mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
had heard to be a yokel from Viterbo. In a letter to Mazarin he gushed,
“The Queen [Anne of Austria, queen mother of France] has not demonstrated
more gravity and majesty than this lady on that occasion.” 2
Mazarin wrote back, “We must do favors for the signora Donna
Olimpia, and it must go beyond everything His Holiness could desire
for her.” 3 The prime minister now considered Olimpia his best friend.
Indeed, the two were remarkably similar; born to nothing, they had
both scrambled up to the pinnacle of wealth and power because of their
street smarts. Gazing at each other from either side of the Alps, each
saw the other as a useful pawn on the chessboard of power; it is also
likely that they greatly admired each other.
With French panache and Gallic charm, the new ambassador set to
work on Olimpia regarding the little matter of the red hat for Michel
Mazarin. We can presume that he, like his predecessors, eagerly lost
money to her at card games. Certainly Olimpia knew a large reward
would be forthcoming from France if she could only prevail upon the
pope to make Michel a cardinal. Surely, she must have told Innocent, it
would be a small gesture to establish goodwill between nations, and
heaven knew there were centuries of precedents for popes creating feebleminded
cardinals for the sake of peace among Christians. But Innocent,
hating the thought of creating a feebleminded cardinal himself,
procrastinated.
However, Innocent knew that with Camillo married and gone, he
would have to create a new cardinal nephew. It was unthinkable not to
have one. Unfortunately, Camillo was the pope’s only nephew. In such
cases a pope could look a bit farther afield in his family, giving the job
to a niece’s husband’s single brother. And both the pope’s nieces had
married into well-connected families with numerous single males.
Olimpia would have loved to have the job herself. After all, no one
in the family was as clever, hardworking, and manipulative as she was.
No one looked out for the family interests the way she did. But a female
cardinal nephew was, alas, impossible, even if that female were
Olimpia. The uproar both in the church and among the heretics would
be too great, and this would be one request the pope would never consent
to.
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