mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
burgher. Built in the fourteenth century around a charming courtyard
with a garden and well, it had been renovated in the early sixteenth century.
In the main room Sforza had the ceiling beams adorned with gold,
eight-pointed stars—the heraldic symbol of the Maidalchini family.
Poised to found a great dynasty, Sforza now needed only the insurance
policy of a second son. Sons brought a family increased prosperity,
prestige, and good luck. Sons cost very little to educate, given the huge
pool of scholars willing to work as tutors. If the oldest son was heir to
the family property, a second son could go into the church, a third son
into the military. Sons were easy to dispose of, and each one that married
brought money into the family in the form of his bride’s dowry.
What Sforza greatly feared was a daughter. There was an Italian saying
of the time—“to make a girl,” which meant failure, disaster, plans
gone awry. There was a reason for this. Girls sucked dry the family
fortune with the dowries they required to marry honorably. A daughter
would lessen the patrimony Sforza had saved for Andrea, dispersing it
to another family. A girl would flatten the fortune and prestige of the
rising Maidalchini name.
As the shrieks ceased and he heard the midwife’s footsteps coming
toward him, Sforza prayed fervently to all the saints. Was it a boy?
The saints, evidently, had not listened to his prayers. Sforza’s child
was a girl.
Children were baptized soon after birth, lest they die and their unbaptized
souls be barred from entering heaven. And so, according to
her recently discovered baptismal record, later that day Sforza’s daughter
was baptized by Carlo Montilio, the bishop of Viterbo, in the twelfthcentury
Cathedral of Saint Lorenzo. Sforza’s standing in the community
was shown by the fact that the child’s godmother was Fiordalisa Nini,
the sister of Nino Nini, the richest man in town.
The baby was christened Olimpia.
As Father Montilio sprinkled her with baptismal water, he spoke the
sacred words that would mark the child’s soul with an indelible stamp,
signifying that as a Christian she belonged to God. “I baptize you in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
Performing this baptism as he had hundreds of others, Father Montilio
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