mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
When the coaches of two cardinals met, there was also a rigorous
protocol. According to Gregorio Leti’s book on cardinals and their etiquette,
“A Cardinal stops his Coach to another that is his Senior,” and
by this he meant not the older cardinal but the one who had been created
first. “For it is to be taken notice of, that the most antient Cardinal
is the last always that stops and the first that goes forward.” 16 This rule
was, of course, ignored when the cardinals were mad at each other, in
which case they pretended not to see each other and galloped on by.
The position of the chairs in an audience chamber was also an important
determiner of rank, since those facing the door were more prestigious.
This custom had taken root in the Dark Ages when it was
always possible that murderers could burst through the doors waving
knives and those facing the door had a better chance of surviving.
Once, when the grand duke of Tuscany visited Cardinal Francesco
Barberini, he found both chairs facing each other with their sides parallel
to the door. The grand duke, a modest soul, moved his own chair a
bit so as to place his back more toward the door, giving the cardinal the
greater honor. The cardinal, equally polite, did the same. By the end of
the conversation, both illustrious gentlemen had their backs to the door
and were seated next to each other looking straight ahead, as if they
were watching a movie. All that was lacking was the popcorn.
Diplomatic etiquette became so increasingly difficult over the course
of the seventeenth century that in 1698 Peter the Great of Russia and
the emperor Leopold of Austria had to meet at a “tavern” set up by their
protocol officers, where Peter played the innkeeper and Leopold the
peasant. They didn’t need to worry about who sat on which chair and
which direction the chairs faced, as one monarch cheerfully served beer
and the other sat on a stool and drank it.
Stiff and suspicious, Cardinal Pamphili did not make friends easily and
occasionally made inveterate enemies. His manner often came across as
brusque, sometimes even downright insulting. In 1636 he criticized the
artist Guido Reni for some decorations he had made for Saint Peter’s
Basilica. Reni was so offended that he decided to avenge himself in his
q
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