Malice sucks up the greater part of her own venom, and poisons herself.
—Michel de Montaigne
EVERY FAMILY OF A FRESHLY deceased pope teetered on the brink of ruin at the conclave, and the Pamphilis were no exception. Everything Olimpia had worked for over the previous forty years could be snatched from her in an instant if the wrong cardinal were elected pope.
On January 18, 1655, sixty-six cardinals solemnly entered the Sistine Chapel. In his last creation of 1654, Innocent had filled the college up to its limit of seventy. In the meantime one had died, two elderly cardinals living in Spain didn’t want to budge, and Cardinal Mazarin remained in Paris running the country for the king and sleeping with the queen mother.
In the Sistine Chapel, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, as vice deacon of the Sacred College, started off the proceedings by singing the Mass of the Holy Spirit. The conclave remained open for foreign ambassadors throughout that day and all the next. For several months, the Spanish and French ambassadors had been sitting on instructions from their kings as to which cardinals to exclude in conclave and which to support. Now that the conclave was about to begin, their meetings with the cardinals were so urgent, and lasted so long, that the conclave was not officially sealed until after 2 A.M. on January 20, when the Spanish ambassador almost had to be physically ejected.
This conclave was unusual because there was no cardinal nephew of the freshly deceased pope to rally the allies of his uncle into an impressive faction. Cardinal Francesco Barberini, cardinal nephew of the pope-before-last, gathered many of his uncle’s creations around him. Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici was in charge of the Spanish clique, and Rinaldo d’Este, supported by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, was in charge of the French partisans.
But there was a fourth group, consisting of ten “young” cardinals—most in their forties—many of whom had been promoted in Innocent’s last creation the year before. Led by Olimpia’s supporter Decio Azzolini, they formed a faction independent of France or Spain. They called themselves “the Flying Squadron,” or squadrone volante, a term for an auxiliary military unit that was deployed with great speed to that spot on the battlefield where its assistance was most urgently needed. The Flying Squadron vowed to elect the best pontiff possible, regardless of French or Spanish interests. Most of its members were close friends of Olimpia’s.
Before the conclave began, Olimpia and Cardinal Azzolini had decided their first choice would be Cardinal Giulio Sacchetti, a mild-mannered and scholarly prelate of exactly the right age—sixty-eight—who would do no harm to the Pamphilis. Sacchetti, who would have won in 1644 had Spain not excluded him, was also the favorite of Cardinal Mazarin and therefore had many of the French votes.
On January 21 the first scrutiny was held. Cardinal Sacchetti received thirty-nine votes, only five fewer than was required to become pope. Several other candidates, including Cardinal Chigi, were proposed but received far less support.
On January 22, the seventy-three-year-old Cardinal Pierluigi Carafa received forty-one votes. Later that day he began to feel ill, along with Cardinals Pallotta, Caffarelli, Rapaccioli, and Ceva. Only two days after the doors were sealed, an epidemic had broken out, which was unusual for a winter conclave.
Tensions already ran high. That evening, Giacinto Gigli noted, Cardinals Astalli and Azzolini fell into a violent shouting match and ended up slapping each other. Given the fact that Astalli was Olimpia’s vicious enemy, and Azzolini her staunchest supporter, it is likely that the subject of the argument was Olimpia.
On January 24, the rumor raced across Rome that Cardinal Francesco Barberini would become pope. Olimpia, Maffeo, and Olimpiuccia received the news with glad hearts, and the bookies changed their odds to favor him. But it proved untrue. Other papabili were proposed and ditched for various reasons. Cardinal Spada was highly regarded but not well liked. Spain supported the election of Cardinal Francesco Rapaccioli, but at forty-six, he would likely have such a long reign that none of the older cardinals would get a chance to be pope.
Cardinal Ulderico Carpegna was pushed by France if Sacchetti fell out of the running. At fifty-nine he was almost of suitable age. But his greatest disadvantage was his young, vivacious sister-in-law, who was best friends with the princess of Rossano and despised Olimpia. The sister-in-law had not only numerous poor relatives but insatiable ambition. The cardinals shuddered to think of another Olimpia storming into the Vatican and telling them all what to do.
