mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
of noble guests as well. Competition for seats was fierce, and Cardinal
Antonio kept order by marching up and down the aisles wielding a
heavy stick, which he used to push unruly guests out of the way or to
force people to sit more closely together. One evening before the performance
started, the cardinal and several princely guests were seen giving
one another the finger—yes, that particular gesture has been around
for centuries—and calling one another sodomites.
Olimpia loved to attend her friends’ operas as well as their tragic and
comedic plays. But she preferred to give her own performances, in which
she reconstructed the world as she saw it—a colorful place of ridiculous
characters, with everything supervised and directed by herself.
Cardinal Pamphili’s astonishing love for his sister-in-law had blossomed
unimpeded by the constant presence of his brother Pamphilio in the
Piazza Navona house. Not much is known about Pamphilio after the
Naples sojourn, and he seems to have lived a secluded life in the 1630s,
perhaps due to illness.
Certainly late in the decade, if not earlier, he suffered greatly from
kidney stones. In the summer of 1639 one, in particular, tormented him,
blocking up the flow of urine, causing violent shooting pains, high fever,
chills, and abdominal swelling. The normal rhythm of the family
ceased as attention was focused on the sick man. Olimpia would have
stopped going out in her carriage—except, of course, to church—as
friends and neighbors dropped by to check on Pamphilio’s health. With
the best of intentions, Pamphilio’s doctors would have tortured their
patient unmercifully, siphoning off his blood with leeches, causing violent
diarrhea with enemas and uncontrollable vomiting with herbs
known as pukes, all in an effort to dislodge the large kidney stone.
But nothing worked. On August 29, Pamphilio lay in the sweltering
heat of a Roman summer, drenching his sheets in sweat and moaning
in pain. The end seemed near, and a priest was called to administer last
rites, the sacred words to ease the dying person along the path to God.
Gianbattista, Olimpia, and her three children would have knelt in
prayer with bowed heads.
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