19

Honor and Dishonor

Mine honor is my life, both grow in one.

Take honor from me, and my life is done.

—William Shakespeare, Richard II

THERE WERE WORSE THINGS for a woman to do than retire to her palace in the countryside and queen it over her feudal territory. And while Olimpia must have spent many hours grieving privately and hating ardently, she was never one to sink into a paralyzing depression. Other than a few hours of emotional collapse after she realized she had lost her power, misfortune never seemed to have serious long-term effects on her health, as it did the pope’s. She had always remained vulgarly robust in the face of pregnancy, childbirth, epidemics, widowhood, and now public disgrace.

Whenever Olimpia was upset, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work, and in San Martino there was still much to do that she had not been able to attend to while living in Rome. She hired architects to build more houses and bring new families to the town, and continued decorating her palazzo and the church.

Olimpia’s native land was refreshing, relaxing, and it must have soothed her to be away from the turmoil of Rome. Yet she must have hoped that Innocent would find himself adrift without her, the clever captain who had guided his ship for nearly forty years. Plagued by indecision, mistrustful of the men who now advised him, surely the pope would eventually call for her.

It is almost certain that she had spies in Rome—and in the Vatican itself—sending her frequent reports. Her friends, and she still had many of them, would have kept in close contact. Cardinals and ambassadors would have informed her of the pope’s doings, his moods, and any word he dropped about her. But the best spies were servants, those who could peer through keyholes, listen at doors, and fish letters out of the trash. Many servants earned several times their official salary for their spying activities.

Letters sent to her at San Martino would have been written partly in code, or with invisible lemon-juice ink, or in invisible ink and in code, and burned immediately after being read. Codes such as these were changed regularly to confuse the spies of enemies.

In a heap of miscellaneous family papers in the Doria Pamphilj Archives, there is a code cipher from Innocent’s pontificate that, given the strong, clear handwriting, could have been written by Olimpia:

Pope	100
Panzirole	101
Cherubino	102 [Cardinal Francesco Cherubini]
Maidalchini	103 [Cardinal Francesco Maidalchini]
Brancaici	104 [Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio]
Olimpia	105
Prince Camillo	106
Giustiniani	107
Ludovisio	108
Rome	109
Viterbo	110

a b c d e f g h i l m n o p q r s 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 t u y z

23 24 25 26¹

In early June 1651, Olimpia’s correspondents would have told her that the Four Rivers Fountain in the Piazza Navona was finally completed after four years of design and construction. Spewing sour grapes, Francesco Borromini looked at his enemy’s masterpiece and declared it would never shoot out water. Gian Lorenzo Bernini heard his rival’s prediction and decided to play a little trick.

On June 8, when the pope visited the fountain in a great cavalcade, he walked around it for half an hour, admiring it from all angles. Innocent then asked Bernini where the water was, and the sculptor hung his head and shamefacedly admitted that it wasn’t yet ready to flow. The pope was a bit disappointed and said that without water Bernini’s masterpiece was not a fountain, it was a statue. As the pope was leaving the Piazza Navona, Bernini opened the faucets and the sound of rushing water filled the square. The pope raced back and marveled at the water dancing over the sculpted figures.

Proved wrong about the water, Borromini next spread word that the obelisk was in danger of toppling and crushing those beneath it. Bernini had done a terrible engineering job with Saint Peter’s bell towers, he bellowed, and now he had done a terrible job with the Four Rivers obelisk. One day in a heavy wind, as passersby eyed the obelisk with concern, Bernini’s carriage stopped. The sculptor got out and squinted at the obelisk, scratching his head. A crowd gathered around him, all nervously staring at the obelisk.

Then Bernini suddenly seemed to get an idea. He went into his carriage and pulled out some string. Then he climbed up onto the fountain and wrapped it around the obelisk, attaching the ends to iron torch hooks on the houses on either side of the piazza. With a satisfied nod, he got into his carriage and rode off, as all the spectators had a hearty laugh. It was a brilliant move; Borromini’s nasty rumors had been laughed to death.

