ON THE FOURTH DAY after his death, Urban VIII was laid in a casket of cypress, which was placed in a lead coffin engraved with his name, his coat of arms, and the years of his reign. According to custom, before the coffin was sealed, a scroll listing the dead pope’s pious deeds was placed at his feet. It is not known when or why this tradition began. Perhaps it was for the dead pontiff to read to Saint Peter to convince him to open the pearly gates.
Interestingly, a sack of gold was also placed beside the pope’s corpse, probably a vestige of the ancient Greco-Roman tradition of putting a coin on the mouth of the deceased to pay the ferryman to take his soul over the River Styx. Urban, however, as a Catholic, would have used it to pay the heavenly gatekeeper if he had remained unconvinced by the list of pious deeds. Armed with the scroll and the gold to help him on his journey, Urban was laid to rest in Saint Peter’s Basilica beneath a magnificent marble effigy of himself in pontifical robes, with his right arm outstretched in blessing, a black winged skeleton crouched at his feet. Only half finished at the pope’s death, it was being sculpted by the incomparable Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
While the funeral solemnities, rich with music and incense, took place inside the church, in the streets of Rome violence broke out against the dead pope and his greedy family. Papa Gabella, they called Urban; Pope Tax. He had placed sixty-three new taxes on the Roman populace to support his nephews, and despite the increased taxation, at his death the Vatican treasury was nineteen million scudi in the red. Angry mobs raced around Rome with hammers, disfiguring as many Barberini bees as they could reach on fountains, walls, and bridges. Crowds waving hammers tried to hack to pieces the statue of Urban in front of the civic government building of the Campidoglio, but soldiers with guns and cannon successfully defended it.
Ferocious pasquinades were placed all over the city. Giacinto Gigli noted sadly, “The people vented against the dead pope and the Barberinis with injurious words, their pens writing every evil, and there were an infinite number of compositions published, some in Latin, some in Italian, some in prose and some in verse, so that I believe there was never anything like it…. If Christians treat the head of their own church this way, what will the Turks and Heretics do?…Many other verses were against the Cardinals, making fun of the customs, vices, inclinations, and defects of each one, especially those who aspired to be pope.”1
For centuries, the vacant See had been a time of anarchy in Rome. Those wanting to settle an old score would wait for years if necessary to carry out the deed after the pope died, when the police were hopelessly overwhelmed with crime. Every morning bodies, many headless, appeared on the streets or floating down the Tiber.
Vacant See violence was exacerbated by the fact that upon a pope’s death, prisoners were let out of jail in imitation of Pontius Pilate’s freeing Barabas at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. Sometimes debtors didn’t want to be released, knowing that their creditors were waiting just outside the prison door ready to beat them. The jailers would try to smoke the reluctant debtors out, accidentally suffocating some of them.
On the day of the pope’s death, Giacinto Gigli, serving a stint as one of Rome’s fourteen caporioni—a kind of city councilman—went into one prison himself carrying a ring of large keys to unlock the cell doors. A huge crowd had gathered on the square in front of the prison to watch Gigli, followed by soldiers, drummers, and prisoners, march pompously outside.
After their release, many of the more violent prisoners immediately formed gangs, which roamed the streets, broke into houses, plundered, raped, and murdered. The princely households barricaded themselves inside and hired armed guards to stand watch with loaded pistols and drawn swords. Servants patrolled the roof, ready to throw rocks at any would-be attackers below.
Merchants hid their merchandise, schools ceased instruction, and courts were suspended. The entire city pulsated with suspense, hoping that a new pontiff, and the order he would bring with him, would come soon. The liveliest places in Rome were the gambling parlors where people wagered on which cardinal would become pope, the odds changing daily as news leaked out of the conclave.
According to tradition, a conclave was to be held in the Vatican commencing on the tenth day after the pope’s death. But the low-lying Vatican was ghastly in August and September, roasting hot, shirt-soakingly humid, and without a breath of fresh air. Worse, it was subject to malaria, as the area had been a swamp for thousands of years. When the Roman emperor Vitellius stationed his army on Vatican Hill in A.D. 86, most of his men died of malaria. Sixteen centuries later, the mosquitoes seemed to retain an ancient memory, buzzing happily about their ancestral abode and diving down with bloodlust at the sight of red robes.
