handsome presents in the hopes of influencing the powerful was, after all, only common sense. Olimpia had done it for decades to position her brother-in-law to become nuncio, cardinal, and pope. Now, sitting at the pinnacle, she would reap her reward as other ambitious people gave gifts to her. It was only fair.

Bribery was endemic not only in the Papal States but throughout Europe. When Peter the Great began executing corrupt state officials, one of them summed up the international situation when he quipped, “In the end you will have no subjects for we are all thieves.”
¹⁹

Pasquino had a field day with the cartloads of gifts trundling into Olimpia’s Piazza Navona courtyard. In ringing Italian rhyme he said,

He who wishes a favor from the sovereign,

Bitter and long the road to the Vatican. But the shrewd person
Runs to Donna Olimpia with full hands, And there who wants it attains it,
And the street is wider and shorter.
²⁰

Olimpia, always short, had indeed been getting wider lately.

As a close relative of the reigning pope, Olimpia was doing nothing

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new in accepting bribes in return for her influence. Her zeal for power and wealth would have been lauded in a man; after all, almost every cardinal and Roman nobleman had the same aspirations. But there was one problem with Olimpia: she was a woman, operating at the apex of the oldest continuously existing misogynistic institution in the world.

q

To understand Olimpia’s position in the Vatican, and public reaction to it, we must first take a look at the historical relationship of the Catholic Church and women. It had started off well enough; Jesus and Paul had been close to women, traveling with them to spread the word of God. Jesus’ female followers stood loyally at the cross when his male disciples ran away to hide. After the crucifixion, many apostles traveled with their wives to spread the gospel. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul wrote, “Don’t we have the right to take believing wives along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Peter?”