The new fountain was the talk of Europe. All the kings requested drawings of it, and the fountains of Versailles would be based on it. But Olimpia, whose idea it had been, had not been invited to its inauguration.

Though Olimpia was being pointedly ignored by many former friends, the wily Jesuits understood that she could jump back into power at any time and corresponded cheerfully with her. In the summer of 1651, the Jesuit Father Albergati invited her to a magnificent celebration honoring Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the Roman College. Her reply was bitter; they should invite the queen—the princess of Rossano—and not the poor exile. The Jesuit replied cheerfully that the queen had also been invited, along with all the nephews and nieces of His Holiness.

Olimpia loved Jesuit services and very much wanted to go. Yet she couldn’t imagine herself sitting in the same church with the princess of Rossano exulting in a more honorable chair. She decided to attend after the evening bell when most people hastened home. “And I will go, too,” she wrote, “but privately and after the Ave Maria.”² That way her enemies could not gloat over her defeat.

 

After Olimpia’s fall, Cardinal Panciroli had hoped to be the sole advisor to the pope, with Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili working as his assistant. He envisioned that at a certain point years in the future when he died or retired, he would leave his position to the new cardinal nephew. But very soon after the young man’s promotion, Astalli-Pamphili’s manner went from ingratiating to haughty. Panciroli realized that his protégé was not a helpmeet but a rival. He had nourished a viper in the breast.

His sudden elevation had gone to Camillo Astalli-Pamphili’s head. He was deified by courtiers and lauded by ambassadors; he received magnificent gifts from kings. Why should a prelate as great as he sit still and listen to the boring instructions of a sick old man? Cardinal Panciroli complained bitterly to the pope about the rash, ungrateful Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, and Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili complained bitterly to the pope about the jealous old Cardinal Panciroli.

The pope, for his part, had grown tired of Cardinal Panciroli and preferred speaking to this young, charming man instead. Innocent began to distance himself from his old friend. But he soon realized that the third cardinal nephew was not all he thought he would be. “Cardinal [Astalli] Pamphili,” wrote the French ambassador de Valençais, “was adopted into the pope’s family, and it would have been good for him if together with his red hat they had been able to also give him a brain…. There were no stellar qualities in him, and certainly he had greater proclivities for pastimes than for work.”³

The new cardinal nephew was not only inexperienced in international diplomacy, he was vain, shallow, and lazy. He loved the honor and wealth of the job, the sumptuous palaces and gardens, and the gorgeous carriages pulled by splendid horses wearing ostrich-feather hats. He loved having the seat of honor at all the best parties. But he wasn’t up to the work. Oddly, the first Cardinal Nephew, Camillo Pamphili and the second Cardinal Nephew, Camillo Pamphili were quite similar—all swashbuckling swagger, swirls of red robes, and little else.

In addition to Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s increasingly apparent uselessness, Innocent was experiencing family problems. As long as Olimpia had ruled in Rome, she had reined in her children and their families to prevent them from badgering the pope. Now the Giustinianis, Ludovisis, and Pamphilis hammered him incessantly with requests for honors, titles, and incomes, sometimes pointing fingers at one another as being unworthy of the same. Nor did he have the strength to ban them from the papal palace. According to the Venetian ambassador, Innocent “will never know how to free himself of this, by refusing to admit his relatives who visit him so frequently.”⁴ As always when under stress, Innocent became ill. On July 20, he grew extremely feverish from a bladder infection.

At least Olimpia’s family members could agree on one thing: they hated Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili. Camillo in particular loathed him for taking over his pleasure villa, Bel Respiro. Like Olimpia, her son saw Cardinal Panciroli as the architect of Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s meteoric rise and passionately despised him. Camillo soon wreaked his revenge. When Cardinal Panciroli went to visit the recovering pope on August 4, Camillo barred his path. It would only disturb Innocent to see him, he said. It would not be good to stress His Holiness.

