Mistress of the Vatican (9 page)

When Rome enjoyed peace and plentiful harvests, bread “rose” from its usual eight ounces to ten or twelve ounces. The poor survived well enough, working where they could and having just enough to buy bread, lettuce, and a little oil as salad dressing. But whenever Rome and its surrounding countryside suffered war, drought, flood, or epidemic— or when the pope withdrew Vatican bread subsidies to give the money to his greedy relatives—bread “fell” to six or even four ounces. Then the poor starved, dying on the street in a disheveled heap of ribs and rags.

The social safety net of the times was created not by the government, which did little to help the poor, but by confraternities—charitable orga-nizations of laypeople attached to a particular neighborhood church. Each confraternity had its own special form of charity. Many attended the sick and dying. Some fed the hungry. Others provided dowries to poor girls or helped orphans and widows. One confraternity focused on reforming prostitutes, perhaps the most challenging job. Another one counseled death row prisoners in their cells, accompanied them in the tumbrel to the place of execution, and stood next to them as the execution took place.

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Eleanor Herman

But the generosity of confraternities was never enough to ease the boundless suffering in Rome.

Working-class Romans usually lived their lives outside. Markets were held in every square. Artisans worked in front of their shops. Women set up spinning wheels in front of their homes and yelled to their neigh-bors and passersby. The main occupation of Roman citizens, living on the street as they did, was gossip. They were quick to note who was going in and out of which house, how long they stayed, and what they looked like when they came out.

As comfortable as the Romans made themselves on the streets, they had to be ready to run at a moment’s notice. In some ways, seventeenth-century Rome resembled a Hollywood version of the American Wild West. Street fights would erupt between the armed entourages of two feuding families or two dueling ambassadors. Shots would ring out, swords clash, and all those who had been lounging, working, or selling on the streets would vanish in an instant behind bolted doors and shuttered windows. Only once the violence had stopped would the Romans come out to gape at the dead bodies littering the pavement.

Worse dangers lurked in Rome than the spontaneous eruptions of baroque cowboys. Until 1875, when flood banks were built, the Tiber River was level with the streets and houses around it. Floods were an ever-present problem, and every decade or so a raging torrent killed hundreds of Romans in low-lying areas. In a few hours entire sections of the city could be flooded to a depth of ten or twelve feet. The Jews suffered most of all, as they had been crammed into the lowest-lying part of Rome right next to the river by papal decree.

Sometimes when the river surged suddenly, inmates incarcerated in Rome’s Tor di Nona prison drowned in their cells as water poured in the barred windows and rose to the ceiling. During the two or three days the waters remained at their peak, Rome resembled Venice. Red-robed cardinals canoed through the streets offering blessings and— more important—bread to the starving, who lowered baskets from their second-floor windows.

When the waters receded, houses, roads, and public buildings were filled with sewage and mud. Sometimes typhoid broke out. And with

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each new deluge the ruins of the ancient forum disappeared a little more into the twenty feet or so of silt, deposited there by centuries of floods. The jagged tops of triumphal arches and colossal temples stuck out of the mud, tombstones commemorating the glories of a vanished race.

Fires, too, were an ever-present threat. Logs rolled out of fireplaces; untended candles shed sparks on straw-covered floors, and suddenly a whole city block was ablaze. As residents ran naked into the streets, dragging out chairs and tables, the volunteer fire brigade passed buckets of water from the nearest fountain, which was often quite a distance away. Since water thrown from a bucket had little effect on a raging inferno, most fires were simply allowed to burn themselves out, while “firemen” doused the roofs of buildings across the street to prevent sparks from igniting.

Even the ancient stones themselves posed a threat. In Olimpia’s time most of the buildings were hundreds of years old and had been patched together from parts of imperial Roman baths and basilicas. The city had no salaried building inspectors, and every few months a house, a tower, or a wall would groan in pain and come crashing down with very little warning, killing everyone in its path. Even the most exalted Romans were not spared the dangers of falling masonry. In 1499 the ceiling of the Vatican audience chamber fell on Pope Alexander VI, knocking him unconscious and killing the servant standing next to him.

Casting a penetrating gaze around her new city, Olimpia must have realized it was dirtier, noisier, uglier, and far more lethal than Viterbo. But it was here, in Rome, where she would finally realize her lifelong dream of working in politics. Her new husband, Pamphilio, would surely want her advice.

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4

The Brother-in-Law

q

I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.

—
Portia, William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar ignor Pamfili her husband, like most Italian men, conducted his business affairs without asking his wife’s opinion or advice,” reported Gregorio Leti.
¹
In fact, the normally lethargic Pamphilio was horrified when his vivacious new wife peppered him with questions about his political business and cheerfully suggested she become his advisor. If Pamphilio Pamphili had one firm opinion about how the world should work, it was that women had no place in men’s business affairs. And here, for the first time in her life, Olimpia was truly stymied. Pamphilio was adamant, and there was nothing she could do to change his mind.

But even if she couldn’t get involved in politics, there were many tasks to keep Olimpia busy. There was, for example, charity work. Though Olimpia could be tight as a tick with her money, she would always be known for her generosity to nuns. She had great compassion for women who had not been clever enough to escape their lifelong imprisonment, as she had. In those convents with strict rules of poverty, the nuns sometimes went hungry, the roofs leaked, and there were no fires in winter. Olimpia visited convents often, chatting

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

cheerfully with nuns in the parlor. She brought bedding, linens, firewood, food, and cash for structural repairs.
There but for the grace of God go I.