Cardinal Cecchini, the former datary, was well respected but suffered from family disadvantages, which also reminded the cardinals of Innocent. “He lets himself be dominated by his sister-in-law more than is usual,” the Venetian ambassador wrote. “His only nephew has very little in the way of a brain, and of the countless other relatives, none is very smart.”1
On January 27 the conclave was opened briefly to allow the just-arrived ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor to meet with cardinals. In the meantime word leaked out that Cardinal Maidalchini was denouncing his aunt Olimpia in dramatic speeches.
On January 30, the Florentine envoy Riccardi reported, “Signora Donna Olimpia said that she is more mortified by the way Maidalchini is acting, having allied himself with her enemies, than of the death of the pope and of the many pasquinades and writings against her…. I hear that in conclave he continues to speak ill of his aunt, as he used to do outside.”2 Gregorio Leti asserted that Cardinal Maidalchini “declaimed with more noise than all the others against his aunt, although everyone laughed at all his discourses because no one esteemed him much in the conclave.”3
It was generally believed that the Holy Spirit was listening intently to every word the cardinals said in conclave. But Olimpia had no fear that God was paying any attention at all to her wayward nephew. “The braying of an ass,” she said, shaking her head, “is not heard as far as heaven.” 4
As the conclave slowly ground forward in the chilly chambers, the bored cardinals began to wheel and deal—often literally, playing cards for small sums when the boredom became unbearable. At night they met secretly in one another’s cells to encourage votes for a favorite candidate, and they sent and received messages to the outside world concealed in their food platters.
To relieve the unending tedium, the young cardinals played “carnivalesque pranks” on the older ones, according to Cardinal Spada, who spotted them sneaking around at night holding candles.5 The young cardinals discovered that Cardinal Carafa had built a secret door in his cell, which opened up on a passage behind the cell of Cardinal de’ Medici, leader of the Spanish faction. This enabled Carafa’s conclavistas to eavesdrop on the plotting and planning of the Spaniards. Cardinal Maidalchini, who was by now twenty-five, wrapped himself in a sheet and tiptoed through the passage. He planned to enter Cardinal Carafa’s cell through the hidden door and shriek like a ghost. But Carafa was a light sleeper and had become aware of strange sounds in the passageway. Though he lay still in bed, he was, in fact, wide awake. When the white form moved past him, he whacked it hard with the cane he kept in his bed. Sobbing in pain, Cardinal Maidalchini staggered out the way he had come.
On February 9, Cardinal Giangiacomo Trivulzio left the conclave feverish with a rash on his face. Three days later Cardinal Vincenzo Maculano became ill but refused to leave the conclave because he wanted to become pope. On February 15, Cardinal Carafa, who had also refused to leave despite a fever, died in his cell.
Olimpia was hell-bent on preventing her enemies from becoming pope. There were three in particular who for years had poured forth vitriolic monologues about her greed, lust for power, and sexual immorality: Giovan Battista Pallotta, Federico Sforza, and Vincenzo Maculano. She was also terrified of the former datary, Domenico Cecchini; though he seemed to hold no grudge against her for alienating him from the pope, payback time could come the moment he plopped the triple tiara on his head. Whenever these four cardinals were nominated, Cardinal Francesco Barberini shot them down on Olimpia’s behalf.
But it was much easier to prevent the election of an enemy than to secure the election of a friend. Scrutinies were held every day for Cardinal Sacchetti, who, though he was popular with the other cardinals, had been vetoed again by Spain, who still thought him too friendly with Mazarin. Those cardinals with pensions from the king of Spain, and from his ally the duke of Tuscany, were reluctant to vote for him.
Olimpia was receiving conclave news every day from a spy, Francesco Ravizza, the conclavista of her cousin Cardinal Gualterio. But on March 3, Ravizza was taken to jail in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Gigli wrote, “It was discovered that in a certain place he sent letters which were carried to Donna Olimpia and which told her all the negotiations of the conclave about the creation of a new pope.”6
One of the letters found was from Olimpia with instructions to prevent the election of her old enemy, Cardinal Maculano, at all costs. The discovery of Olimpia’s spy sparked heated debate. Some cardinals declared it was bad enough that a woman had elected one pope; they would do everything in their power to prevent her from electing a second.
On March 4 news leaked out of the conclave that Cardinal Bernardino Spada had become delirious with fever and believed that he had been elected pope. He began making loud plans for his coronation and issuing proclamations. Cardinal Spada was forcibly removed from the conclave and taken to his palace to recuperate. But many believed that he had feigned his illness so that he could meet with the French ambassador and Olimpia for urgent negotiations.