The threat of infection was compounded by the utter ignorance about malaria’s cause, which was thought to be mal aria—bad air. In his Book on Particular Matters, the thirteenth-century scholar Michael Scot described malaria as “a corruption of the air that is not evident everywhere, but which moves about hidden from region to region, then settles down and maintains itself.”2 In Olimpia’s time, Scot’s definition was still believed; it was not until 1880 that the parasite Plasmodium was found to be transmitted by mosquitoes.
Given the heat and risk of illness, many cardinals petitioned to move the conclave to the other Roman papal palace, the Quirinal, situated on a breezy hill. The conclave doctor agreed that the Vatican was a lethal choice due to “the miasmas and the danger of infection.”3 But Cardinal Antonio, who as camerlengo had the final decision, held his ground for a Vatican conclave out of respect for papal traditions. Realizing the health risks, most cardinals made their wills before reporting for duty.
A papal conclave was thought to be guided by the Holy Spirit, who would inspire the cardinals to select the man chosen by God. But Olimpia was leaving nothing up to the Holy Spirit. She had, in fact, been preparing for this moment for more than thirty years. She had buttered up the Spanish, courted the French, venerated the Barberinis, discreetly bribed the cardinals and flattered all of their female relatives. Having positioned her kings, queens, and bishops on her chessboard, she now placed her pawns—spies in the conclave and in the houses of the French and Spanish ambassadors.
Leti wrote, “Due to the vacant See at the death of Urban, Donna Olimpia threw herself into keeping watch over all things carefully, and into making the most extreme effort to discover the intrigues, the plotting, and the intentions of the cardinals and ambassadors with regards to the election of a new pope. And even though she had a natural stinginess, she didn’t fail to spend a great deal on spies to be well aware of all things. She staged a campaign to inform herself of the least intrigue from here or there and made every effort possible to learn what was happening.”4
With an eye to a checkmate, right before the conclave Olimpia gave precise instructions to Gianbattista. Leti continued: “The evening they entered the conclave, Cardinal Pamfili spoke a long time with his sister-in-law, but I have never been able to discover exactly what passed between them.”5
The conclave was preceded by the sound of hammering echoing from the Vatican halls as carpenters boarded up all windows in the cardinals’ area. They left a couple of inches open at the top to let in a little humid air, swarms of mosquitoes, and a faint beam of light; candles would be used throughout the day. The boarding up of windows was supposed to prevent cardinals from making gestures or signs or giving messages of any kind to the outside world.
Though supposedly sealed off from communication with those outside, the conclave leaked like a sieve and would continue to do so until Pope Pius X enforced absolute secrecy in 1904. Until then journalists and diplomats wrote daily newsletters with conclave updates, reporting with uncanny accuracy on who had voted for whom. Cardinal Antonio Barberini routinely corresponded with the French ambassador, the marquis de Saint-Chamond, who sent back replies. And Olimpia received frequent reports from Gianbattista, friendly cardinals, and their servants, and responded with new instructions.
Messages were often smuggled in and out of conclave in food platters. Meals were brought in twice daily by the cardinal’s household servants, who marched in stately procession carrying large silver bowls swinging from wooden poles. Having arrived at the door assigned for food deliveries, they handed over the bowls to the guards, who were supposed to examine all platters and wine bottles for secret messages going in and out. But the guards often cast a careless glance at the victuals, even more careless than usual if a handsome tip was offered. Instructions to the cardinals were hidden among the roasted gizzards in a duck’s body cavity, or tucked under the crust of a chicken pie. Cardinals replied by concealing messages in the secret compartment of a silver salad bowl returned for washing, or in a hollowed-out wine cork.
Cardinals lived in “cells,” hastily constructed rooms ranging from about fifteen feet to twenty-two feet square. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when there were fewer than twenty-five conclave cardinals, the cells had been built in the Sistine Chapel itself, where votes were cast in front of the main altar. But now that the Sacred College had been expanded to a maximum of seventy cardinals, the cells were built in the hall next door. Placed over each cell was a letter of the alphabet or two; after the letter Z came AA, AB, and so on. Before the conclave opened, cardinals had to draw letters out of a chalice to determine which cell would be theirs. This was to prevent squabbling over the bigger cells.
