Mistress of the Vatican (54 page)

At first Olimpiuccia’s father, Prince Andrea, refused to return her to Olimpia. His mother-in-law’s interference with his daughter had always irritated him. But finally he realized that the future of the Pamphili family depended on the marriage. If the Pamphilis had any hope of obtaining a friendly pope in the next conclave, Olimpiuccia must be sacrificed. And so he reluctantly drove her back to the Piazza Navona but told everyone who would listen that his daughter’s unhappy fate was caused by his nasty, meddling mother-in-law, who had originally planned to marry her to that imbecile Francesco Maidalchini, who had, thank God, gone into the church.

In May 1653 the haughty Cardinal Antonio Barberini set out from Paris with a great entourage to return to Rome, where he would be welcomed with triumphal arches and numerous festivities. And on May 30, the dowry documents, written in the florid style of the time, were signed.

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The Most Excellent Signora Donna Olimpia Maidalchini Pam-phili, Princess of San Martino, promises the Most Excellent Signor Don Maffeo Barberini, son of the Most Excellent Signor Don Taddeo Barberini of Most Happy Memory, and of the Most Excellent Donna Anna Colonna, to give him as his legitimate wife the Most Excellent Signorina Donna Olimpia Giustiniani her granddaughter and daughter of the Most Excellent Signor Andrea Giustiniani, and of the Most Excellent Signora Maria Pamphili, niece of His Holiness, which granddaughter the Signora Princess of San Martino has educated since the first months after her birth, and loved as if she were her own daughter . . .”
¹³

The dowry was 100,000 scudi given by the bride’s father, but the
av-visi
noted that Olimpia had provided 70,000 of it herself.

On June 15, the sobbing child bride and the morose groom were married by the pope himself in an elaborate ceremony in the Sistine Chapel, attended by the entire Sacred College. Immediately after the ceremony, the marriage feast was held at the Pamphili Palace. The bride’s grandmother was absolutely delighted, the groom’s mother less so. Anna Colonna, who had avoided for nearly a decade marrying a blue-blooded child of hers to a parvenu Pamphili, looked on the marriage as a degradation and a necessary evil. Having Olimpia in her family would be a daily martyrdom for the haughty princess. We can imagine her sour-faced and purse-lipped, picking at her food with a silver fork—not tin anymore—while a beaming Olimpia dug into her meal with hearty gusto.

After the feast, the groom was supposed to take his bride to her new home, the exquisite Palace of the Four Fountains. But Olimpiuccia raced up to her old bedroom and locked the door. The wedding guests could hear her loud sobs echoing through the walls. Then she threw open the window and cried at the top of her lungs that she wanted to become a nun, that she wanted to die a virgin and poor, and that she had never agreed to marry for money. She shrieked that she knew what her husband expected of her that night because a waiting woman had told her, and she wanted no part of it.

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The people milling around the Piazza Navona admiring the carriages of the wedding guests stopped talking and listened intently. The bride then swore that she would not unlock her door until Maffeo Bar-berini went home without her. Olimpia had never imagined that her moment of greatest triumph—the union of the Pamphilis and Bar-berinis that she had planned for nine years—would be spoiled by the stubbornness of a twelve-year-old.

The humiliated groom hung around disconsolately, not knowing what to do. Finally, Olimpia persuaded him to go home. She had raised Olimpiuccia from birth and knew her better than anyone; she would talk to her and bring her to his palace the following day. But now Olim-piuccia proved herself to be Olimpia’s granddaughter and vowed to use church law against the fate concocted for her. Since in the eyes of the church a marriage was no marriage until consummation, she knew that she was, technically, not married. If she held out long enough, embarrassed the Barberinis long enough, perhaps they would annul the contract and she could get out of the whole thing.

To a great extent Olimpiuccia’s behavior was the fault of her grandmother, who had raised her to be brash and strong in a world that en-deavored to crush weak females. Teodoro Amayden informed his readers that Olimpia had told the child again and again, “Olimpiuccia, never let anyone underestimate you! You must be the boss of everything.”
¹⁴
Little had Olimpia considered that this lesson would be used against herself.

