Mistress of the Vatican (5 page)

Most girls, asked by the bishop in a private interview if they took the veil willingly, nodded their assent through tears, knowing their fathers were waiting outside the door with a big stick. But Sforza Maidalchini knew that the fearless Olimpia could not be badgered or beaten into submission. She had to be handled carefully.

It is likely that he started off in a friendly, persuasive tone, letting her know that their family’s future depended on her. The brother whom she loved, who was by now married and a father, depended on her. Her sisters had obeyed, and Olimpia, too, must obey. Her family had loved her and cherished her, and now she must make a sacrifice for them. She would be well cared for in the convent. The family would visit her often.

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Perhaps Olimpia found strength in the fact that four hundred years earlier another fifteen-year-old Viterban girl, Saint Rosa, had defied an emperor, and Sforza was no emperor.
Absolutely not,
Olimpia told her father.
No convent for me.

Maybe cajolery would work. Sforza instructed Olimpia’s aunt, the abbess of Saint Dominic, to persuade her. For a girl of Olimpia’s strong personality and love of financial affairs, a convent offered the only path to a management position, Aunt Giulia explained. Olimpia could eventually become abbess herself, running the convent and its fields, farms, and orchards, administering justice and punishment to the nuns, dealing with the local bishop.

Using the small dowries the new nuns brought with them, the abbess made loans to trade guilds and private individuals, accruing annual interest, and bought rental properties, which she administered. The abbess invested in the
monti,
state-issued bonds with a guaranteed fixed income. A good head for business was required for the exalted position of abbess, and Olimpia, with her leadership skills, her abacus brain, and her financial genius, would, without doubt, make a magnificent one. She declined the offer.

When her aunt bemoaned the dishonor that would taint the Maidal-chini family if Olimpia married beneath her, the girl replied firmly, “Lady Aunt, it is better that I should lose my family than my body should burn.”
⁷
Olimpia was probably referring to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which he declared, “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

By now Sforza had had enough. Olimpia’s refusal was becoming a very public humiliation. Everyone in Viterbo knew he wanted her to join her sisters in Saint Dominic. Everyone also knew that his daughter was making him look like a fool.

We can imagine that one day Sforza has a servant call her into his sitting room. She finds him there with thunder on his brow, the grim paterfamilias, sitting in his large wooden chair, high-backed with thick arms. He begins yelling at her that she is only a girl, that she has no right to say anything about her own future. That this is a man’s world, where men rule, and she will obey, not instruct
. That the only place for

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M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n

a girl like her is the convent.
He rises, towering over her, his angry words melting into a blur as the blood throbs in her ears.

And Olimpia, short and slender at fifteen, a mere slip of a girl, stands before him, tiny and defenseless. She gets smaller and smaller, shrinking beneath the verbal blows, the insults, and the threats. And as she shrinks, something inside her hardens. Her father, the one man who was supposed to love and protect her, is betraying her in the worst way possible. She will never forgive him. She will never forget. And she will find a way to wreak her revenge.

While Beatrice Cenci had murdered her tyrannical father, Olimpia Maidalchini would feel far greater pleasure in humiliating hers, in wounding him right where it would hurt the most, by shattering his reputation in Viterbo. There was the added advantage that a girl would not be beheaded for
humiliating
her father. Olimpia would bide her time and find a way to pay him back.

Undeterred by her latest refusal, Sforza came up with another idea. He put a young Augustinian confessor at Olimpia’s side all her waking hours to convince her to submit to the paternal will. The man was highly regarded by the Viterban community for his patience and adherence to strict Catholic doctrine. Perhaps this likable priest, with his persuasive manner of speaking and his extensive knowledge of biblical precepts, could wear down the stubborn girl.

Olimpia listened silently to the priest’s interminable harangues, one of which was most likely a sermon on “Honor thy father and mother.” Through narrowed eyes, she must have seen the priest as her deadly enemy, in league with Sforza, the two of them trying to bury her alive. Well, she would pay them both back. One day Olimpia secretly took out her quill, her ink, and a piece of paper, and scratched a letter to the bishop of Viterbo, Gerolamo Matteucci.

It was Olimpia’s good fortune that Bishop Matteucci was a strict churchman, described in the
Bishops and Dioceses of Viterbo
as “occupying himself in church business with perhaps too much severity.”
⁸
He had sent several colleagues into exile for minor infractions, to the loud protests of the Viterban community. Such a stickler for the rules would not allow Sforza to disobey the Council of Trent with a wink and a shrug.

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Eleanor Herman

Sforza Maidalchini, she wrote, was trying to immure her in a convent without her consent, going willfully and knowingly against the rulings of the holy Council of Trent. And, for good measure, to further humiliate Sforza and punish the nagging priest, she added that the priest had tried to sexually molest her.

Perhaps Olimpia snuck out of the house and scurried across town to the bishop’s palace, knocked loudly, and handed her letter to his butler. As she must have suspected, her accusation had the effect of a bomb exploding. Bishop Matteucci forwarded Olimpia’s complaint to the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition in Rome. The priest was taken into custody, hauled up before the tribunal for crimes damaging to Christian morality, found guilty, and imprisoned for six months on bread and water, his career ruined. And the furious bishop forbade Olimpia’s father to force her into a convent.

And so Olimpia had freed herself from the awful fate that loomed before her. But at what cost to herself and the Maidalchini family? As she passed in the street, people whispered, elbowed one another, and laughed. Many citizens of Viterbo felt she had made up the molestation story to get out of the convent, ruining the career of an innocent priest who had been quite popular with his parishioners. A rebellious, vicious girl, they said. Others felt she was telling the truth, that she was the innocent victim of a lecherous cleric, and everyone knew there were plenty of
them
.