As soon as Gianbattista learned the location of his cell, his servants would have hung all the walls with beautiful cloth—purple for cardinals who had been created by the just-deceased pope, as Gianbattista had been, and green for the others. The cells were built without roofs but were covered with a canopy, which could be opened for air circulation or closed for greater privacy. The servants would then have set up his bed, tables, chamber-pot chair, writing desk, stools, a chest with his clothing, books, washbasins, a little stove to reheat cold food, and eating utensils.
Each cardinal was allowed to have two servants, or conclavistas, who slept with him in his cell. Old, sick cardinals were permitted three. These servants were invaluable to their masters. They tidied their cells, served their food, cleaned their clothes, and emptied their chamber pots. But far more important than these mundane matters, conclavistas were their masters’ eyes and ears. They performed tasks undignified for a prince of the church yet absolutely necessary all the same, such as peering through keyholes or placing an ear firmly against a thin wooden cell wall to listen to the conversation inside. Hidden in the shadows, they watched which cardinals visited one another. They often wore disguises at night—false beards, mustaches, or bulbous noses—and ghosted around from cell to cell negotiating with other cardinals on behalf of their masters.
Conclavistas spread false rumors, lied, flattered, and offered bribes to other servants for information. They smuggled letters in and out and sent news to the bookies to set odds on which cardinal would be elected pope. Armed with their inside knowledge, most conclavistas placed high wagers of their own, reaping a fortune when their favorite was elected. A cardinal chose his conclavistas from among his household servants, who eagerly sought the exciting, remunerative position. Among the emoluments was the right to sack the new pope’s cell as soon as he was elected.
On the evening of August 8, 1644, singing hymns and saying prayers, fifty-five cardinals processed into the Vatican. Due to recent deaths, the Sacred College numbered only sixty-two, with seven cardinals living abroad; one of these, the nuncio to Madrid, was racing back to Rome and would join the conclave three days later. Other than the three Spaniards, two Frenchmen, and one German taking part in the conclave, the rest were Italians.
The very first evening, Urban VIII’s brother, the cardinal of Saint Onofrio, was involved in a message-smuggling scandal. The good cardinal had evidently bribed a mason to make a hole in the outer wall of his cell through which he could pass messages too long and detailed to be hidden inside the tiny secret compartment of a food platter. While many cardinals smuggled messages, they all denied doing so and eagerly pointed fingers when their enemies were proven to be leaking news. And it was always the laborers, never the cardinals, who got arrested for the security breach. Giacinto Gigli reported, “There was discovered in his room a hole that gave onto the court of the Belvedere and therefore the cardinals of the opposing faction made a great noise about it and the hole was walled up, and they say that a mason was put in prison.” 6
Having settled into their cells, the cardinals met with various ambassadors for negotiations the next day. The French ambassador visited the cardinals individually or in small groups, advocating the favored candidates of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, prime minister of France. The impoverished Italian-born Giulio Mazzarino had worked his way up the church hierarchy in France by climbing into the widowed queen mother’s bed. Since her husband’s death in 1643, the dim-witted Anne of Austria supposedly ruled for her young son Louis XIV; but it was the luxurious Mazarin—mercurial, brilliant, and crafty—who held the power.
Five months before Pope Urban died, Mazarin heard of his steep decline and sent precise instructions to his ambassador regarding papal candidates. Mazarin’s first choice was the sixty-five-year-old Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, who for many years had been nuncio to France. His second choice was Cardinal Giulio Sacchetti, who at fifty-eight suffered the drawback of youth but was very friendly toward France. There was one other candidate Mazarin named. “As for Cardinal Pamphili,” he thundered, “His Majesty cannot in any way consent that his ministers concur to his exaltation and orders them to oppose him by all means possible, first in secret, but overtly if necessary. He is a man who has given all his affections to Spain, and who has lost no occasion to give proofs that he has an aversion to France.”7
Mazarin was incorrect in accusing Gianbattista Pamphili of blindly supporting Spain. Gianbattista was careful and just in all his proceedings and never rashly jumped to the side of Spain as did so many cardinals, even when he was nuncio to Madrid. Yet Mazarin could not forget that Gianbattista had been popular with the archenemies of France during his time in Spain. Additionally, those at the French court who remembered the cardinal during his 1625 mission to Paris recalled that his personality—awkward, severe, and cautious—greatly reminded them of their enemies the Spaniards.