Days turned into weeks, then months. Messengers galloped back and forth between the Piazza Navona and the Barberini Palace. Maffeo visited periodically, hoping that his bride would get used to him. Olim-pia convinced her granddaughter to permit Maffeo to hold her hand and give her a little kiss, but that was all she could get out of her.

Surely it helped Maffeo’s marital humiliation to be treated as a reigning prince; ambassadors called on the new “nephew,” bowing and offering him rich gifts. Whenever he visited a noble palazzo, the bells pealed in celebration. Yet his hold on the title of papal lay nephew was tenuous because the marriage had not yet been consummated.

Olimpia tried to cajole Olimpiuccia to join her husband and, mistakenly thinking she was speaking to a younger version of herself, raved

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about the social prestige she would enjoy, and the lavish entertainments she would give in salons far larger and more beautiful than those in the Palazzo Pamphili. For Olimpiuccia would live in the magnificent Palazzo Barberini, the palace Olimpia had always had her eye on, with its triumphal staircase, forty-foot ceilings, and splendid fragrant gardens. But here Olimpiuccia differed from her grandmother. She did not care for such things, she said, and preferred the deprivations of the convent to the luxuries of the Palazzo Barberini. She wanted to die a virgin, and poor.

Olimpia called in her daughter Maria, Olimpiuccia’s mother, who had never been very involved in the girl’s upbringing, to do what she could. Maria begged her daughter to obey for the sake of the family. Many young girls, she pointed out cheerfully, were forced to marry ugly, sick old men. Maffeo Barberini was only twenty and not bad-looking. But Olimpiuccia—old enough to understand sex but young enough to despise the idea of it—repeated that she wanted to remain a virgin for life.

All Rome gossiped about this unconsummated marriage, and the pope grew troubled. Easily angered, he fired his
maestro di camera,
Monsignor Centofiorini, and other household employees for poor performance. He ordered his doctor, Gabriele Fonseca, not to come into his presence unless summoned. Giacinto Gigli noted, “And he has become so grouchy that all his servants fear being fired.”
¹⁵

On June 29, after celebrating the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the cranky pope stopped by the Piazza Navona to see how work was coming along on the Church of Saint Agnes. He noticed that ungainly stairs had just been built, which jutted out into the piazza, ruining its oval symmetry. They were so ugly, in fact, that people had begun saying the Four Rivers Fountain figure of the Nile had draped its head so it wouldn’t have to look at them.

Seeing the pope, the masons ran up to him and complained that Ca-millo had not paid them. Innocent was furious. He ordered that the stairs be demolished. He fired Camillo as overseer of the project and the Rainaldis as architects. To finish the job he brought in Francesco Bor-romini, who had the challenge of making major modifications to a

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building already half constructed. It would be a long process, and the pope despaired of ever seeing the church finished. Where would his bones rest when he died? He became depressed, and as usual, his health suffered.

Worried about the pope’s health, Olimpia decided he needed an invigorating visit to Viterbo and San Martino. The pope, who usually disliked travel, was actually looking forward to the diversion. When Dr. Fonseca forced his way into the pope’s room to warn him of the dangers of the journey, the pope fired him. Cardinal Chigi, too, advised him not to go. He was concerned not only with the pope’s health but with the glorification of Olimpia, which seemed to him the sole purpose of the journey she had arranged. The pope, of course, didn’t listen. On Sun-day, October 12, at 8 a.m., the entourage left Rome.

Innocent was so eager to see San Martino that he bypassed Viterbo entirely, leaving the welcoming committee twiddling their thumbs. He was carried up the double-snail staircase of Olimpia’s palace and settled into the bedroom she had built specially for him, with an interior door connecting to hers. When the dignitaries of Viterbo, hearing of the pontiff ’s sudden change in plans, raced to see him, he received them on the papal throne of the audience chamber Olimpia had designed for him. Above him was the gilded ceiling that could be raised or lowered; on three sides were long windows looking out over the green hills. For several hours Innocent graciously granted audiences to local churchmen, officials, and nobles.