Cardinal Spada knew that France had given instructions to Cardinal d’Este to exclude Fabio Chigi if voting seemed to be going in his favor. During Chigi’s tenure as papal nuncio to Germany, he had often remarked that the French in general, and Cardinal Mazarin in particular, were strangely opposed to making peace. Mazarin, with his long memory and delicate ego, refused to see this man as pope.
Yet more and more cardinals were talking about Chigi. True, he was too young at fifty-six and had been a cardinal for only three years, but his incorruptible standards, his international legal and diplomatic experience, and his irreproachable way of life might make up for those defects. The members of the Flying Squadron, in fact, supposing that Sacchetti might very well fail because of Spanish opposition, were holding Chigi in reserve as their backup candidate.
Given the increasing support for Chigi, it was urgent that Spada meet with the French ambassador and Olimpia to see if Chigi would be acceptable to them. For in this election there were not the usual two great powers with veto privileges—France and Spain. There were now three: France, Spain, and Olimpia. Before Spada returned to the conclave, he was seen entering the Palazzo Pamphili.
Gregorio Leti harrumphed, “Because, to tell the truth, putting aside the interests of Spain and France, everything centered on either the protection or the ruin of Donna Olimpia. To see her ruined, the cardinals who were her enemies would have given their vote not only to an unworthy candidate, but to the devil himself as long as he was her enemy. And, on the other side, those who were looking out for her interests would have had no difficulty in rejecting a saint if he had shown the least aversion to this woman.”7
Certainly Chigi would not have been Olimpia’s preference. Yet if Chigi were elected, would he go out of his way to punish the family of the pope who had plucked him from obscurity and made him a cardinal? Would he hold a grudge against her for all those prickling insults? Olimpia was not sure. But the Flying Squadron and the Barberini cardinals, all loyal supporters of Olimpia, believed that the selfless Chigi would not be one to exact his pound of flesh.
Ironically, even Olimpia’s worst enemies—Cardinals Sforza, Pallotta, and Maculano—were supportive of Chigi. With his strict sense of justice, they believed he could not ignore her depradations of the papal treasury and would prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law.
Evidently Olimpia grudgingly gave her approval to vote for Chigi if Sacchetti could not be elected. Now there was only Mazarin to deal with. Cardinal Antonio Barberini wrote a letter urging Mazarin to withdraw his secret exclusion of Chigi. He was the best candidate for the job, Antonio explained, and harbored no resentment toward France. Besides, the conclave had been going on for two months. Rome was in chaos, and Milan had gone to war with Modena. A new pontiff was urgently needed to establish law and order at home and negotiate peace abroad.
Cardinal Sacchetti also sent a letter, generously stepping aside as the French candidate, imploring Mazarin to allow the election of the worthy Chigi for the good of Christendom. If the Most Christian King did not withdraw the exclusion, the cardinals, more of whom were falling sick, might elect Chigi anyway, and for the second time in a row the new pope would bear no love for France, which had tried to prevent his election.
The cardinals’ letters were posted with special messengers who rode like the wind. Finally, the verdict was delivered. Mazarin and the sixteen-year-old Louis XIV would be absolutely delighted if the virtuous Cardinal Chigi became pope.
With France, Spain, and Olimpia accepting the choice, on the evening of April 6 the cardinals went to Chigi’s cell to give him the glorious news that on the following morning he would become pope. When the cardinals knocked on his cell door they found that he was taking a nap. Chigi listened to their news with no change of expression and then asked them to reconsider their choice. He had many obvious imperfections, he said, and quite a few they didn’t even know about. But this self-deprecating statement only increased the cardinals’ eagerness to elect him.
The following day, Cardinal Chigi received a unanimous vote, except for his own, which he gave to Sacchetti. When the last vote was taken out of the chalice and read, Chigi fell to his knees and prayed. With tears streaming down his face, he stood and announced that he would be called Alexander VII to honor the twelfth-century Alexander III, who had come from Chigi’s hometown of Siena.
Four days after the election, on the night of April 11, a great storm hammered Rome. Amidst the rain, hail, thunder, and lightning, a carriage and four headless horses of fire were seen racing through the city. When they arrived at Olimpia’s garden on the Tiber, they sprang into an abyss and disappeared. Word got out that in this carriage was the soul of Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphili.