Mazarin also sent instructions to Antonio Barberini, the cardinal protector of France. If Pamphili were to obtain a significant block of votes in conclave, Antonio was to announce that France had officially excluded him. An exclusion was not legally binding, and the cardinals could technically decide to ignore it. But if they did so, they would doubtless incur the anger of a major Catholic power against themselves personally—meaning the loss of the cardinals’ revenues from that nation. Worse, the church herself might be penalized. The offended nation could withhold church revenues from Rome, or wage war, or, worst of all, pull a Henry VIII and cut ties with the Vatican altogether. Exclusions continued through the 1903 conclave, when Emperor Franz Josef of Austria derailed the election of the popular Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro.
But then, as now, money spoke louder than threats. Mazarin sent sacks of gold to two friendly cardinals to distribute to fellow electors who seemed to be vacillating. Cardinal Alessandro Bichi reportedly received sixteen thousand scudi to hand out as bribes. The cardinal of Lyons received six thousand scudi and letters that he was to pass out in conclave, dictated by Mazarin but signed by the six-year-old king of France, discreetly offering more.
“My cousin,” the letters read, “I have been so particularly informed of the affection that you hold for the advantage of this crown that I cannot prevent myself from showing my sentiments. If you have some good desires, you could explain them in all liberty and confidence to the marquis de Saint-Chamond.”8
Not to be outdone by the French, the new Spanish ambassador, the count of Sirvela, arrived in Rome just as the conclave was about to begin. Teodoro Amayden accompanied Sirvela as he strode into the Sistine Chapel blazing in diamonds and fortified with rich Spanish bishoprics to bestow on cooperative cardinals, lovely princesses with huge dowries to give away to their nephews, and fine estates in the kingdom of Naples. And Spain’s favorite candidate? Gianbattista Pamphili, who had left a good impression behind him after his embassy to Madrid fourteen years earlier. His stiff and sober dignity, which grated on Italians and Frenchmen alike, was most pleasing to Spaniards.
Swords were drawn along the usual French and Spanish lines before the conclave even began. Leti didn’t mince words about the self-interested politics involved in choosing the Vicar of Christ. “Neither did the cardinals examine the virtues or vices of the competitors,” he fumed. “Spain would exalt anyone, were he the wickedest man in the world or even the devil himself, as long as he was the enemy of France. The French would not worry about worshipping a demon, as long as he was the enemy of Spain. The nephews of the dead pope, guarding their own interests, would not bat an eye to advance a cardinal to the pontificate if he were the most detestable of all men, or even the Anti-Christ himself, as long as he was their friend.”9
By midnight on August 9, the camerlengo, Antonio Barberini, cried, “Omnes extra!” at the top of his lungs, and all the wheeling, dealing ambassadors were forced to leave. The conclave had officially begun.
The first centuries of Christianity remain so shrouded in mystery that no one is certain how the earliest popes were elected. Saint Peter, later acknowledged as the first pope, had no throne, no incense-laden ceremonies, no great basilicas, and little Catholic dogma. Going house to house in a rough linen robe and sandals, Peter spread the word about his friend Jesus who had been crucified years before. Highly respected for his personal knowledge of Jesus, Peter was perhaps called an elder—a term that was later translated into bishop—or perhaps an apostle or a disciple. He was certainly not called pope, a term that was not used until some time in the second century when all bishops received the honorary title of papa, or father. Pope Siricius (reigned 384–399) was the first pontiff to claim that title for himself alone, though bishops in the Eastern Empire kept it until 1059.
According to tradition, Peter, knowing he would be martyred, appointed his successor, Linus, to tend his little flock of ragtag Christians in Rome. It is possible that dozens of popes after Peter also named their successors. When Christianity was legalized in the fourth century, the Roman senate, the clergy, and the people of Rome participated in the bishop’s election, though we are at a loss to understand exactly how voting was done by such an unruly crowd.
In the first millennium of Christianity, any churchman, even a simple monk or priest, could be elected pope. But after Pope Nicholas II decreed in 1059 that only cardinals could elect the pontiff, they usually elected one of themselves, and since 1389 they have always done so.