But whether the Maidalchini girl was guilty or innocent, the scandal left an indelible stain on her reputation. On the surface at least, she didn’t seem to care. She had accomplished many things with that letter, and indeed, she could be proud of herself. She had escaped the convent, humiliated her father, and punished the priest. She had carefully drawn her bow, aimed her arrow, and let it fly. It had hit its mark with deadly precision, punishing those who had hurt her.

Olimpia walked through town with her head held high, as she always would when under fire. As with many strong people, Olimpia never showed the cracks in her armor. She grieved secretly and put on a brave face to the world so no one would ever have the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Years later, when life’s vicissitudes once more hit her

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brutally, publicly, when people threw stones at her in the street and spat on her, Olimpia was known to shrug and quote an old Italian saying. “I am like a beaten horse,” she would say. “The beatings just make my coat glossier.”
⁹

Over time Olimpia’s thirst for revenge and her stony face would cause the world to believe she was coldhearted. Indeed, it is a common mistake to think that those with strong leadership qualities never shed a tear in grinding sorrow, that they never feel the throbbing pain of a broken heart, that betrayal does not cut them as deeply as it does the easygoing. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Those who dominate, given their quick intelligence and high expectations, often feel the blow more keenly, suffer more cruelly, cry more bitterly.

And the fact that Olimpia’s revenge was always so calculated, so deadly, was proof of how much she truly did care, of how much she had loved and hoped, of how deeply she felt betrayed. Those who had caused her bitter pain would suffer bitter pain themselves. It was, after all, only fair.

With the priest scandal, Olimpia had learned a valuable lesson that she would never forget. She had learned that she, a weak female, had the strength to break authority—the authority of the church, of the family, of society in general. And her tools in tearing down authority were lies, manipulation, and outright resistance. Only with these tools could she balance the handicap of being female. Given the cruelty men were always imposing on women, she must have viewed these weapons as permissible in her fight against injustice, in her right to protect herself.

Sforza, who had over the course of decades so carefully crafted his standing in the community, was devastated. The bishop was furious at him. The Holy Roman Inquisition frowned upon him. He had escaped excommunication by the skin of his teeth. His neighbors and business contacts either pitied him or ridiculed him behind his back. Sforza’s well-intentioned efforts to protect his family had backfired disastrously. Given the magnitude of his disgrace, maybe Sforza was no longer up-and-coming. Maybe now he was down-and-going. And it was all Olim-pia’s fault.

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Eleanor Herman

There was another problem in addition to his damaged reputation, and this was a truly perplexing predicament. Olimpia had seen to it that a convent was out of the question. And it was unthinkable for a grown woman to live unmarried either with her parents or by herself. Yet whatever chance Sforza had had of finding a decent husband for her had surely vanished in the wake of the priest scandal. At this point, Sforza probably didn’t
possess
enough money to persuade a man to take the scandalous Olimpia off his hands.

Who would want to marry her now? What on earth was he going to do with Olimpia?

But Olimpia knew she
would
find someone decent to marry her. She
would
have money, status, and power, and then no one would ever try to stuff her into a convent again. To prevent men from dominating her, she would dominate men. To prevent men from hurting other women, she would take the poor, the outcast, and the powerless of her own sex under her wing. And all those who were foolish enough to stand in her way would feel her wrath.

It was, after all, only fair.

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2

The Wealthy Landowner’s Wife

q

Wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

—Ecclesiastes 10:19 ver the next year or two after the priest scandal, when Sforza Maidalchini was at his wits’ end over what to do with Olimpia, it became apparent that the richest young man in Viterbo had his eye on her. Twenty-year-old Paolo Nini was the nephew of Olimpia’s godmother, Fiordalisa Nini. His father, Nino, had died, leaving him the sole heir to a large fortune that included two palaces in Viterbo, inns, vineyards, shops, farms, and rental property. In addition to wealth, the Ninis boasted several deceased relatives who had been high-level church officials.

Perhaps Paolo was attracted by the whiff of scandal that wafted about the bright-eyed girl like exotic perfume. Unlike the many dutiful, meek, obedient girls in Viterbo, any one of whom he could have married, Olimpia was exciting. Olimpia was rebellious. Olimpia was very, very smart. Olimpia would, perhaps, be a tigress in bed.

Nothing is recorded of Paolo Nini’s character. But given what we know of Olimpia’s, he must have been a good-natured young man

O

Eleanor Herman

whom she could easily dominate. Cheerful, jolly, easygoing—exactly the kind of man Olimpia would have been attracted to. She would never stand for a man likely to demean her for being a woman.

Maybe Sforza saw the young man’s eyes follow his daughter’s sprightly figure when she went to Mass. Or perhaps, at the annual procession of Saint Rosa, Paolo Nini’s gaze lingered on her, and such a glance would not be lost on the eagle-eyed Sforza. Here was the perfect solution to all the family woes. If only Paolo could be enticed all the way to the altar despite the pitiful dowry, Olimpia would have the worldly life she longed for—a husband, household, children, and social position. The Maidalchini family prestige would rise dramatically. The terrible priest scandal would fade to a vague wisp of old gossip when compared with the reality of the prosperous landowner’s wife.

In any event, it is likely that once Sforza was aware of the attraction, he did everything humanly possible to encourage it. We can assume that using his considerable charm, he invited Paolo to dinner, card parties, and hunting expeditions, events where Paolo and Olimpia could spend time getting to know each other. And we can assume that Olimpia, using the considerable Maidalchini family charm she had inherited from her father, did her level best to win the rich young bachelor.