mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
descended, the entire basilica glowed and shimmered and seemed to be
aflame.
According to one eyewitness, Girolamo Lunadoro, “There was not a
street that was not full of lights, not a palace without illumination. . . . It
is sufficient to say that for many, many years Rome has not been as jubilant
as it is now for the happy exaltation of its prince, to whom Divine
Majesty concede the years of Nestor and the strength to execute his holy
thoughts.” 5
In seventeenth-century Rome, any individual who found himself suddenly
possessed of a fortune was expected to share it with his family.
After all, that was what a good Christian of any social standing was
supposed to do. Sitting on the zenith of the social pyramid, the pope
was no exception.
Moreover, as monarch of the Papal States, the pope was a sovereign
and his family members were, therefore, temporary royalty, holding
their vaunted positions until their elderly uncle breathed his last. But
unlike the Bourbons of France and Habsburgs of Spain, many of the
popes had worked their way up from the humblest backgrounds, and
the citizens of the Papal States did not want their monarch’s relatives
mending nets in fishing hovels or feeding pigs on pork farms. Most of
the pope’s subjects wanted to point to their ruling family with pride—
the princes and princesses setting out from their sumptuous palaces in
elegant coaches and six, just as the royal families of France or Spain did.
Over the period of twenty-one years the rapacity of the Barberini family
had, of course, exceeded the bounds of good taste. It was hoped that the
Pamphili pope would practice a more dignified nepotism.
On September 24, nine days after his election, Innocent made a new
will in which he left all his worldly goods to Olimpia, whom he designated
as his heir, expressly stating that she could do whatever she wanted
with his money. It was highly unusual for a pontiff—or any Italian
nobleman, for that matter—to choose a woman as his heir, especially
when he had a healthy young nephew. But Camillo, Innocent knew,
was a thoughtless ditherer. Olimpia was the only one capable of man-
q
[ 152 ]