mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
power against the other. Though doing so would have won her some
friends, it also would have created inveterate enemies, and Olimpia was
always thinking ahead to her life post-Innocent. Ever the efficient businesswoman,
she realized that there was a killing to be made in cornering
the Roman grain market. The winter floods of 1646 had resulted in
less grain than usual, but she bought up what she could and sold it at
high prices to Spanish garrisons.
Many Romans, either to profit financially as Olimpia did, or to support
their French or Spanish friends fighting in the south, sent grain
from their estates outside Rome down to Naples. Suddenly, there was
very little grain left in Rome. The weight of the pagnotta, the little loaf
of bread the poor bought for one bajocco, decreased from its usual eight
ounces to six, and then to four. With little or no grain to be had, bakers
made foul-smelling bread of beans, peas, stalks, and wood chips.
Hopes for a good harvest were dashed in December when a flood of
biblical proportions rolled into Rome. Giacinto Gigli observed, “It began
to rain copiously without stopping so that on the 6th the Tiber left
its bed and flooded all the low parts of Rome. . . . In the Tor di Nona
Prison four prisoners were drowned, and many people drowned in their
own houses for not being able to flee in time, while others drowned
while trying to save their possessions, and many canoed up and down
the streets distributing bread to those who couldn’t get out. . . . There
drowned carriages full of people, pulled by six horses, and men on
horseback, and others escaped as if by a miracle, like a woman who was
pulled from the water alive, being grabbed by her dress with a hook
while the torrent was carrying her off. . . . Masses were held continuously
to restore tranquility to the weather.” 16
Eager for a scapegoat, the Romans blamed Olimpia for their hunger.
Knowing of her grain speculation with the Spanish, they ignored war,
revolution, floods, and the hundreds of other nobles who had shipped
grain south, and blamed her and her alone. Whenever the huge double
doors of her palazzo swung open, mobs descended on her carriage crying,
“Bread! Bread!” To disperse them, Olimpia was forced to throw
coins to the crowd, who scrambled for them, thereby allowing her carriage
to pass.
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