Mistress of the Vatican (41 page)

In 1638 Anna Colonna wanted a chunk of the body of Saint Filippo Neri to send to her new chapel in Naples. Neri, who died in 1595, had been a friend of Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s and had founded a religious order called the Congregation of the Oratory. Because he had died only some forty years earlier, his body had not yet been sliced up and distributed as those of ancient martyrs and medieval saints had been, and this corpsely integrity was a great source of pride to the Oratorians. Each year on his saint’s day, the body was brought out from under the altar and exposed to the faithful.

One day a priest who had some business in the Vatican happened to glance at a table bearing decrees awaiting Urban VIII’s signature. To his horror, on the top of the stack was a decree ordering Saint Filippo Neri’s exhumation and dismemberment. The priest ran to the Oratori-ans and told them that they were about to be robbed. The monks immediately appointed two of their brothers to hide the body without telling anyone its location, and then to hide themselves.

When the church officials came with their long knives, they had the tomb opened and found that the body was gone. The assembled monks said—quite honestly—that they didn’t know where the body was. Furious, the officials had to be satisfied with carting off some silver vases in which had been placed the saint’s heart, intestines, a nerve, a tooth, and some hair. Though sad to lose such valuable relics, the Oratorian fathers were happy they still had an intact saintly body—which the two monks dragged out of a closet once the furor had died down. But this

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intactness was not destined to last much longer. Once Anna Colonna heard they had put the body back, she sent someone by with a pair of clippers to snip off a rib.

And now in 1649 the new first lady of Rome wanted an impressive saintly relic. Olimpia truly needed such heavenly protection now, given the rising public hatred of her and its consequent dangers. And worse, the pope seemed to be distancing himself from her, ever so slightly. Perhaps it was just the stress of the job, but sometimes she didn’t like the look in his eyes or the tone in his voice.

Olimpia planned to put her relic in the Church of San Martino, which she had refurbished with Francesco Borromini. Olimpia’s new town and restored church urgently needed a holy relic to encourage pilgrims on their way to Rome to stop by and stimulate the local economy. And Olimpia knew exactly whose body she wanted to raid.

In 1638 the corpse of the fifteenth-century saint Francesca was found in the Church of Saint Mary on a hill overlooking the Roman Forum, where it had been buried 198 years earlier. Immediately the bones began to perform miracles. Sister Teodora Celsi, whose body had been withered and twisted for sixteen years, dangled her useless arms among the bones and suddenly felt warmth revive them. She opened her hands, which had been so tightly closed that her nails had grown into her palms. Two days later she returned to the saint to have her paralyzed legs healed. A blind person was restored to sight, two people possessed by demons were liberated, another cripple leaped up with joy, throwing away his crutches, and many were healed of fever.

After several days of performing miracles, the bones were dressed in fine new clothes, covered with silk flowers, and reburied in the original humble tomb. Bernini designed a grand new tomb in the same church, of exquisite marble crowned with bronze figures. On the night of March 9, 1649, the saint’s feast day, Saint Francesca’s coffin was to be moved to the new tomb. This translation, as it was called, was the perfect opportunity to pocket a relic.

Naturally there would be a stink if Olimpia swiped the whole body. Decorum decreed that she take only a piece. The best portion of a

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saintly corpse was always the head, which was thought to have the greatest power. And indeed, most saints’ bodies had already lost their heads to another church.

No, Olimpia decided, the head was too much to steal. And besides, somebody would certainly notice it had gone missing. She could take a finger or a tooth; probably no one would miss that. But such a small item would not give her church the prestige it needed. Then she hit upon the solution—the shoulder bone. Big enough to impress more than, say, a toe, it was a solid chunk of bone, but not as controversial as the head. She would pilfer the shoulder bone.

Saint Francesca had founded the Tor de’ Specchi Convent, where Innocent’s sister Agatha resided. The nuns there were looking forward to the translation as the most exciting event of their careers. They would leave the convent at sunset to make a torchlight procession through Rome up the hill to the church. There they would see the coffin opened, venerate the bones of their patroness, and watch the solemn entombment.

But when the nuns arrived after an hourlong procession, they found to their horror that the saint’s casket had been sealed with lead and already placed in the new tomb. Why hadn’t they been allowed to see the sacred relics? Then someone whispered that the monsignor charged with the translation had yanked the saint’s shoulder bone off and stuck it under his priestly tunic for Olimpia.

Giacinto Gigli wrote in his diary, “Anyone can imagine the chagrin that the nuns felt, the cries and lamentations that were heard through the whole Forum, and they said they would have thought that for the love of Sister Agatha, Pope Innocent’s sister, who should have been more respected and honored, they would have expected the contrary.”

But the monsignor who had done the dirty deed, Gigli continued, and “did not want to hear the cries of the nuns . . . was impolite. The next morning Sister Agatha went to the Vatican to see her brother the pope to complain and quarrel about it. He, at the insistence of Donna Olimpia, sent the shoulder to a place called San Martino near Vit-erbo.”
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Though Olimpia caught the most flack, she was not alone in abstracting something from Saint Francesca’s coffin. The august cardinals

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and government officials who witnessed the translation had also fished for plunder. There was no protest from the nuns because they had only taken third-class relics—snippets of clothing and silk flowers that had been put in the coffin back in 1638. But a first-class shoulder was a different matter altogether. A sacrilege, they cried. Pasquino roared against the pope, who permitted his sister-in-law to profane the holy bones.

