Mistress of the Vatican (59 page)

When Sixtus IV died in 1484, his master of ceremonies, Johann Bur-chard, had a terrible time trying to provide the corpse with a shred of dignity. The pope’s sacristan had stolen the bed and left the pope naked on the floor. “And indeed, despite my hunting from the sixth to the tenth hours,” Burchard wrote, “I was unable to find either oil or handkerchief, or any sort of receptacle, in which to put the wine and water scented with herbs to wash the corpse; and not even socks or a clean shirt to dress it.”
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The tradition had continued down to Urban VIII’s death in 1644 when his master of ceremonies couldn’t even find a candle to place beside the body.

Olimpia was not about to let plunderers take any of Innocent’s

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possessions. She ordered covered wagons to roll up to the courtyard of the Quirinal in the wee hours and had her servants carry down the fine tapestries, inlaid mahogany furniture, bed hangings, silverware, candlesticks—every single item of any value except the bed.

Olimpia’s third goal was to steal the papal treasury. Usually the gold reserve of the Papal States was kept in the heavily fortified Castel Sant’Angelo. But in the event of the pope’s illness or death, the guards would never allow her to simply walk off with the entire Vatican treasury. Somehow she had convinced the pope to take the gold out of Cas-tel Sant’Angelo and hide it under his bed. This was a secret known only to Innocent—who had probably forgotten by this time—and Olimpia.

During the pope’s last illness, every day Olimpia was quietly sneaking the gold out of his room. The public sedan-chair carriers took her into the pope’s apartments shortly after dawn, left her chair there, and came back for her at midnight. Throughout the day, when the pope was asleep or raving, she would crawl under the bed, drag out one of the chests, and put as much gold as possible into sacks. These she would put inside the sedan chair. The porters began telling stories in taverns of how much heavier Donna Olimpia was to carry at night than she had been in the morning.

Olimpia would have liked to stay in the pope’s bedchamber around the clock to keep her eye on the gold. Etiquette, however, demanded that she return home every night if only for a few hours; spies and journalists stood outside the Quirinal Palace and noted what time she left. She was deeply concerned that during her absence a servant or perhaps the doctor would peer under the bed and find the treasure chests. To prevent such an occurrence, when she left the Quirinal at midnight, she locked the pope in his bedroom alone. No matter how sick he was, no matter how urgently he needed water, a piece of bread, or a chamber pot, he would have to wait for assistance until she returned at sunrise the next morning.

Though the pope didn’t know it, in Brussels on Christmas Eve, Queen Christina of Sweden was privately received into the Catholic Church, abjuring her Lutheran religion. She would convert publicly in the coming months. It was another tragedy of Innocent’s reign that

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although the queen had converted under his pontificate, his successor would reap all the credit.

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When Olimpia left the pope’s bedroom periodically to allow his cardinal advisors in for an audience, she usually found Decio Azzolini waiting in the antechamber, and often Francesco Cherubini, the pope’s auditor. These men greeted Olimpia with great courtesy. Oddly, the secretary of state, who should also have been waiting, was nowhere to be found, not even in his office. After a while, it occurred to Olimpia that Cardinal Chigi was
avoiding
her.

Indeed, her suspicion proved correct. Chigi’s distaste for Olimpia had become so overpowering that he stationed a groom as a lookout; seeing Olimpia coming out of the bedchamber, the groom would race to Chi-gi’s office crying that Olimpia was on her way. Chigi would quietly slip away to hide from her.

One day Olimpia instructed a butler to ask Cardinal Chigi what she had ever done to him to make him run away from her. She did not expect cardinals to bow on bended knee before her, she added, but why could Chigi not greet her once in the antechamber, as the other cardinals did?

Cardinal Chigi politely sent word that he could be of no service to her in the papal palace, where he had urgent work to do, and a sick pontiff to attend to, and was often on his knees imploring God’s mercy for Innocent. But if she ever needed anything from him, she should let him know and he would gladly call on her at the Palazzo Pamphili—a polite way of saying women had no business walking in and out of the papal palace. To which Olimpia bellowed, “Thank God I don’t need anything from him!”
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That would change. Soon.

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There was an etiquette to seventeenth-century dying. The individual approaching earthly dissolution must summon relatives, friends, and even enemies to gather at his bedside for a rousing final speech. Even a

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life poorly lived could, to a certain extent, be redeemed by an edifying deathbed monologue decrying vice, groaning in repentance, and imploring forgiveness.

A pope, of course, had additional deathbed duties. According to the 1650
Relatione della Corte di Roma
, the dying pontiff must call his cardinals to gather around him. He must ask their forgiveness for any wrongs he had done them during his reign, and must endeavor to right those wrongs if possible. He must then give his recommendations for his successor, names they were to ponder deeply in the coming conclave. Finally, he must ask them to pray for his soul.

Innocent’s mind had been wandering his last several weeks. But now, just as his body was completely failing, he regained his mental clarity and knew what he had to do. Innocent told his majordomo, Monsignor Scotti, to summon Camillo to him, as well as the Ludovisis and Gius-tinianis. The monsignor first sent urgent word to Camillo and the princess of Rossano, who came immediately.

Giacinto Gigli wrote, “The pope asked pardon of the princess of Rossano for not having given her the satisfaction she desired, because he could have done better, and he prayed to God to console her with a new pope who would be more to her satisfaction. The princess did not reply.” She was, evidently, still seething with anger at him for bringing Olimpia back and giving her all the power.