It was a deadly insult to the old cardinal, who had been instrumental in Innocent’s election, had harmed his health shouldering the pope’s workload, and had lost papal favor to the inept Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili. Gigli reported that Panciroli “returned to his apartments with a bitterness and a pain in his heart so great that reaching the door he could go no further but entered into the room of his servant and threw himself facedown on the bed where he stayed a long while and then he was carried into his room and put in his own bed.”⁵ He would not rise from it.

At 7 P.M. on September 3, Cardinal Giangiacomo Panciroli died at the age of sixty-four, disillusioned by his change of fortune. In his last days he had repeatedly called for the pope, but Innocent did not come. Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, perhaps afraid of what Panciroli would say about him, told the pope that the disease was contagious. Innocent was, however, greatly saddened by his death, and “went into deep mourning for several days without being able to console himself.”⁶

Olimpia did not mourn. She viewed Cardinal Panciroli as the author of her downfall. It was he who had convinced Innocent to create a new cardinal nephew and cut his ties with her. It was he who was responsible for the ruinous collapse of everything she had built. And it was he, four years earlier, who had engineered Camillo’s marriage to the despicable princess of Rossano. Hearing the news that Cardinal Panciroli was no more, she replied with bitter satisfaction, “He is dead, but I am alive.”⁷

The timing of Cardinal Panciroli’s death was unfortunate. For months the French ambassador had been planning a grand celebration to mark the thirteenth birthday and official coming of age of King Louis XIV on September 5. When the fireworks blasted off, lighting up the night sky in jubilation, many Romans thought the French were celebrating Cardinal Panciroli’s demise two days earlier, as he had always been partial to Spain.

Now that Panciroli was dead, there was only Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili to help Innocent with the workload. Those who liked the fake nephew politely remarked that he was still young and inexperienced in the ways of diplomacy. Those who disliked him called him a blithering dunderhead. Cardinal Pallavicino wrote that “the pope, full of years, was leaning on an inexperienced and unknown crutch.”⁸ Though Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili wanted to have all the powers of a secretary of state, Innocent knew that would be disastrous. He must replace Cardinal Panciroli.

The pope had, by this point, given up on the idea of bringing in a family member to assist him. The only man who had ever helped him run the Vatican had been Cardinal Panciroli, who had not been related in any way, shape, or form. The successful candidate for secretary of state should be an older man with extensive international diplomatic and legal experience.

Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili was frightened as to who might be chosen as his new boss. A truly brilliant man would recognize his defects and point them out to the pope. A mediocre man would be better for him, or at least someone he could call a friend and who would cover for him. He proposed his cousin, Francesco Gaetani, and received a crisp papal refusal. He next suggested the clever young cleric Decio Azzolini, his friend, but he was equally inexperienced.

The subdatary, Francesco Mascambruno, who continued to be in the pope’s favor, pushed himself forward for the job. But Innocent knew that despite his legal knowledge Mascambruno had no diplomatic experience. Besides, the pope had a surprise in store for Mascambruno. He would make him a cardinal in the next creation. Unaware of the forthcoming honor, Mascambruno was deeply stung by Innocent’s refusal to make him secretary of state. After everything he had done for Innocent and his family, the subdatary felt cheated.

Cardinal Bernardino Spada suggested that Innocent consider Monsignor Fabio Chigi, apostolic nuncio to Münster, Germany. This suggestion received the pope’s immediate consent. Though Innocent had never met Chigi, he had received his weekly dispatches since 1644 and had them copied in larger handwriting so that he could read them personally. “This is a man of purpose!” the pope said to Cardinal Panciroli after reading his correspondence, and told everyone that there had never been a better nuncio than Fabio Chigi.⁹ Though the Thirty Year’s War had ended in 1648, Chigi remained in Germany to hammer out secondary treaties with the still-squabbling parties.

Fabio Chigi was, indeed, the perfect man for the job. He had spent twelve years in the highly charged, vitriolic German peace negotiations putting up with all kinds of egotistical foolishness. The Swedish envoy rose, went to bed, and ate to the sounds of blaring trumpets, disturbing all the other diplomats. The French envoy refused to speak Latin and insisted everyone speak French. The Austrian envoy was ready to give away the entire Catholic Church if only he could go home. The diplomats outdid one another in throwing lavish drunken banquets and racing their horses instead of focusing on the peace treaty. And through it all, Fabio Chigi’s wisdom, calmness, and integrity had won the respect of his sniping, petty counterparts.