Just as the papal election process changed over the centuries, so did the qualities required to be pontiff. In Christianity’s first centuries the perfect pope was a man of deep faith who would willingly suffer martyrdom at the hands of pagan Roman emperors in their periodic persecutions. Given the likelihood of being thrown to the lions, there were fewer candidates for the position. Once Constantine legalized Christianity, the church became big business and more men vied for the job. Now the pope was a CEO; he must possess top administrative skills to spread the faith, appoint church leaders, build churches, manage money, and develop dogma.
When the last Roman emperor abdicated in A.D. 86, the remaining emperor was in far-off Constantinople. Sometimes he sent troops to help Rome, but more often he did nothing, having enough problems to deal with closer to home. As a result, the Roman people looked to the only authority figure in town—the pope—to perform the duties of a secular official. Instead of focusing on religion, the pope was now expected to feed the hungry, police the unruly, provide laws, and fend off invading barbarian hordes. Over the course of the next millennium, several popes strapped on armor and rode into battle against enemies.
By the Renaissance, the ideal pope was supposed to encourage the arts and letters. Nicholas V (reigned 1447–1455) founded the Vatican Library, collecting moldering Greek manuscripts from across Europe and preserving a significant portion of the ancient literature we have today from being lost forever. The world’s greatest artistic masterpieces—those by Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and countless others—were commissioned by popes to glorify God and themselves. By the seventeenth century most pontiffs had legal training and diplomatic experience, abilities required to remain aloft in the shifting sands of baroque European politics.
The ideal candidate was rather advanced in years. Though John XI was eighteen or twenty when elected in 931, and Benedict IX was a teenager when chosen in 1032, by the Renaissance older cardinals were preferred for their wisdom and experience in church affairs. But the real reason for electing an elderly pope was the ambitions of the cardinals. If the new pope died sooner rather than later, the cardinals who elected him would have another chance to become pope themselves. It was a terrifying prospect for one man to hog the papal power for decades, depriving other worthy men of their chance, and the seventeenth century had already witnessed two such debacles. Paul V had had the bad taste to reign from 1605 to 1621, dashing the hopes of many meritorious sons of the church, and Urban VIII selfishly lived for twenty-one years after his election.
What was the perfect age for a new pope? By Olimpia’s time, sixty was viewed as a venerable age, and cardinals under sixty were generally considered too young for the job. Younger cardinals, however, could be elected if their health was poor. In 1513 Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X at the age of thirty-seven, a teenager in terms of papal candidates. The young cardinal brought into the conclave his surgeon, who glumly informed the other cardinals that the candidate had few years to live, and he was immediately elected. In 1585 Cardinal Felice Peretti won the election by pretending to be weak and ill, coughing and hobbling around painfully with the aid of a cane, hoping to win the votes of the cardinals who wanted a short pontificate. Once he was elected, Sixtus V cast away the stick and rose before the astonished cardinals glowing with healthy vigor.
Even an elderly candidate would be considered unsuitable if he had several brothers itching for huge salaries and government positions, a dozen unmarried nephews hoping to be created cardinals and run the church, and a flock of sisters salivating over social status, palaces, and large dowries for their single daughters to marry into the highest echelon of Roman nobility. Such a pope would, within a few years, wrest most of the power, and all of the money, out of the hands of the cardinals and into the pockets of his own family. A cardinal with a throng of grasping relatives was highly unlikely to be elected pope, even if he possessed the most sterling qualifications to run the church.
