mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
relatives. Having greeted the exalted visitor, they would hop into their
carriages and follow him to the Vatican in a colorful cavalcade.
But the most impressive cavalcade was that of the obbedienza ambassador,
a special emissary sent by an old king to a new pope, or by a new
king to the old pope, as a sign of obedience to the pontiff. An obbedienza
procession was a kind of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Circus, sometimes complete with camels and elephants. It had its roots
in the imperial Roman past, when victorious legions marched in triumph
through the streets of Rome carting booty and slaves captured in
foreign countries. In the more civilized days of the Renaissance, foreign
countries began sending their own booty, gifts designed to amaze the
Romans and bring honor to their donors.
When the new king Ladislas of Poland sent Prince Jerzy Ossolinski
as his obbedienza ambassador in 1632, he instructed him to carry out his
mission to rival or even surpass the cavalcades of the king of France.
“Where the French had silver he was to take gold; where they had gold
he was to have precious stones; and where they had precious stones he
was to use diamonds.”
Ten camels carried the ambassador’s luggage, and according to a
contemporary report, “the astonishment of the Romans was specially
roused by six Turkish horses which followed, whose trappings were
studded with emeralds and rubies whilst harness, stirrups and even the
shoes were of pure gold. The members of the embassy, too, were resplendent
in cloaks set with diamonds. Ossolinski’s zupan (Polish coat)
of black cloth shot with gold, glittered with diamonds; his sword, set
with precious stones, was valued at 20,000 scudi.” 13
If the Polish obbedienza amazed the Roman people, it is likely that
some cardinals watched it while stifling yawns. A cardinal’s lifestyle
was just as regal. The glory of the church was reflected in the glory of
her princes, in their gilded carriages, marble palaces, and sumptuous
banquets. A cardinal needed to have a minimum of forty horses in his
stables—though many had three times this amount—and rich velvet
trappings for each animal to match the color of his robes.
The cardinal’s apartments on the piano nobile of his palace consisted
of a series of antechambers culminating in his bedroom in the corner of
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