The princess of Rossano left the death chamber in silence. As she swept down the marble halls, she must have been surprised to see Olim-pia at her side asking to have a word with her. Olimpia had decided that now was the time to drop her grudge against her daughter-in-law. Now the Pamphili family must close ranks to present a united front against all enemies.

Olimpia said that she was sorry about the misunderstandings of the past, but that among relatives “there is always some little thing.” The princess replied angrily, “Between us there was never some little thing, but some very big things, and it was all the fault of Your Excellency, and how I will revenge myself for it!”
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And with a swish of her train, she was gone.

Having cast her pearls before swine, Olimpia was livid. She stormed

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into the pope’s bedroom and told him what the princess had just said to her. Dying though he was, he called Camillo back and angrily “ordered the Prince Pamphilio his nephew to render obedience to his mother Donna Olimpia, charging him to profess to her his gratitude with all respect and obsequiousness.”
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Olimpia next chastised Monsignor Scotti for inviting the princess of Rossano to the deathbed when the pope had only called for Camillo. The majordomo replied that it had seemed the right thing to do and he did not have to obey
her.

Olimpia’s daughters arrived with their husbands and children. Having spoken to his family, Innocent called for his cardinals. He first sent messengers to two he had banished from his presence—Cardinal Cecchini, the former datary, and Cardinal Sforza, whom he had punished for speaking against Olimpia. Gigli recorded that Cardinals Cecchini and Sforza “came right away and the pope reconciled with them and took them by the hand and said many kind things.”
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The one banished cardinal he did not send for was Cardinal Astalli; still stewing about his betrayal, Innocent said that he had plenty of reasons to keep him in exile.

In the meantime, the pope told Camillo to summon all the other cardinals in Rome. Gigli gives a moving description of the pope’s final meeting with the Sacred College. “In the dinner hour, they all came running with great haste,” he wrote, “and the carriages went to Monte Cavallo and returned to pick up others with such speed that it seemed they were flying, and there was such a crowd of carriages that the piazza in front of the palazzo was full, and the courtyard and street of the four fountains up to the church of Saint Catherine of Siena . . . and all the cardinals were gathering in front of the pope’s bed.”

Gigli continued, “And he asked pardon of them if during his pontificate he had not given them the satisfaction that was required, saying that sometimes anger had made him do things he should not have done, and then he exhorted them to elect a pastor for the Holy Church who was good and better than he had ever been, and not to guard the interests of the crowns but to think only of the Holy Church.”
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The pope then expressed his desire to make little Gianbattista Pam-phili a cardinal. Though the pope had every right to do so, the cardinals

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knew that by making a six-year-old a prince of the church the pope would shame the Catholics and make all the heretics laugh. They talked him out of it.

“He said many kind things to all the cardinals and to each one of them he recommended with great sentiment Cardinals Cecchino and Sforza and their families. Almost all the cardinals left, and it was observed that Sforza left crying and Spada had a face as red as fire.”
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On the morning of December 27, Dr. Matteo Parision suggested that Innocent fulfill the other requirement of papal death etiquette—the distribution of vacant benefices and pensions to cardinals of moderate means, as well as to deserving court prelates and his own household servants. Innocent called for his datary and gave him instructions.

That evening, seeing the worried looks on the doctors’ faces, Cardinal Chigi asked them if the time might be right for the pope to receive the last rites, and they sadly nodded. Chigi called for the pope’s private confessor, the Jesuit Father Giovanni Paolo Oliva. When told it was time, Innocent received the news calmly, according to Cardinal Pallavi-cino, and “with admirable readiness and tranquility disposed himself for the sacraments of penitence and the viaticum.”
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The pope first confessed, whisking away the last cobwebs of sin clinging to the corners of his soul. Then he took the viaticum, his final Eucharist and last spiritual meal for the road. Father Oliva dipped his thumb in consecrated olive oil and anointed the pope’s eyes, saying, “By this holy unction, and through his great mercy, may God indulge thee whatever sins thou hast committed by sight.”
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He then moved on to the pope’s ears, lips, nostrils, hands, feet, and groin, asking God to forgive the sins committed through those body parts.

Olimpia had discreetly slipped away before the last rites, and Cardinal Chigi hoped that she had gone for good. At such a solemn moment he believed the dying pope should set his sights on God, not on his reputed mistress. Looking in the nooks and crannies of the papal apartments, Chigi could find no trace of Olimpia. Satisfied, he went downstairs to the papal kitchens.

The exhausted cardinal sat down to his meal. But before he could plunge a fork into his food, a servant came running up with the unwel-

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come news that Olimpia had tried to enter the pope’s bedroom as Father Oliva was anointing him with holy oil. Chigi was furious. Another messenger raced up to him—this one from Cardinal Francesco Bar-berini—with the urgent request that he return to the pope’s side immediately.

But Chigi refused to enter the pope’s chamber as long as Olimpia was there. Only when he heard she had gone did he go back upstairs to visit the pope. When Chigi learned that Olimpia and her daughters had not left the palace but were stubbornly sitting in an antechamber, “he could not hold back his exclamations against this annoying occurrence.”
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His anger was exacerbated when Signor Febei, the pope’s master of ceremonies, told him that a delegation of honored persons had appeared at the foot of the Quirinal with a message of reproach for Chigi, whom they knew to be in charge of the deathbed. “The luster that the pope had acquired in the last preparations for death was stained when women came to recommend his soul,” they said.
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