At seventy, Cardinal Pamphili was considered healthy enough to live the requisite six or seven years and old enough to die shortly thereafter. He offered the great advantage of having three dead brothers and two sisters safely locked up in convents and sworn to poverty. He had only two nieces by Olimpia, one of whom was already married, and one nephew, who, though not terribly bright, was not known for greed, ambition, licentiousness, or free spending. And Gianbattista’s dignity was a great point in his favor. Ambassador Contarini of Venice reported, “Many thought he was worthy of the pontificate because his words were few and weighty, which made people believe he was really wise.”10
Despite these advantages, some cardinals heatedly expressed their dislike of both Gianbattista’s appearance and personality. Cardinal Antonio Barberini described Gianbattista’s character as “rigid and bitter.” Another Venetian diplomat, Giustiniani, noted, “Some were offended by his dismal and saturnine aspect, the reflection of a contumacious and restless soul, and in him one could see customs poorly suited to the placidity that the person carrying the name of the universal father should have.”11
Gregorio Leti was, as usual, crueler in his explanation. He asserted, “There were several reasons why Cardinal Pamfili was not desired by many people as I can well say. His poor expression, his somber sad air, and his ugly badly formed face made people take him for a bizarre and uncomfortable soul. Many took the occasion to say that it would not be good to make a universal father, a pope, who had a face so horrible and deformed that it scared the children.”12
Gianbattista’s looks aside, the specter of Olimpia hovered uneasily over the conclave. Ambassador Giustiniani had heard the gossip that the cardinal and his sister-in-law were sleeping together. He wrote, “Others were aware of the fact that the pontificate would be subject to female influence due to the boundless affection the cardinal showed his sister-in-law, absolute arbiter of all the most serious affairs that concerned the interests of his family, not without the opinion that his deeply rooted affection involved more than platonic sympathies, which was a very important point, considering the vehement spirits of that lady.”13
Cardinal Antonio complained of the “cupidity and haughtiness of his sister-in-law.”14 He deplored the likelihood that despite Gianbattista’s advanced age, his robust constitution would keep him alive for years, with Olimpia at the helm of the Vatican.
Francesco Mantovani, the ambassador of Modena, summed up Gianbattista’s strong points: he was highly educated, hardworking, and just. But he added that Gianbattista would surely be handicapped in conclave by his “coarseness of spirit and the greed of the sister-in-law.”15
What the diplomats and cardinals were complaining about was not so much Olimpia’s character but that such a character should be encased in a female body. If Olimpia were Gianbattista’s brother-in-law instead of his sister-in-law, her clever accumulation of power and wealth would have been lauded. As a man, Olimpia would have been a remarkable asset to any Holy Father. As a woman, she was his greatest vulnerability.
The casting of votes in conclave has a special name: a scrutiny. Twice a day, morning and afternoon, cardinals would anonymously write the name of a candidate on a folded piece of paper, disguising their handwriting, and toss it into a chalice in front of Michelangelo’s daunting Last Judgment, which was splayed across the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Visions of tortured souls being dragged to hell served as a constant reminder of what was in store for cardinals who voted selfishly and not according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Cardinal Antonio was confident of getting Mazarin’s candidate, Cardinal Sacchetti, elected. But according to the old saying, “He who enters the conclave a pope, leaves it a cardinal.”16 And indeed, the only thing predictable about a conclave was its unpredictability.
From the moment voting began on the morning of August 10 to the end of the month, the Barberinis did everything possible to elect Cardinal Sacchetti pope. But repeatedly the Spanish cardinal, Albornoz, rose and cried that His Most Catholic Majesty, King Philip IV, knowing Sacchetti’s ardent affinity for France, had excluded him. During the meetings held in between the scrutinies, and in late-night visits to cardinals’ cells, the Barberinis used every method they knew to get the cardinals to ignore the exclusion—cajoling, bribing, and threatening—but to no avail.
The Barberinis asked the confessor of the conclave, the Jesuit theologian Vantino Magnoni, if such an exclusion were legal. With furrowed brow, the priest nodded, stating that while an exclusion was an interference, the will of so powerful a monarch as the king of Spain must be heeded or else evil could befall Christ’s church.
Day after day of fruitless voting passed in the stifling heat. Hygiene deteriorated. Those locked inside the murky tomb were overwhelmed by the smells of body odor, urine, and excrement. Even worse, the mosquitoes began to bite. On August 27 two cardinals and five conclavistas declared themselves “incommoded,” subject to projectile vomiting, migraines, diarrhea, and high fever.
Terrified of contagion spreading like wildfire in the enclosed space, the cardinals shifted uncomfortably. Given the stalemate over Sacchetti, they would need to elect another candidate if they were to leave the conclave alive. Some cardinals began to speak of Cardinal Pamphili. Stern, dignified, learned, with decades of church legal and diplomatic experience, surely he would make an acceptable pope?
The mosquitoes were on Olimpia’s side. Receiving daily reports of the cardinals’ discussions and moods from her conclave spies, Olimpia knew that opinion was moving toward Gianbattista. One day, waiting in her Piazza Navona palace for news from the Vatican, she received a sign from the Holy Spirit itself.
