Mistress of the Vatican by Eleanor Herman

Author:Eleanor Herman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780061827419
Publisher: HarperCollins

Who says “lady” says harm.

Who says “woman” says misfortune.

Who says Olimpia Maidalchini

Says lady, harm, ruin.12

On one occasion Pasquino quipped:

“The Roman people are dying of hunger,”

It was said in the Vatican hall

So the pope, to put an end to the loss,

Said Maidalchini would eat for us all.13

Pasquino starting referring to Olimpia as the Pimpaccia of the Piazza Navona. Pimpa was a power-hungry, greedy vixen in a popular play, and the Italian ending accia means something like “incredibly horrible.”

It was believed that the princess of Rossano was responsible for some of the pasquinades, epigrams, and cartoons against her mother-in-law. After all, she held contests in her palazzo to create such witty masterpieces, and oddly enough, a short time later they appeared on the talking statues of Rome. Olimpia would have liked nothing more than to tie the slanderous pasquinades to her daughter-in-law. Giacinto Gigli wrote that she convinced the pope to station spies near Pasquino “who mixed with the crowds clothed in silk to look like gentlemen.”14 Many pasquinade writers were arrested, including three mischievous brothers, but this didn’t put a dent in the heaps of biting verses piled on the statue.

More serious than the pasquinades were the avvisi sent to foreign governments. The agent of the duke of Modena was arrested because in his newsletter he wrote that the ministers of the tax department had held a meeting before the papessa—the female pope—where it was decided that the pagnotta should fall by two ounces. It was a great insult to the Holy See to call a woman the papessa and to insinuate that Olimpia was responsible for holding meetings to decide the vital issue of the bread supply. The worst part of it was that this avvisi was being sent to a foreign ruler. What messages had been sent out that had not been caught by the censors? What were heads of state thinking about Innocent?

Olimpia knew that the pope cared a great deal for the dignity of his office. All popes had to put up with nasty pasquinades, of course; that came with the office. But most of the pasquinades during Innocent’s reign were about Olimpia, not the pope. She was the cause of scandal, the cause of the waning dignity of the papacy. In front of the pope, she shrugged off the popular hatred, hid a great deal of what was going on, and presented a smiling face. But deep down she was worried. If it really came to a contest between Olimpia and the dignity of the papacy, she was not completely certain which one Innocent would choose.

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