They could complain all they wanted. Olimpia, for her part, was thrilled to have such an illustrious relic for her church. And surely the power of the bone would protect her from anything the Roman people tried to do to her. Perhaps it would make her brother-in-law return to his formerly docile self, obedient to her commands and grateful for her help. This new, independent Innocent made her oddly uneasy.

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While he was looking around for funds to ease the bread situation in Rome, it occurred to the pope that the duke of Parma still owed the apostolic treasury some 1.6 million scudi. In 1644, Urban VIII had gone to war over the debt, but having spent 12 million scudi with inconclusive results, the pope made a humiliating peace. The issue, however, had never been resolved.

On September 11, 1646, the swashbuckling Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Castro, had died, leaving his sixteen-year-old son, Ranuccio II, heir to his considerable debts. Innocent approached the young man in a friendly manner, suggesting how he could pay off the debt by selling various properties or simply handing them over to the Holy See.

For some two years negotiations continued, and it seemed that young Farnese was prepared to sign over a portion of his territory to satisfy his debt. But just before he did, the bishop of Castro died and a replacement was needed. Ranuccio insisted on naming the new bishop, but the pope declared that he and he alone had the right. When Innocent sent his newly appointed bishop to Castro, the bishop was murdered by Ranuc-cio’s assassins.

Insulted at home and abroad, Innocent couldn’t stand any more. Prodded by Olimpia, who hated the duke of Parma for supporting the

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princess of Rossano, the pope declared war. He hired an army, which he could ill afford, and stormed the fortress of Castro later that month. The garrison surrendered on September 2. Tired of Castro as a thorn in the papal side, and perhaps encouraged again by Olimpia, Innocent gave orders to raze to the ground not just the castle but the entire town. No two stones were left standing. The residents were dispersed, but not before one of them carved a sad stone for the site which read, here stood castro.
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Olimpia carted off the image of the Immaculate Virgin and two sets of church bells. Taking the church bells of a vanquished enemy was a Mediterranean tradition to flout one’s victory over an enemy, much the way Germanic warriors had turned the skulls of their enemies into drinking cups. Though Olimpia might have liked to drink from the silver-plated skull of the princess of Rossano, she had to be satisfied with the church bells of the princess’s closest ally. One set she placed in her Church of San Martino, and another she kept for the new Church of Saint Agnes she was planning to build next to her Piazza Navona palazzo.

During the Castro war, Olimpia lost her beloved half-brother. On July 29, Andrea Maidalchini died at Viterbo at the age of about sixty-eight. But if Olimpia mourned him, the people of Viterbo did not. Gigli commented, “He was much disliked because he bought all the grain, all the wine and oil, and then resold it at profit. He did not want to increase the bread at Viterbo where he was despised as the author of the famine. After his death the loaves became bigger in Viterbo.”
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The loaves also became bigger in Rome as a plentiful grain harvest put an end to the lingering famine. Gigli reported that on August 1, bread rose to a normal eight-ounce
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. He added, “For this the people stopped murmuring and many were happy enough.”
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The day of Innocent’s election he had named his old friend Monsignor Domenico Cecchini to the most important Vatican office—that of da-tary, a word that refers not only to the office but also to its director. The datary was the pope’s personal bank account. Each penny the church

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collected from indulgences, benefices, graces, privileges, offices, and taxes went into the datary, which then dispensed the funds to other departments, or to the pope’s relatives and friends, according to papal instructions.

The individual who served as datary was in the enviable position of being able to put his hand in the till without anybody knowing about it, at least as long as his theft was acceptably modest. In an era when accounting referred to scribes scratching lists of numbers on pieces of paper, there was ample room for fraud. Moreover, the position guaranteed the datary large bribes from those seeking pensions and honors from the church.

The selling of church and government offices was standard practice and a reliable way for the Vatican to make money. Each office was an investment that brought a guaranteed annual income. The position of protonotary, for instance—whose job it was to write the lives of the saints—was sold for 7,000 scudi and offered 400 scudi revenue a year. The office of lead, which ensured that all papal bulls had lead seals attached, cost an impressive 23,000 scudi up front but brought an annual income of 3,000. The transaction was a gamble for both the buyer and seller of the office. If the buyer lived for decades, the church lost money. If he died immediately after purchasing it, the church could turn around and sell it again.

The problem with office selling was that the most qualified candidate for the position was usually not the candidate with the deepest pockets. Many who bought an office had no intention of doing the work and subcontracted it out for a lower price, pocketing the profit. Sometimes the buyer was too cheap to hire a replacement and pocketed the entire salary without doing any of the work; in this case someone else in the office would have to write about the saints or order the lead.

Rome was not alone in selling offices and titles. In England, kings routinely sold noble titles to raise money for an empty exchequer. James I (reigned 1603–1625) came up with a new title—baronet—which he sold for over a thousand pounds to whoever wanted it. Many butchers and tailors who had run profitable businesses were suddenly able to buy their way into English nobility. His first year as king, James sold 838

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knighthoods—including one to a barber and another to a man who had married a laundress.

As usual, France did things on a grander scale than England, selling thousands of duplicate positions to raise money for its aggressive military campaigns. One French courtier wrote, “One of the most wonderful privileges of the kings of France is that when the king creates an office, God, at that very instant, creates a fool to buy it.”
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An extremely prestigious position was the groom of the stool, the man who had the rare honor of wiping the royal rear end. This position was highly prized because it allowed the owner to be very close to the king—closer than most of us would wish.