Olimpia’s three-year-old granddaughter, Olimpiuccia, saw a white dove flying through the upstairs corridor. Delighted, the little girl chased it from room to room until it flew into the bedroom of Cardinal Pamphili and perched on the canopy over his four-poster. Hearing the child’s cries, Olimpia and some servants ran to find her. To their shock, they saw the white dove on Gianbattista’s bed, flapping its wings, cooing, and blinking at them. All of them knew the story of how a swarm of bees—the bee was the symbol of the Barberini family—had entered the conclave of 1623 and hovered over Cardinal Barberini’s cell just before he was elected. The dove, the symbol of the Pamphili family and of the Holy Spirit, which directs papal elections, had clearly been sent by God to indicate that Cardinal Gianbattista Pamphili would be the next pope.
Armed with such a sign from heaven, Olimpia played her hand. The only person still blocking Gianbattista’s election was his old enemy Cardinal Antonio Barberini. She was well aware that Antonio was terrified that the family of an unfriendly new pope would prosecute the family of the old pope for stealing Vatican funds, a tradition that had existed for centuries. He also feared losing his political power, being pushed back to the ranks of unimportant cardinals.
In a message smuggled in to Antonio, Olimpia reassured him on both points. If he swung his block of votes to Cardinal Pamphili, Olimpia would have her twenty-two-year-old son, Camillo, marry Antonio’s niece, the fourteen-year-old Lucrezia Barberini. This marriage would ensure the alliance and mutual support of the two papal families and offered the added advantage that the Barberinis could keep their powerful positions. By marrying Lucrezia, Camillo would give up any chance of being cardinal nephew and ousting the brothers.
Seeing the impossibility of electing his friend Sacchetti, Antonio was tempted by Olimpia’s offer. He smuggled a message out to the French ambassador floating the idea. The marquis de Saint-Chamond replied with icy politeness, “I would like at the expense of my own blood to favor the exaltation of Pamphili, as much as for the esteem I have for his person and the particular affection I have had for him for twenty years, as for the respect of Your Excellency and to conform to your wishes which will always be law to me, but it is impossible to go against the intentions of the King.”17 And so the stalemate continued.
On August 29, Cardinal Bentivoglio took to his bed with a raging fever, soaking his sheets in sweat. The other cardinals recalled that in the last conclave, that of 1623, eight cardinals had died of malaria along with forty conclavistas. On August 30, only twelve cardinals voted for Sacchetti, a far cry from the thirty-seven votes he needed for a two-thirds majority. In the afternoon scrutiny, Cardinal Francesco Cennini, an avowed enemy of the Barberinis and ardent supporter of Spain, got twenty-five votes from cardinals willing to elect a moron to escape the infected conclave with their lives. Antonio Barberini was stunned. Cennini would be far worse for the interests of France and the Barberini family than even Pamphili.
On September 2, Francesco Barberini became feverish but insisted on staying in conclave to vote. On September 4, Antonio wrote Saint-Chamond that Sacchetti’s election was no longer possible. The other French candidate, Cardinal Bentivoglio, was dying of malaria. The only cardinal who stood a chance was Gianbattista Pamphili. If Pamphili promised to bestow significant favors on France—allowing Mazarin to name his candidates for cardinals, for instance, granting rich benefices to Mazarin’s relatives, and other concessions, would Mazarin withdraw the exclusion?
Cardinal Alessandro Bichi, an avid friend of France, was furious at Antonio’s capitulation, crying that he would die in conclave rather than vote for an enemy of France. He pointed out that no matter what Cardinal Pamphili promised France, once he was elected pope no one could force him to keep his promises. Over the centuries, countless cardinals had made generous promises to get elected, even swearing oaths on the Bible; but as pope they simply changed their minds, declaring such oaths invalid because they had been made under duress.
