mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
present Innocent X with the homage of six-year-old King Louis XIV.
Mistakenly believing that the cardinal nephew would hold the greatest
influence over the new pontiff, Mazarin instructed Gremonville to bestow
on Camillo the abbey of Corbie, the second richest in France, with
an annual income of twelve thousand scudi.
To win over Olimpia—whom Mazarin reckoned would always have
some influence over Innocent—Gremonville was instructed to lose
money at her card parties. The ambassador of Lucca observed that on
certain evenings the Pamphili palazzo on the Piazza Navona became a
gambling den, “where run princes, high prelates and other sorts of nobility,
each believing himself greatly fortunate to have rotten luck in this
gaming, as losing could acquire the protection of this signora in their
interests and cause her to affectionately and efficaciously advance their
causes to His Holiness.” 1
Losing money to Olimpia was, of course, a form of bribery, but more
fun for her than simply receiving a bag of money or a diamond necklace.
At the card table she could truly win. It is amusing to picture the
grandees of Rome and ambassadors of foreign powers racing to Olimpia’s
house intent upon losing vast sums to her at the seventeenth-century
equivalent of poker. Given the whims of Lady Luck, there must
have been a few courtiers who won, despite their best efforts to lose, and
walked away humiliated by the gold coins stuffing their pockets, knowing
that now they would never get anywhere with the pope.
The courtly Gremonville managed to lose such great sums that
Olimpia demonstrated “with words and a great expression of affection
the desire to earn his approval, declaring herself his special servant, exaggerating
that there would never be an occasion where she would not
do her best to serve him.” 2
Having cleverly lost a fortune to Olimpia at cards, the ambassador
then informed the pope of Cardinal Mazarin’s dearest wish, the one tiny
favor that would cement the friendship of France and the Papal States
forever—a cardinal’s cap for Mazarin’s brother, the Dominican priest
Father Michel. This request was not out of Mazarin’s love for Michel,
whom he considered an idiot, but out of his dynastic ambitions.
By making some of his relatives high-level churchmen and marrying
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