In addition to his extensive diplomatic and legal experience, Fabio Chigi had the rare reputation for strict Catholic virtues. He lived a chaste life, keeping far from women. He slept on a board instead of in a feather bed, drank from a cup with a skull on it, and kept no fire in his cold damp German rooms, which resulted in the saintly suffering of bad health.

Chigi was an anomaly in the church hierarchy—he had no ambition other than to serve God. He lived simply, gave most of his money to the poor, and as bad as the intrigues of Germany were, he was thrilled to be far removed from that snake pit of intrigue, Rome.

Within days of Panciroli’s death, Innocent sent a swift messenger to Germany with instructions for Monsignor Chigi to leave for Rome immediately as Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili wanted to bestow an honor upon him. The pope did not tell him that he would be appointed secretary of state; if Chigi knew in advance, he might very well politely decline and stay in Germany. As it was, even the mysterious message was disturbing. Cardinal Pallavicino stated, “Chigi received this news with a doubtful heart. As much as he wanted to return to the Italian sky, he was terrified to enter the troubles of the court.”¹⁰

Chigi left Germany on October 1, 1651, and arrived on November 30 in Rome, where he was told to call on the pope immediately. The moment Innocent saw Chigi he was smitten with his serious demeanor. He had a long, narrow face, a long, bony nose, and a dark mustache and goatee. His heavily hooded dark eyes were large and expressive. After a bit of conversation, the pope dropped the bomb: Chigi would be his new secretary of state, working with Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili. Chigi reluctantly accepted the position.

Noticing Chigi’s frugality, Innocent told Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, “We must think about this man because he does not think about himself.”¹¹ The pope presented Chigi with several bags of gold—the enormous sum of three thousand scudi—for his expenses in establishing an honorable household in Rome. Chigi was shocked to receive such a gift but accepted it to please the pope.

Imitating the pope, when Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili discovered that Chigi’s Roman palace was mostly bereft of furniture, he declared that he would give him one thousand gold pieces to furnish it. Chigi was horrified at the announcement but finally had to accept the gift to avoid offending the cardinal nephew.

The rigorous Fabio Chigi squirmed in discomfort at the gift-giving culture of Rome, which often blurred into bribery and influence buying. “He disliked giving and receiving,” wrote Cardinal Pallavicino, “this trafficking in gifts of the ambitious and the self-interested, and the ostentation of the wasteful. He preferred to give alms to the poor rather than fatten the powerful with gifts.”¹²

Within days of his arrival in Rome, Chigi learned that etiquette demanded he give presents to Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili and Camillo as an expression of gratitude for his good fortune. Not to do so would be the cause of great offense, and he would acquire the reputation of being either ignorant or cheap. Chigi bowed to the reigning custom, but his gifts were thoughtful rather than sumptuous—hard-to-find spices from the Orient, rare books, exquisite perfumes, and delicious pastries. “But having allowed himself to overcome his repugnance to giving, he remained inflexibly opposed to receiving.”¹³

Chigi’s incorruptibility was the talk of Rome. He refused bribes and gifts from the French and Spaniards alike, and from family factions in Rome; stranger yet, the pope had to force him to accept incomes and benefices becoming his office. Unlike other courtiers, Chigi was as friendly to those known to be in disgrace at court as he was to the favorites, treating all with equal kindness and respect. No one in the Vatican had ever seen anything like it.

Before Chigi had been called to Rome, Innocent had given in to Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s pleas to keep him a monsignor. Making the older, wiser man a cardinal would give him more power than that of the young and foolish cardinal nephew. But even so, the insightful, efficient Chigi soon took over the office, becoming the cardinal nephew’s boss in fact, if not in title. Suddenly the honorable Fabio Chigi was the pope’s favorite, and the charming Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili was on the outs.