While Rome’s nobility were calling on the new pontiff to congratulate him, Olimpia was afraid to do so. Would he physically eject her from the papal palace? He had always said he didn’t want women running around the Vatican. She sent Camillo to render homage in the name of the Pamphilis and sound out the pope’s response. Alexander accepted Camillo’s wishes with dignity but not great warmth. This worried Olimpia.
Next she sent her majordomo to present her congratulations. Alexander merely told him to thank his mistress for her good wishes. And that was it. Not satisfied, Olimpia sent Cardinal Azzolini to let the pope know how delighted she was at his exaltation. Once more, the pope replied with alarming coolness. Shortly thereafter, he granted the vegetable vendors’ request to reopen the Piazza Navona for their Wednesday market. Then he ordered Olimpia to clear out the construction material for the Church of Saint Agnes, which was littering the piazza.
Olimpia was, for once, uncertain what to do. How would she win over this new pope, who held her very life in his hands? Projecting her own tastes onto Alexander, she completely misjudged him. She sent her majordomo to the papal palace with two enormous gold vases and the wish that she could come and kiss his feet. But the Holy Father sent her majordomo back with the vases and a message that she was to keep herself far removed from the Vatican as it was not a place for women.
Pope Alexander immediately embarked on numerous acts of goodwill and charity. He sold his silverware for six thousand scudi and gave the money to the poor. He ordered his butler to replenish the papal cupboards with plates and bowls of earthenware on which was painted the skull and crossbones. He personally paid the debts of up to thirty scudi of every debtor in prison, thereby permitting many of them to go home. He sent cartloads of white bread to the prisoners who remained.
The new pope ordered a lead coffin in which he planned to be buried and placed it in his bedroom. Alexander hoped that by having the image of his death before him, he would always remain a humble servant of God no matter how rich and powerful he was. But there was perhaps a second reason for this macabre décor—to make sure his body would never end up on a plank of wood in a janitor’s closet.
On April 18, 1655, Pope Alexander VII was crowned in Saint Peter’s to the great joy of the Roman people. Though the Pamphilis had emptied the papal treasury completely, in the three months since Innocent’s death taxes and contributions from all over the Catholic world had been rolling in. Alexander, however, tried to cut expenses where he could. For his May 9 possesso he wanted no pompous cavalcade with trumpeters, drummers, and gaily caparisoned horses. He wanted to go on foot, and humbly.
But, Giacinto Gigli noted, “he was persuaded to consider that the cavalcade gave joy to the people and that the money of the Apostolic Camera went to the Romans to make clothes for the officials and pages, and other pious works, because this money went to poor gentlemen and paid poor artists and so the pope let his decision be changed and allowed the cavalcade at a moderate cost.”8
Olimpia was not in town for the coronation. She had left some time earlier for a visit to San Martino. Perhaps she vacated Rome because she was afraid of attracting any attention to herself. Or maybe she simply couldn’t bear to watch the crowning of a new pope, clear proof that her power was gone forever. It must have been soothing for her to escape the insults, noise, filth, and fear of Rome for her country palace. There the air was sweet and fresh, and in April the hills were alive with the color of emeralds.
One day shortly before the coronation, as she sat in her sitting room overlooking her little town and the medieval church, Olimpia was handed a letter bearing, for a change, extremely good news. On April 12 her beloved granddaughter, Olimpiuccia, had given birth to her first child, a month before her fourteenth birthday. The labor was fairly easy, and both mother and daughter were healthy. She called her baby Costanza, after her aunt and the little girl Olimpia had lost as a young woman in Viterbo.
Upon hearing the news of Cardinal Chigi’s election, Romans tried to learn more about his family, whom they expected to come racing to Rome. Did he have nephews of the appropriate age to become cardinals and help him run the church? What secular relatives would be made princes and princesses? How greedy were they? Were there any women in the family who might try to take over?