Faced with Cardinal Antonio’s eager proposal and Bichi’s warning, Saint-Chamond, the eternal diplomat, hedged. He asked Antonio to wait for twenty days before switching his votes to Pamphili, during which time he would send a courier posthaste to Mazarin asking if he wished to change his instructions. Antonio waited uneasily. Then, on September 7, Cardinal Bentivoglio died wretchedly in his cell. On the morning of September 10, Cardinal Gaspare Matthei was carried out of the conclave semiconscious, followed that evening by the vomiting Cardinal Giulio Gabrielli. The electors were dropping like flies, and those cardinals who remained healthy were gripped by malaria hysteria.
While Olimpia was Gianbattista’s most ardent supporter outside the conclave, his greatest champion inside was fifty-seven-year-old Giovanni Giacomo Panciroli. The son of a humble tailor, the intelligent Panciroli had worked his way up in the church and attached himself to Gianbattista’s coattails. He had assisted him in the Roman Rota and in his missions to Naples and Spain. He had become a cardinal in 1643 in Urban’s last creation and was named nuncio to Madrid. Hearing of the pope’s fatal illness, he rushed back to Rome, arriving in conclave three days after it began. Pro-Spanish and pro-Pamphili, Panciroli would do everything possible to get his friend elected pope.
According to Teodoro Amayden, Cardinal Panciroli saw Cardinal Antonio’s wavering. One day he approached him with flattering words. “See, Antonio, how fortune has carried you to high places,” Panciroli said. “But this is nothing compared to what you can do today…. On you alone the Sacred College depends. You alone can create the pontiff.”18
The idea appealed to Cardinal Antonio. For one moment, he would be more powerful than the pope himself; he would be the pope maker, the very instrument of God, crowning Saint Peter’s successor. He suddenly decided that it would be better not to wait for Mazarin’s decision. It was, after all, easier to apologize later than to ask permission and then act expressly against orders. If the decision was positive, all would be well. If it were negative, he had arranged to switch sides to Spain, and the Spanish ambassador promised to provide him with revenue equal to that which had been lost from France.
On the morning of September 14, Cardinal Antonio met with the cardinals of the Spanish faction and agreed to switch his block of votes to support their candidate, Gianbattista Pamphili. That evening, some fifty cardinals crammed into Gianbattista’s cell to congratulate him, though many were forced to yell their good wishes from the corridor. As soon as they departed, their conclavistas squeezed inside to render their respects. “There was such a multitude of people in that cell,” wrote an anonymous conclavista, “that they stole all his silverware.”19
That night, Cardinal Antonio and the pro-Spanish cardinals set their spies to watch the cells of the pro-French cardinals to see if they were plotting a coup. Worried about a last-minute surprise, Cardinal Antonio called for the morning scrutiny to be held much earlier than usual, at dawn.
At 3 A.M. Gianbattista sent a messenger from the conclave to bang on the door of Olimpia’s palazzo and give her the news of his imminent election. Standing in their nightclothes holding candles, she and Camillo received the message “with great pleasure,” according to the 1650 autobiography of Cardinal Domenico Cecchini.20 Gregorio Leti described “the transports of joy of Donna Olimpia. She was so beside herself with happiness that she seemed to be only 25 years old, although she was closer to 50.”21 (She was actually fifty-three.)
On September 15, as the sun rose over the Vatican, cardinals rubbing the sleep from their eyes stumbled into the Sistine Chapel. According to the diary of one conclavista, Gianbattista had not slept at all, “partly out of happiness and partly out of fear.”22 Now he bounced up and down nervously on his seat. “All your cardinals, are they there?” he asked the Spanish cardinal, Albornoz, who sat next to him. “Yes, they are there,” was the reply. “Your Eminence must have good courage.”23
One by one, the cardinals marched up to the altar and cast their votes into the chalice. When the votes were tallied, there was an overwhelming majority for Gianbattista. With one cardinal dead and two others sick at home, he had only needed thirty-six votes to win, but forty-eight of the fifty-three cardinals left in conclave had voted for him. Five cardinals, including the fulminating Cardinal Bichi, had voted against him.
Having counted the votes, the distinguished theologian Cardinal Juan de Lugo rose to his feet and said in a loud voice, “Benedictus Dominus Noster, habemus cardinalem Pamphilium Pontifecum.” Our Blessed Lord, we have Cardinal Pamphili as pope.24
Appalled at the choice of new pontiff, Cardinal Bichi raced back to his cell and fired off a letter to the court of France. “Gentlemen,” he thundered, “we have just elected a female pope!”25