Mistress of the Vatican (60 page)

Hearing that he was being blamed for Olimpia’s presence, Cardinal Chigi burst into a tirade against her in front of Cardinal Antonio Bar-berini and several other cardinals, who exchanged meaningful looks. Now the Barberinis would never allow him to be elected the next pope. “But Chigi,” wrote his biographer, “had no ambition, and therefore had no fear.”
¹⁸

When Olimpia finally left the Quirinal that night, she was in quite a quandary. She could hardly throw out all the priests and cardinals standing around the pope’s bed and lock the doors behind them. She was forced to go home and leave them all there with the remaining two beautiful chests of gold under the bed. As she left the Quirinal, she was overheard to sigh, “So soon, so soon.”
¹⁹
Believing that the pope would die that very night and her house might be sacked and burned, she did not return to the Piazza Navona but stayed with Olimpiuccia at the Palace of the Four Fountains.

The cardinals were horrified that Olimpia had locked the pope up alone at night, but since he hadn’t complained, they hadn’t been sure how to proceed. But once the pope had been given last rites, the cardinals

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circled their wagons around him. The following morning at dawn, as Olimpia cheerfully marched into the pope’s chambers hoping to find the gold still under his bed, what she found instead was Father Oliva blocking the door.

This authoritative figure, holding a crucifix as if Olimpia were a vampire, prevented her from entering the pope’s bedroom. When she started to argue, he actually put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, saying she had no further business there. Fluttering, chirping about her concern for the pope, she hovered in the antechamber, ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice and get her gold.

During the pope’s last days, countless courtiers hoped to take advantage of his weakened state and request favors—pardons, indulgences, judicial judgments, and offices. But Cardinal Chigi stationed himself by the bedroom door like a dragon, telling favor seekers the pope’s thoughts must wend their way heavenward and not be tied to earth by earthly matters. Petitioners must save their requests for the next pope.

But Chigi could not prevent a scene on December 29 when Dr. Pari-sion, who two days earlier had persuaded the pope to distribute various vacancies, discovered that the pope had granted
him
no money. The datary had told him that now there was nothing left. Thinking the doctor was checking on the pope’s health, Chigi allowed him into the death chamber, where Parision threw a temper tantrum, yelling that the pope owed him money.

“Hearing this, the pope began to whimper and called the datary, and asked him if there was nothing to dispense. He replied that there was a pension for 50 scudi and a benefice in Calabria for 160, and the pope ordered that these be given to the doctor.”
²⁰
And now the Vatican bank was empty.

On December 30 the pope lost the power of speech and couldn’t eat for two days. His legs had swollen horribly, and one of them burst, “and out of it issued much water, and his delirium left and he came back to himself.”
²¹

During Innocent’s final illness, “Chigi stood by with assistance and orations, paying scarcely enough time to the needs of nature. The sadness, the stench, the application of his mind, and the long unease of

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kneeling in prayer gave him great bodily suffering, but he showed no fatigue of spirit.”
²²

The first week of January 1655, Gigli gave a gripping account of the pope’s final days. “The pope, against the opinions of the doctors and everyone else, was still alive,” he wrote, “and was in such bad shape that many had compassion for him. . . . The palace was so empty that there wasn’t even a bowl or a spoon to give the pope a bit of soup, and it was necessary to send someone to buy a bowl and spoon. And in bed the pope was under a vile blanket like the kind used by a poor person in a hospital. He had only the shirt on his back, all the other ones were gone. And there was only one candlestick of brass, which soon disappeared, and was replaced by one of wood.”
²³

Before Innocent expired, he made two requests. He asked the cardinals to choose a worthy successor—he highly recommended Cardinal Chigi—and he begged his family to stop fighting. Between seven and eight on the morning of Thursday, January 7, 1655, Pope Innocent X died. Cardinal Chigi closed his eyes.

Cardinal Pallavicino wrote, “Innocent X finally died on January 7, 1655 with the assistance of Cardinal Chigi, having reigned ten years, three months and 23 days, pretty much feared, not at all loved, not without some glory and happiness in foreign affairs, but ingloriously and miserably for the continuation of tragedies or comedies in his domestic life.”
²⁴

Gregorio Leti summed up Innocent as follows: “This was truly a pope worthy of the best memory if his sister-in-law had not lost him his reputation. . . . Instead, one was constrained to bury him in eternal oblivion so as not to mention his sister-in-law.”
²⁵
He wrote, “His suffering Donna Olimpia to rule all, his exaltation and abasing of his adopted nephew Astalli, his banishing and recalling Don Camillo his nephew, his persecuting and reingratiating with the Barberinis, in a word, his changing will and judgment every moment, and his inconstancy in everything, would have embroiled any government whatsoever, and much more the papal government, which is naturally full of confusion.”
²⁶

Giacinto Gigli was disturbed by a pamphlet published shortly after the pope’s death that denied a bit too vigorously that Innocent had died

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“with his eyes open and his face frightened and in great poverty, having been robbed of everything.” He added, “Unfortunately, it was all true, and it would have been better if this pamphlet had not furnished such information to the heretics.”
²⁷

It had been more than forty-two years since Gianbattista Pamphili, a thirty-eight-year-old monsignor living in a dilapidated row house, had met Olimpia Maidalchini, the twenty-one-year-old bride of his brother. Ambitious and energetic, with flashing dark eyes and an obliging smile, she had swept into his house and completely changed the trajectory of his life. And now that relationship, which had shocked first Rome and then the world, was over.