The new pope had a brother in Siena, sixty-year-old Mario Chigi, a man whose means were far more modest than his ambitions. When a messenger raced to Siena with the glorious news of the election, Mario was beside himself with joy. He had just won the billion-dollar papal lottery. Leti observed, “Without so much as putting on new clothes, as his Wife would have had him, he caused a Horse to be saddled, and with two servants took his journey towards Rome, having first receiv’d from one and the other a number of submissive complements, not without the title of Excellence.”9
But Pope Alexander VII refused to embark on the slippery slope of nepotism and sent a messenger to Siena. Before Mario had ridden many miles from town, he was met by “a gentleman from the Pope with Letters to him, in which his Holiness did most strictly command that neither he, nor any of his Relations should stir from Siena to go towards Rome, under pain of incurring their brothers indignation for ever.”10
Reading the letter, “poor Don Mario was as if he had been thunderstruck…. All his blood retired to his heart, and left him pale, like a Ghost, though otherwise corpulent enough…. He resolv’d to return by night to Siena, being asham’d to enter the City by day.”11
Mario returned home dejected, but his spirits rose when the duke of Tuscany sent him expensive gifts, and when cardinals and princes lavished him with congratulations and silverware. He was elated when the Venetian senate sent him a solemn embassy with letters patent declaring him a nobleman of the most serene republic. But when the French ambassador was ready to set out from Rome to congratulate Mario personally, word came from the pope to stay put.
Undeterred, Mario wrote to Monsignor Scotti, the pope’s majordomo, expressing his heartfelt desire to come to Rome and kiss the pope’s feet. If, however, he was not allowed to do so, he would like Monsignor Scotti to kiss the pope’s feet for him. When Monsignor Scotti read the letter to Alexander, the pontiff proffered his foot and said, “Kiss it.”12
Several cardinals asked the pope when he would bring his family to Rome and which positions they would fill. Alexander replied that Fabio Chigi had had relatives, but Alexander VII had no family other than the church. If anyone cared to look in the baptismal register of Siena, he would find no person by the name of Alexander VII. The cardinals were shocked at this reply and warned him that if he didn’t show affection for his family, he would look pusillanimous, selfish, and cheap. How could a pope be expected to take care of tens of millions of Christians if he wasn’t willing to take care of his own family?
The ambassadors were also greatly displeased at the new pontiff’s stubborn opposition to nepotism. The Venetian ambassador stated that the republic would not send the traditional obbedienza parade if it would be dishonored by a lack of papal nephews. Besides, he said, the more a pope spent on his family, the less money he would have to make war on other Italian kingdoms and stir up trouble.
The Spanish ambassador explained to the pope that papal relatives were required to take part in the ostentatious cavalcade for the presentation of the chinea each June 28. If no papal relatives marched in the parade, Spain would be dishonored and would not give the white horse at all. Spain insisted on having a cardinal nephew with whom the ambassador could negotiate, as the pope was often too busy. Moreover, Spain was ready to hand over rich possessions in the kingdom of Naples to the pope’s secular nephews, along with fat pensions and noble Spanish brides with generous dowries. How could they influence the new pope if they were not permitted to bestow their munificence on his nephews?
France and Tuscany found themselves in a similar perplexity. Knowing that the new pontiff was incorruptible, Cardinal Mazarin and the Medici duke had amassed large amounts of gold to bribe the pope’s family members to influence him. Now they had sacks of gold sitting around their embassies collecting dust, and they didn’t know what to do with them.
The relatives of past popes—the Ludovisis, Borgheses, Barberinis, and Pamphilis—were aghast that this new incorrupt system made them all look like crooks. If Alexander refused to enrich his relatives at the expense of the poor, what did that say about them? Plus, if the new pope didn’t bring his relatives to Rome, there would be no marriages to bind them all together so he couldn’t throw them in jail.
Many prelates looking to rise in the church were disturbed at having to do so on merit alone; bribes and personal connections were so much easier. Minor courtiers hoping to serve in the households of papal relatives as secretaries, masters of ceremonies, and gentlemen-in-waiting were furious at the lack of new job openings.
Rome’s service industries were also unhappy at the shocking news that the pope was keeping his family firmly in Siena. Papal relatives bought carriages, furniture, jewels, and clothing; they hired servants, architects, painters, sculptors, and gardeners. They threw elaborate parties to the delight of bakers, butchers, and grocers. They held opera performances to the benefit of actors, singers, and stage-set designers. Nepotism provided an important boost to the Roman economy.
But Cardinal Girolamo Grimaldi, for one, was delighted that the new pope was opposed to nepotism. He had done some calculations and found that there were only enough church properties left for two more papal families to steal.