Cardinal Chigi, who had been dragged along unwillingly, was shocked to see an inscription on the gate outside Olimpia’s palace that stated that Pope Innocent X had given her the principality. He pointed out to the pope that Rome-bound travelers rumbling by on the main road—Catholic and heretic alike—would see the inscription and, knowing all the scurrilous stories about the pope and his sister-in-law, would laugh at it. Innocent reluctantly agreed that it had to be removed and told Olimpia, who now held another grudge against Chigi.

The following day, the entourage rode the three miles to Viterbo, where the pope was received in the cathedral by none other than Cardinal Francesco Maidalchini. The little cardinal had been assigned the

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benefice with the sole purpose of getting him out of Rome so that the pope wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. Compared to the intrigues of Rome, the peace and quiet of Viterbo had suited Cardinal Maidal-chini, who was still only twenty-three. Perhaps he was nervous as the pope was carried in his litter up to the altar—Innocent had been known to yell at him in front of the most important visitors. But when Innocent emerged, he was in high spirits and showed unusual kindness to Olim-pia’s nephew.

The pope next visited Olimpia’s younger sisters in the Convent of Saint Dominic. Having left the convent, the papal carriages rolled to Olimpia’s Nini palace for a reception. Here was where her worldly success had begun. Here she had known wealth of her own for the first time. Here she had discovered sex. Here she had borne two children; and here she had lost two children. Here she had become a widow when twenty-three-year-old Nino breathed his last. Here she had plotted her further advance in the world and had gone looking for Pam-philio Pamphili, nobleman of Rome. It must have meant a great deal for Olimpia, bringing the pope into her past, in full sight of the citizens of Viterbo. If there were any still alive who had treated her badly when she was young, she must have doubly relished her victory.

On the road back to San Martino, the cavalcade stopped for refreshments at the hunting lodge called Il Barco, built by Olimpia’s half-brother, Andrea, who had died four years earlier. It was a frescoed jewel of a house, with a floor-length wall fountain in the entry-level hall and bedrooms leading out onto charming balconies with outside staircases. A little church stood behind it, and orchards all around it.

The self-important Andrea had always hated it when people pointed to his younger half-sister as the source of his power and wealth. She alone, they said, had given him the wherewithal to build his hunting lodge. But they were wrong. As tax collector of Viterbo, Andrea had stolen the money all by himself. Still, the insults rankled. He had inserted a marble slab into the outside wall where carriages drove up, stating that he had built the residence in 1625, “before his sister Olim-pia went as wife to the brother of Pope Innocent X.” Yet his sister Olimpia had gone as wife to the brother of Pope Innocent X in 1612.

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At Il Barco, Olimpia played a joke on the pope. In and around Vit-erbo, October was the time of the famous chestnut harvest. Olimpia had secretly arranged for roasted chestnuts to be tied on the trees. She then instructed the Swiss Guard to gather them for the pope, and he laughed heartily when he tasted them, proclaiming it a miracle. When Monsignor Acquapendente, the governor of Viterbo, paid his respects, Innocent was so jolly that he promised to make him a cardinal in the next creation, a promise that he kept.

The entire visit was a great success. Innocent enjoyed it immensely, and away from the cares of Rome he felt younger and healthier than he had in years. He didn’t even let the usual family disturbances unduly worry him. On the road home, a group of laborers blocked the papal carriage and informed the pontiff that Prince Giustiniani had hired them to fill potholes for the pope’s visit but now that the work was done wouldn’t pay them. As punishment, the pope refused to honor the prince’s castle with the expected visit. Camillo had come along on the trip, leaving the princess of Rossano in Rome, and told the pope that his marriage was unbearable. The princess never stopped nagging him, and he wished he could be cardinal nephew again.