mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
accounts were frozen and all Barberini family members were put under
surveillance. Servants were taken away for questioning—a polite word
for torture. Word on the street was that the Barberinis would be put in
prison, perhaps a dank, dark cell in the dungeons of Castel Sant’Angelo,
a place from which few people ever emerged.
Dressed as huntsmen, Cardinal Francesco, Prince Taddeo, and his
children sailed away from Rome in January 1646, leaving the imperious
Anna Colonna to defend what was left of the family property. Just
when Olimpia thought she could take over the Palazzo Barberini, Anna
Colonna defiantly raised the French flag over the entrance, declaring
that she had given the house to Louis XIV, and brought in French soldiers
to defend the property. It was a clever move, because now if Olimpia
made any attempt to take it, France would have cause to wage war
on the pope.
Though Anna Colonna kept her palace, it was cold and empty. All
the exquisite furnishings had been hidden from the pope. The princess,
who had used only utensils of pure gold and silver, was seen waving
a rusty tin fork in the air as lamentable proof of how far the family fortunes
had fallen due to the vengeance of the Pamphilis. Many who
knew her, however, said she still had the gold and silver utensils safely
hidden in a palace wall and used the rusty tin forks to make herself
look pitiful.
Mazarin welcomed the fugitive Barberinis in triumph, greeting
them outside Paris with a cavalcade of more than a hundred carriages.
He held lavish banquets for them and restored their French incomes.
The French government decried the unjust persecution of the poor innocent
cardinals.
Documents indicated that when Innocent heard of Mazarin’s exuberant
welcome of the Barberinis to Paris, he threw a temper tantrum,
screaming and jumping up and down in his white robes. “The heretics
are laughing,” he said, “and the Catholics are scandalized to see a pope
so scorned as I am.” 4
While the pope was fretting about his loss of dignity, Olimpia was
not above having a good laugh at the situation. For the Carnival of
1646 she gave a play in her palazzo, attended by Rome’s elite, in which
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