The pope’s master of ceremonies and his assistants removed his body from the bed and carried it to another room to be washed with cold water and herbs. His barber shaved his head and beard. His body was washed again with white wine warmed with fragrant herbs, then oiled with balsam.

The moment the body was gone and the room was empty, Olimpia ran in. She fell to her knees, scrambled under the bed, and dragged out both chests of gold. She had brought with her several burly servants to carry them quickly out of the palace and load them into her carriage. As the chests were being removed from the pope’s bedroom, papal servants raced inside to despoil what was left of the bed.

Olimpia galloped home, hoping no one would attack her carriage once the bells started tolling their news of the pope’s death. Once her carriage raced into the courtyard of the Piazza Navona palace, she barred the doors behind her.

Olimpia was now locked inside a prison from which she dared not emerge. Her greatest fear all those years of what men would do to her had come true, but they had not done it to her. Tragically, she had done it to herself.

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23

Unforgiveness

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Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

—William Congreve

hen Innocent’s servants returned his body to the bed, they found that the sheets had been stolen. They were forced to wrap him in a coarse wool blanket on the bare mattress while they went to find decent clothes to bury him in.

The bell ringers of Saint Peter’s Basilica began pulling on the ropes; the huge bells started to sway and, after several strenuous tugs, to ring. Churches across the city had been waiting for this signal for two weeks, and their bell ringers ran into their belfries and began tugging on the ropes. Soon all the church bells of Rome rang out, not the joyous pealing of a papal election or a jubilee but the slow thudding tones that signified the death of a pope.

As soon as the bells tolled, Pasquino, his friend Marforio, and the other talking statues of Rome were covered head to toe with nasty poems. A shocked Gigli noted, “There were published many verses and pasquinades that cursed the dead pope and Donna Olimpia, composed by ingenious but unwise people. Some were too biting, and some were impious, modeled on the Lord’s Prayer . . . and other prayers. Innocent

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was cursed as having satisfied the greed of a very greedy and infamous woman, and many other unworthy things.”
¹

The heretic cousin of King Charles X Gustav of Sweden happened to be in Rome and started collecting pasquinades to take back home. He ripped them off the talking statues and let the poets of Rome know he would pay gold for the most outrageous ones. Perhaps hearing of Queen Christina’s secret conversion, he intended to show Lutherans how Catholics revered their recently deceased pontiff. But as usual the worst ones were reserved for Olimpia.

Pasquino roared:

Finished is the lust

Of this old bag
Of the Piazza Navona
Let’s call the hangman!
Finished is the lust
The pastor is dead
The cow remains with us
Let’s have a feast of her
Let’s take out her heart!
The pastor is dead.
²

Because of the vicious verses, “many were imprisoned who had written such compositions, and four copyists were sent to the galleys, and others led to the prisons of the Inquisition of the Holy Office.”
³

At eight o’clock on the evening of January 7, a sad torchlight procession wound its way from the Quirinal Palace down to Saint Peter’s Basilica. The pope’s body lay on a mattress covered in red silk, on a cart pulled by black horses. Innocent’s master of ceremonies had rifled through the palace and found some decent clothing that had not been stolen. The corpse was dressed in red vestments and a red cap, white leather gloves, red velvet shoes embroidered with gold crosses, and a pallium, or white stole, that had rested overnight on the tomb of Saint Peter. A silk funeral cloth was placed over the body for the journey, leaving only the feet visible, and around these were wound a thin piece of gauze.

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The funeral procession was led by cavalry officers in full armor, followed by two cannon, each pulled by three horses. The pope’s grooms and other servants followed carrying torches. Directly in front of the hearse marched Camillo, Prince Ludovisi, and Prince Giustiniani. Next came the open hearse surrounded by a choir chanting psalms. The Swiss Guard, fully armed, marched just behind the hearse, followed by light infantry and three more pieces of artillery.

As the torchlight procession wound its mournful way toward the basilica, thunder rang out and it began to spit rain. Several minutes later, lightning ripped across the sky and a deluge drenched the mourners. They bolted for cover, every man for himself, leaving the dead pope in the middle of the street. When the rain subsided, the procession clumsily re-formed and brought the soaking-wet body to Saint Peter’s, where it was placed on the high altar, under Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s great baldachino, and over the tomb of the saint.

The morning of January 8 the pope’s body was exposed for the traditional three-day viewing. On January 10 the funeral was held. Olimpia is not mentioned in any reports of the funeral, and it seems that she stayed home, locked up with her gold, fearful of being torn to bits by the mob. Gregorio Leti assured his readers that she remained inside during the entire vacant See. “One certainly feared that during the vacant See the furor of the people would be carried to pillage her palace,” he explained, “and to insult her person so that she did not appear in public.”
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At the funeral the cardinals appeared in their traditional fuchsia-colored mourning garb, with no lace rochets over their gowns. But Cardinal Astalli, who had jumped onto his horse the moment he heard of the pope’s death, appeared wearing bright red robes loaded with lace. He had not forgiven Innocent for having disgraced and exiled him. During the funeral Mass, he refused to kneel, cross himself, or pray.

As shocking as Cardinal Astalli’s behavior was, there was a much greater problem at hand. The cardinals did not know what to do with the body after the funeral. It was customary for a pope’s family—who always milked the Vatican treasury dry—to at least pay for his funeral.