Mistress of the Vatican (19 page)

But it was all right. Camillo could dither as much as he wanted as long as he performed the one duty his mother assigned him. He must marry the girl of her choice.

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A widow was supposed to shun society, speak rarely, and fasten her eyes on the floor lest she be tempted by worldly vanities. She was to put away her jewels, pray daily for her husband’s soul, never talk to unrelated men, and above all, never be seen laughing. A virtuous sense of shame was to imbue her every action. Interestingly, advice manuals of the time encouraged widows to shun the society of their brothers-in-law; while virgins didn’t know what they were missing, widows were considered to be sexually insatiable and easily led astray by even the closest relatives.

Olimpia evidently did not read advice manuals for widows. She looked men straight in the eye, spent more time than ever with her brother-in-law, and, bedecked in diamonds, attended theatrical performances at which she guffawed most loudly of all. She also hunted regularly. Now and then the Viterbans were treated to the unusual sight of a grieving widow racing across the fields after a fox, her billowing black weeds flapping around her.

Nor did Olimpia give up speaking to unrelated men. According to the ambassador of Mantua, she was “haughty and entered into conversations more than was seemly for a widow, and spent many hours gambling.”
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Olimpia was passionate about card games and held late-night gambling parties in her palace. She loved beating her opponents,

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slapping down her cards with a cry of victory and raking in their cash. Gianbattista’s cautious nature was adamantly opposed to gambling, but he enjoyed the parties nonetheless, talking with important guests and listening to the musicians.

Olimpia did not attend the balls or feasts of other noble families very often. Her contemporaries said this was due not to grief over her husband’s death but to her avarice—she would then be required to reciprocate by giving expensive festivities of her own. Considering that she did give expensive festivities of her own from time to time—elaborate theatrical performances in her palazzo—it is more likely that she found the events of others boring. She far preferred small dinner parties at which she could talk to powerful men about politics and finance and win them over to support Cardinal Pamphili in the next conclave.

Olimpia had one sore spot in conversation. She became noticeably disturbed when those around her praised the generosity of other women. “Women,” she would counter, “were to amass riches, not to dissipate them.”
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Most men would have disagreed with her.

In the late 1630s Olimpia found a clever way to avoid dissipating her riches when she wanted frescoes painted in her expanded palazzo. Hearing that the talented artist Andrea Camassei, who had worked for Urban VIII, had been thrown into debtors’ prison, Olimpia generously offered to pull a few strings with her Vatican friends and spring him if he promised to paint her rooms for free. The artist was in no position to argue and worked the next year at the Piazza Navona house without being paid a single scudo.

In the 1630s and early 1640s, Olimpia had one goal—to line up sufficient cardinals to elect Gianbattista pope. He was, more than ever,
papabile,
having reached the age of sixty in 1634. His reputation as an able if stern churchman had been enhanced by increasing honors and positions of responsibility.

In 1637, Urban VIII suffered a serious illness from which it was thought he would not recover. He did recover, but his health was never the same, and ailments kept him in bed for weeks at a time. Papal power slipped into the hands of his cardinal nephews, and for several years a conclave was expected at a moment’s notice.

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One of the main stumbling blocks to Olimpia’s papal aspirations was Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who had been responsible for the mysterious death of her young Gualtieri cousin in the early 1630s. Though Cardinal Pamphili was unfailingly polite, the mere glimpse of him seemed to Cardinal Antonio like a biting accusation. He simmered with resentment and often tried to provoke Gianbattista publicly by pricking and prodding him with cruel remarks. Here Gianbattista’s lifelong habit of caution assisted him; at an insult flung at him by Cardinal Antonio, the older man would merely hold his tongue and politely bow.

It was unfortunate for Olimpia that the cardinal nephew of the recently deceased pope was invariably the leader of the conclave that followed. Antonio would do his best to prevent Gianbattista’s election, if only to avoid the vengeance he so richly deserved for seducing and killing his nephew. Undeterred, Olimpia went to work on other cardinals. “She never spoke of her brother-in-law but with much modesty, trying however with every effort imaginable to discover the sentiments that the other Cardinals had for him,” Leti wrote.
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Olimpia also had to win the favor of foreign ambassadors, particularly those of France and Spain, who had a say in papal elections. It was a delicate diplomatic balancing act. If she too openly courted one faction, the other would oppose Gianbattista in conclave. According to Leti, “When she had occasion to converse with someone from the Span-ish faction, she assured him of her brother-in-law’s inclination for this crown. On the other hand, when she spoke to someone from the French crown, she never forgot to persuade him of the secret affection he had for their interests, saying that he could better advance them in secret than in the open.”
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Fueled by the bloody battlefields of the Thirty Years’ War, the dramatic rivalry between France and Spain convulsed Vatican politics, as well as daily life in Rome. Partisans of Spain hung the Spanish royal coat of arms over their doors, and their enemies, the supporters of France, hung the French fleur-de-lis. Both nations sought to attract with lucrative pensions the prelates and cardinals of the Roman court, and some cardinals switched loyalties frequently, depending on which crown offered them the most money. The Roman people were amused

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to find that sometimes a cardinal’s palace would bear one coat of arms as the sun went down and the rival coat of arms when it rose. As word spread, people would gather to point fingers at the new coat of arms over the cardinal’s door and laugh.