While most women spent an unconscionable amount of time gossiping with one another, Olimpia generally disliked the company of her own gender. “She spoke little when in the ordinary company of women,” Leti noted. “But she spared no words when dealing with men.”
²
Olim-pia often said that chattering with women was a waste of time. Silly, empty-headed creatures, most of them, twittering about babies, balls, and bows. And yet, Olimpia must have made the requisite social calls on Rome’s powerful noblewomen if only to ensure their assistance in the future, once she had figured out how she could use it.

But getting an entrée into society wouldn’t be easy. Roman nobles inflated their importance based on their lineage. They pointed with pride to the popes and cardinals rotting in the family vault, to their ancestors’ valiant feats of arms five hundred years earlier in the Crusades, to their mildewed palaces glimmering faintly with traces of bygone glories among the leaks and mold. The further these glories receded into the past, the less affably a noble family would welcome a wealthy nou-veau riche newcomer. Many members of that closed and hostile society must have treated Olimpia with ice-cold hostility.

Olimpia would have known immediately the esteem in which her hostess held her by how far out of her audience chamber the noblewoman came to meet her. Roman etiquette was cruelly precise. The host or hostess showed the greatest respect by waiting outside for the guest’s carriage to arrive, an honor usually reserved for royalty or the relatives of popes. A fairly well respected visitor was greeted at the bottom of the stairs. A visitor of so-so importance would find the hostess at the top of the stairs, mumbling apologies for not being able to come down.

Those who were genuinely disliked would be ushered all the way into the hostess’s audience chamber by the butler to find the hostess sitting grimly in her chair. The same etiquette was used upon the visitor’s departure. When the visitor rose to leave, and the hostess merely stood and didn’t set foot outside the room, the visitor knew she was despised, or at least looked down upon as greatly inferior.

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Eleanor Herman

Olimpia would have found a few of her hostesses—those truly kind women eager to welcome a newcomer—at the top of the stairs. But later events would show that many had snubbed her badly when she first moved to Rome, and we can assume this snub took the form of calcified noblewomen glued to their chairs. A tax collector’s daughter from Viterbo, these grand dames would have grumbled, who married an old man from the minor nobility for his title. Why should they get out of their chairs for
her
?

Back at her Piazza Navona palace, Olimpia must have suffered greatly from their unkindness. Though she seemed unflappable in public, she would never forget how these snooty women had treated her, and she would never forgive. One day she would wreak her revenge, she vowed, a vow that she would in time fulfill.

As a Roman nobleman’s wife, Olimpia would have employed many more servants than she had as Paolo Nini’s wife in Viterbo. A
scalco,
or meat carver, was a sign of great prestige. The
scalco
’s exuberant slicing of fish, beef, poultry, and game rivaled a theatrical performance. He was in charge of all the knives in a household and kept them sharp and sparkling. More important, he guarded the food from the time it was purchased until it reached his master’s table, making quite sure no one had spiced it with a bit of arsenic. The 1668 butler’s guide to a noble household,
Il perfetto maestro di casa,
declared that the
scalco
“has his master’s life in his hands.”
³

The
coppiero,
or wine steward, was in charge of all wine and water for the table. He worked with local wine dealers and vintners outside Rome to purchase the finest vintages available for his master’s entertaining. He obtained the cleanest water possible for the waiters to pour from silver ewers over the guests’ hands at the start and end of meals, the water running off into silver bowls. He stocked the family carriage with a traveling bar of crystal goblets and fine wines should his master or mistress require refreshment on a journey. And he kept the wine under lock and key to make sure the other servants did not quaff it down and show up drunk for work, a common occurrence in noble households.

But according to
Il perfetto maestro di casa,
the
coppiero
had one duty

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of greater urgency than all others: he “must use great diligence especially in households where there are enemies, and hatred, keeping a watchful eye on the wine cellar and the lesser servants, because if wine, water, or their containers are switched, there can be disastrous consequences.”
⁴

The
credenziere
was in charge of all things related to setting the table and buffet—silverware, platters, pitchers, glasses, napkins, and tablecloths. To guard these valuables, which were made of silver, gold, and crystal, he slept in the pantry where they were kept. He had to wipe them clean before each meal to make sure no enemy had secretly entered the house and coated them with hemlock.

Olimpia’s new household was required to follow the painstaking etiquette required for a Roman nobleman. For instance, whenever Pam-philio raised his glass to drink, all his servants standing stiffly in the dining room were required to remove their hats in veneration. And when the Ave Maria bells rang out from Rome’s hundreds of churches at sunset, all the servants were required to fling themselves on their knees and pray while the nobles removed their hats and bowed their heads.

The dignity of a Roman nobleman was measured in the number of his retainers, most of whom rode noisily through the streets following his carriage no matter where he went—to church, to a friend’s house, to his tailor, even to his mistress. When the
maestro di casa
rang a particular bell, within fifteen minutes all male members of the
famiglia
were required to be mounted on a horse, ready to fly through the streets of Rome behind their master. Those who were not ready would forfeit a week’s meals. Even the cooks, gardeners, and servant boys would fling on the family livery and race madly through the streets, creating as much din and dust as possible.