Well informed in her exile, Olimpia knew who held the reins of power that had been so violently wrenched from her hands. She traded courteous letters with Monsignor Chigi, who replied with equal courtesy. Though they had never met, they sent each other gifts of wine, cheese, and game. She had nothing against Chigi, who had never done her any harm and could, perhaps, be won over as an ally to help her return.

But the princess of Rossano was not about to let the powerful secretary of state become an ally of her despised mother-in-law. She set about winning his allegiance and had a great advantage over Olimpia by being in Rome. She could wine him, dine him, and meet with him, which Olimpia could not. But if the princess thought that batting her long black lashes or appearing in a particularly low-cut gown could dazzle the somber Chigi as it had Innocent, she was dead wrong.

Cardinal Pallavicino explained, “Now, with every studied industry, showing herself eager for his success, she tried to win Chigi as an ally for the house of Pamphili. But this effort, which would have vanquished the sternest puritan at court, didn’t work with this man, and he replied that he wanted to be of service to all, but against no one, and that being secretary of state it was his office to negotiate the politics of the nation and not the economics of one particular family.”¹⁴ And here she was stuck.

 

There was no love lost between Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili and the subdatary, Francesco Mascambruno, who both competed for power and the pope’s affection. The datary, Cardinal Cecchini, had been in disgrace for two years now and still waited pathetically day after day in his office for the pope to call him. Mascambruno ran the lucrative department, and when the marquess Tiberio Astalli asked him for pensions and incomes, as was his due as the cardinal nephew’s brother, Mascambruno angrily rebuffed him. The subdatary sold these positions and was certainly not about to give them away.

To get Tiberio Astalli off his back, Mascambruno complained to the pope that the marquess was importuning him almost daily and should perhaps be banished to his estates in the country. Innocent angrily called in Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili and told him to make sure his brother did not bother Mascambruno anymore, or the whole family would be exiled. The cardinal nephew, knowing Mascambruno’s hands were very unclean, conducted a little investigation of his own, found something heinous, and spread the word.

Monsignor Chigi had been in his position as secretary of state for less than three weeks when an angry Jesuit stormed into his office. Father Luigi Brandano, the assistant to the Holy See from Portugal, had heard that the pope had signed a scandalous indulgence for the Portuguese count of Villafranca. The count had been married in a church ceremony by a village priest, which would have been no sin in itself except that the count was already married to a richly dowered lady, and his second bride was a teenaged boy, dressed up like a woman, with whom he fully consummated the marriage that night. When word got out, the Spanish Inquisition threw the groom, the “bride,” and the priest into a dungeon.

The penalty for sodomy was usually burning at the stake. But the desperate count had paid forty thousand gold pieces for a papal order to get him out of this hot water. Even now, Father Brandano insisted, a bull signed by the pope was winging its way to Portugal ordering the transfer of the trial from the jurisdiction of the unforgiving Inquisition to that of the local bishop, a friend and relative of the sodomite count who would, no doubt, immediately release the guilty trio and impose a small fine as penance.

The virtuous Monsignor Chigi was so appalled at the Jesuit’s story that he immediately arranged a papal audience for Father Brandano. As the Jesuit was retelling the tale, the Portuguese monsignor Mendoza came flapping into the audience chamber and angrily spewed out the same story. The furious pope denied ever having signed a bull that, in effect, permitted two homosexuals to marry and commit sodomy with only a slap on the wrist as penalty.

Innocent refused to believe the story and vehemently defended his employees in the datary. However, given the fact that his reputation and the reputation of the entire church were at stake, the pope agreed to launch an investigation. He sent word for Cardinal Cecchini to come immediately to the papal audience chamber. Eaten up by gout, Cecchini hobbled breathlessly to the pope, hoping that he had been restored to favor. Instead, he heard devastating rumors of forgery in the datary.