Such was the case of Cardinal Virginio Orsini, who, according to Teodoro Amayden’s newsletter of August 1647, “was a Spaniard and on his palace he had the arms of the Catholic King. When his son died he became a Frenchman and shortly afterwards a Spaniard once more; at present he is French again—for how long no one knows.”
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One day Cardinal Mario Teodoli went to Teodoro Amayden lamenting that he had never received anything from Spain and had large debts to pay. France was offering him a generous subsidy if he would place himself in the French camp. The fiercely pro-Spanish Amayden met with the top Spanish cardinal, Gil Alvarez Carillo de Albornoz, to see if something could be done, but Spain, alas, could not afford it. Cardinal Teodoli said, “Since the Spaniards don’t want to help me, I have gone into the camp of the French, though reluctantly.”
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The rivalry of France and Spain had so infiltrated Roman society that even clothing reflected one’s preference. Women showed their support for France or Spain by the side on which they wore their hair ribbons—on the right of the head for Spain, on the left for France. Men showed their allegiance by the color of their stockings—red for France, white for Spain. The position of the feathers in their hats was also indicative of political preference—right for Spain, left for France. Even the cut of one’s beard had a huge political significance. Cardinal Teod-oli first signaled his approaching shift into the French camp by wearing his beard in the clipped, pointed French style. Sure enough, a few days later his palace bore the French coat of arms.

Openly advertising one’s allegiance in the form of stockings and beards often resulted in tumults in the street. Men wearing red stockings, for instance, might attack a group wearing white stockings, which sometimes resulted in murder and days of riots. Some men chose black stockings simply to avoid being assaulted the moment they went out their doors.

It was not known whether Olimpia was pro-French or pro-Spanish,

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and it seems likely enough that Olimpia was pro-Olimpia. She didn’t wear hair ribbons of any color, and her political leanings seemed impenetrable under her long black widow’s weeds. She instilled in Gian-battista the need to show strict impartiality so that no one faction would oppose his election in the next conclave. And his red stockings, if they could ever be glimpsed beneath his long robes, were simply part of a cardinal’s uniform.

The enmity between France and Spain was further complicated in 1640 when Portugal, which had been a Spanish state since the last Por-tuguese king died in 1580, rebelled against its heavy-handed overlords. The Portuguese found a relative of the last king and proclaimed him King John IV. Spain was horrified by the rebellion; losing the huge harbor of Lisbon and the colony of Brazil would reduce it to a second-rate power. The Spanish king sputtered angrily about treason and sent soldiers to regain the rebellious region. The French were delighted at the revolt and supported Portugal with men, arms, and money.

But Portugal’s status depended greatly on being recognized internationally. After France recognized the new nation, there was a deafening silence. Portugal pushed for recognition from the Papal States and sent as ambassador the bishop of Lamego in the summer of 1642. The Span-ish ambassador, the marquis de los Vélez, was so furious at Portuguese effrontery that on the night of August 20 he attacked the bishop’s carriage in the streets of Rome with a group of armed men. Seven retainers died in the brawl, after which the French and Spanish ambassadors, and the Portuguese bishop, galloped out of Rome in a huff.

While the dispute over Portugal only ruffled diplomatic feathers, the pope’s disagreement with the duke of Parma led to a costly war. Odo-ardo Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza, despised Prince Taddeo’s insistence on precedence and felt irreparably insulted by the pope’s upstart nephew. On a visit to Rome in 1639, he refused to cede precedence to Prince Taddeo and snubbed Anna Colonna publicly. One morning he even barged into Urban’s Vatican bedroom, yanked open the papal bed curtains, and complained bitterly to the startled pontiff under the bedspread about the arrogance of his nephews.

This behavior reminded the pope that Odoardo owed the Papal

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States loans amounting to 1.5 million scudi. The Barberini nephews thought this was an excellent opportunity to become dukes themselves, seizing Farnese’s tiny duchy of Castro as forfeit for the loans. Urban sent ten thousand troops under the command of Prince Taddeo to take Cas-tro. Cardinal Antonio strapped on armor over his red robes and rode into battle. But the French, Venetians, Mantuans, and Tuscans gave financial support and troops to the duke of Parma. The pope found himself politically isolated, and the cost of the war strained the papal coffers beyond their capacity.

With the Vatican treasury bankrupt, the futile campaign ended on March 31, 1644, when France mediated an embarrassing peace in which everything was returned to the way it had been before the conflict. But the scorched earth of Umbria, the Romagna, and Ferrara—historically the most fertile regions of the Papal States—could not so easily be returned to its former state. Neither could the empty coffers of the Vati-can treasury fill themselves up again as if the war had never happened. The pope had spent some twelve million gold scudi on his army, though many thought that the Barberini nephews had pocketed a large portion of this sum.

In all probability the humiliation of the war of Castro hastened the pope’s death. On July 2, 1644, the seventy-six-year-old Urban VIII became alarmingly weak. Cardinal Francesco informed his uncle that there were eight vacancies in the Sacred College at the moment and suggested he stuff the conclave with Barberini friends. But Urban, who knew that quite soon he would be standing before a tribunal even greater than that which Galileo had faced, would not hear of it. He died on Friday, July 29.

The camerlengo, or chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, performed the ancient and solemn ritual that took place immediately after a pope’s death. He hit the dead pope on the forehead three times with a silver hammer, each time calling his name. If the pope did not answer, the camerlengo solemnly announced, “The pope is dead.”

Surely the cardinals gathered around the bed would have been

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shocked if the pope had sat bolt upright and cried out, “I am still here. Stop hitting me on the head with that hammer.” But like all popes before and since who were whacked with the hammer, Urban lay still. The camerlengo then broke the papal fisherman’s ring—the pontifical symbol of office—and officially reigned himself until the election of a new pope.

During Urban’s final illness, his servants had, according to tradition, descended on the papal apartments like ravenous locusts. They stripped his rooms of everything not nailed down, with the exception of the bed, which they generously spared for the dying man. According to Teodoro Amayden, Urban VIII “died like the other popes, unhappily, without a holy candle to light, and after much searching one was found in the church of Saint Mary of the Spirit, and taken to him.”
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