The datary offices were searched for the Portuguese bull, but it was not found. A copy was found in the chancery, the department responsible for establishing new dioceses and benefices. The copy of the forged bull had been made by a certain Giuseppe Brignardelli, who had already sent off the original to Portugal. Brignardelli, it was discovered, had fled. But when Cardinal Cecchini’s investigators questioned his wife, she said that three days before her husband’s disappearance her nephew had shown up with thirteen thousand scudi from Francesco Mascambruno to help him escape. When Mascambruno’s lodgings were searched, the investigators found fourteen thousand gold pieces, countless vases and plates of pure gold and silver, and bank records showing enormous deposits. They also found seventy forged papal bulls, which Mascambruno was evidently holding until payment arrived.

Several of the bulls were in the process of being forged, which revealed how he had done it. Official letters of the seventeenth century were works of art, with magnificent calligraphy and pleasing spaces between the paragraphs. Mascambruno had written a summary of the bull at the top of a long sheet of parchment, an innocuous dispensation for third cousins to marry, for instance. The pope, casting barely a glance at the summary, signed at the bottom of a large white space.

Back in his office, Mascambruno cut off the top of the document and wrote a new text, permitting homosexual acts, for example. Then he attached the lead bulla dangling from red ribbons at the bottom and sent it off, not through the datary but through the chancery, where his accomplices worked. Investigators discovered a network of coconspirators across Europe, corrupt officials in different nunciatures forwarding the forged bulls to those who had paid for them. It was a brilliant scheme because the only part of a papal bull that was closely examined for forgery was the signature, and that was always genuine.

On January 22, 1652, Francesco Mascambruno was taken to the infamous Tor di Nona prison. During long interrogations he gave up no information, saying only, “Ask Donna Olimpia,” or “The Ludovisis and Giustinianis know all about that.”¹⁵ He wanted his captors to know that if he was going down, he would implicate the entire Pamphili family and drag them down with him.

Despite Mascambruno’s dark insinuations, the scandal vindicated Olimpia. While she had queened it over Rome, she had been the scapegoat for all famine, flood, war, and vice. But not even her worst enemies could blame Mascambruno’s conduct on her. The investigation proved that hundreds of Mascambruno’s forged bulls had been written during Olimpia’s disgrace and exile, when the subdatary had publicly dumped her and become the ally of her enemy, the princess of Rossano. The princess had become so close to the subdatary that she even permitted his low-born female relatives the signal honor of riding in her carriage.

It also appeared likely that Olimpia’s earlier supervision of the datary had kept Mascambruno’s corruption within the bounds of polite acceptability. It was only since her exile that Mascambruno had gotten truly out of line, particularly after Innocent’s refusal to name him secretary of state. Mascambruno’s sullying of the pope’s name was a strong brew of greed and revenge.

Reeling from Mascambruno’s betrayal, the pope felt increasingly grateful to Monsignor Chigi for his sober efficiency. Though Innocent had promised Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili that the new secretary of state would not be made a cardinal, he soon changed his mind. In Fabio Chigi, Innocent had finally found a man in some ways similar to himself—hardworking, abstemious, and just. Such a man should be rewarded. The pope instructed Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili to give Monsignor Chigi the wonderful news, which he must have done reluctantly.

But when Chigi was told of his imminent assumption into the Sacred College, he “showed no happiness, or change of expression but, as if he were discussing foreign affairs, replied that great thought should be given to that, and that he would perhaps better be able to serve His Holiness in his present position. Then he continued discussing other affairs with the same tranquility as before.”¹⁶ It was an unheard-of reply, rather like a lottery player, hearing that he held the winning $100 million ticket, suddenly turning to discuss the weather.

When Chigi held his regular audience with the pope that evening, he didn’t fling himself on his knees expressing heartfelt gratitude for the immense honor in store for him. In fact, he didn’t even mention the cardinal’s cap. After he departed, Innocent called for Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili and angrily accused him of not imparting the news. The young cardinal protested that he had indeed told him. Dumbfounded, the pope exclaimed, “We have not ever seen such a man; nothing moves him.”¹⁷

On February 18, the night before the announcement of his elevation, Chigi told a friend that he accepted the dignity reluctantly because with increased honors came increased responsibilities. “I assure you that if the list were in my possession, I would cross out my name,” he said with a sigh.¹⁸

Innocent assigned Cardinal Chigi three important congregations in addition to his time-consuming duties as secretary of state. He joined the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, and the congregation that examined potential bishops. Working day and night, Chigi proved himself the most efficient member of the Sacred College.

One evening the pope gave the order that Cardinal Chigi, not Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili, should have the honor of carrying the candles into his office at sunset and staying for a consultation. The two had a long chat behind closed doors while the younger cardinal cooled his heels in the antechamber, fuming that he, as nephew, should have had precedence over the secretary of state and access to the pontiff at all times. And from then on it was Chigi, not the nephew, who carried in the candles.

In the same consistory that saw the creation of Cardinal Chigi, the princess of Rossano saw the elevation of two of her candidates—her cousin Baccio Aldobrandini and the French cleric Jean-François Gondi, who became known as Cardinal de Retz. Until then Olimpia had helped Innocent choose the new cardinals, and now she had clearly been replaced by her daughter-in-law. The avvisi commented, “The Rossano is becoming the open competitor of her mother-in-law.”¹⁹

 

Though Innocent was wracked with grief over the betrayal of Francesco Mascambruno, a man he had implicitly trusted, he hired two of Rome’s best lawyers to defend him. After a trial lasting two months, with some eleven thousand pages of witness testimony, Francesco Mascambruno was sentenced to be hanged. Then his head would be cut off and stuck on a skewer, which would be placed on the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge, along with his body, hanging by his left foot. After being exposed in such a disgraceful manner for several hours, both head and body would be burned, and the ashes tossed into the Tiber.

Accompanied by Mascambruno’s lawyers, the princess of Rossano swished into the Quirinal arrayed in her most fetching attire, imploring the pope to pardon the forger, who had promised to devote the remainder of his life to prayer and penance in a distant monastery if spared. Sighing, Innocent said, “Pray God to grant the pardon that we cannot concede for justice sake.”²⁰

Ironically, it was the usually ineffectual Camillo who obtained the pope’s mitigation of the sentence. Mascambruno would be beheaded, his body exposed and then buried decently in a church. But when the forger was informed that the sentence had been mitigated, Mascambruno was not at all grateful. In fact, he did not believe the execution would be carried out. He spoke of other cases where the condemned was brought to the place of execution, forced to lay his neck on the block, and at the last minute pardoned. Surely the pope would not execute him and was plotting an elaborate drama to scare him for his misdeeds.

As an ordained servant of the Holy Mother Church, a priest could not be executed. He must first be defrocked. On April 14, Mascambruno was taken in a heavily guarded carriage from his prison to the Church of Saint Salvatore in Lauro, where before a crowd of cardinals, nobles, and ambassadors, his priestly vestments were wrested from him. Finally, his fate began to sink in. “Pray Lord God and the Holy Virgin that they forgive every one of them for this great persecution!” he shrieked. “God pardon them, pardon them. Great persecution! Great persecution! Pardon to all, pardon from the heart. Be my witnesses that I pardon them all!”²¹ His howling was so unseemly in a church that his guards shoved a gag into his mouth.

When he returned to his cell, Mascambruno found the Brothers of Compassion there, members of the confraternity that comforted those awaiting execution. When he bewailed his unjust fate, they consoled him with the fact that he would not die unconfessed and unrepentant. If death had struck him down still stained with his foul sins, he would have gone to hell. Now, given holy absolution after confession, he would spend only a little time in purgatory and still might make it into heaven. Mascambruno took them at their word. His final confession lasted seven hours, during which time he admitted countless acts of theft and forgery that he had not even been charged with, including pilfering 35,000 scudi that had been set aside for Olimpia’s granddaughter, Olimpiuccia Giustiniani, in 1650. Stealing from an innocent child of nine was considered as low as a person could possibly sink.

The following day at dawn, the brothers conducted him to the prison courtyard. Given Mascambruno’s frightful theatrics the day before, it was decided to do the job with merciful speed. After the forger said only one short prayer, the executioner pushed him down and struck off his head. For its journey to the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge, the head was, oddly enough, “sewn onto the body from which blood trickled and the dogs licked it,” a spectator observed.²² The body remained there from eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, thronged by the curious, the jeering, and the compassionate. Finally it was interred in a nearby church.

The day of Mascambruno’s execution, the pope was seen sitting in his Quirinal apartments, crying. The scandal was far-ranging. Dozens of other offenders were in prison and would be tortured, executed, exiled, fined, imprisoned, or sentenced to the galleys. By exiling Olimpia, Innocent had hoped to clean up the reputation of the Holy See. But now it was much worse than when she had been at the helm, and no one could blame her for this. The Catholics hung their heads in shame, and the heretics laughed at him.

 

Over time, the princess of Rossano’s star dimmed a bit, and she found it increasingly difficult to compete with Olimpia’s forty years of interaction with the pope. For if Olimpia had been like an old comfortable pair of loafers, the princess was a new pair of stylish high-heeled shoes that pinched. Innocent had always been able to relax with the older Olimpia. This young Olimpia, though easier to look at, was always prickling him with requests for favors, honors, and money for herself, her family, and her friends. Her shrill, incessant demands were more irritating than his sister-in-law’s measured advice and behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

The princess’s Vatican politicking took the place of a happy marriage. Studying her foolish husband through narrowed eyes, she found much to criticize and often ripped into him for the many things he was always doing wrong. She particularly hated it when Camillo still trembled upon hearing his mother’s name, even though Olimpia was clearly powerless.

It was a cruel irony that Camillo, who had married the princess to get away from the domination of his bossy mother, now found himself dominated by a bossy wife. In fact, appearances aside, the two Olimpias were remarkably similar; both were ambitious, strong, and far smarter than he, and neither would ever let him forget it.

Scorned by his wife, poor Camillo found solace in the arms of pretty singers and dancers, women who looked up to him and told him what a great and clever man he was. He further punished the princess by carefully controlling her purse strings, which he, as her husband, was legally permitted to do. Whenever the princess wanted to go shopping or throw a party, he cracked open his change purse and reluctantly doled out a few coins from her immense dowry, which infuriated her. He called her a reckless spendthrift, and she called him a womanizing idiot.

Camillo was stung daily by the fact that no one called his wife by the title he had bestowed on her by marriage—the princess Pamphili. Everyone in Rome knew Olimpia Maidalchini as the princess Pamphili, and the matter was further confused because both women had the same first name. And so the princess of Rossano stayed the princess of Rossano, and poor Camillo became the prince of Rossano. The humiliation became too much for him, and he asked the pope to send him to Avignon as legate just to get away.

But Innocent did not send him away. Though he knew his nephew was stupid and useless, the pope was a sentimental fellow who loved his own blood dearly. One day a cardinal asked him about assigning an income to either Camillo or Prince Ludovisi. The pope replied that the shirt was closer to the heart than the coat, and Camillo, who was evidently the shirt, was given the income. Another day the same cardinal asked him which of his three nephews he loved best. Innocent said, “I love Prince Giustiniani out of respect for his wife. I love Prince Ludovisio because he is a good prince. But I love Prince Pamfili because he is my blood.”²³

Sitting motionless in San Martino like a black widow spider eyeing her prey, Olimpia was wreaking her revenge without lifting a finger. Her enemy Cardinal Panciroli was dead. Her enemy Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili had proved ineffectual and had lost his power to Cardinal Chigi. Her enemy the princess of Rossano was losing her initial influence over Innocent with her constant demands, and her fairy-tale-romance marriage was falling apart. Her enemy Pope Innocent X was plagued by constant family squabbles because Olimpia was not there to control her fractious brood.

To top it all off, the pope was embroiled in the most shocking Vatican scandal in nearly a century, a scandal that would never have occurred had Olimpia still been running the show. She knew that, and fretting on his papal throne, so did he.