mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
knighthoods—including one to a barber and another to a man who had
married a laundress.
As usual, France did things on a grander scale than England, selling
thousands of duplicate positions to raise money for its aggressive military
campaigns. One French courtier wrote, “One of the most wonderful
privileges of the kings of France is that when the king creates an
office, God, at that very instant, creates a fool to buy it.” 9 An extremely
prestigious position was the groom of the stool, the man who had the
rare honor of wiping the royal rear end. This position was highly prized
because it allowed the owner to be very close to the king—closer than
most of us would wish.
But unlike royal courts, the Vatican court had a theological problem
with the selling of offices. Simony was the name for the buying and
selling of spiritual things. In the biblical book of Acts, a magician
named Simon saw the miracles worked by Peter and the apostles and
offered them money to buy their spiritual power. Peter responded,
“Your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain
God’s gift with money!” Over the centuries, popes and church councils
had harshly forbidden simony and declared offices purchased with it to
be held illegally.
Faced with the contradictory requirements of theology and finance,
by the fifteenth century the church reached a compromise—only
midlevel positions could be sold. Top Vatican positions, such as papal
ministers or the datary, were too important to sell and were given to
truly qualified men. On the other end of the spectrum, minor positions
were to be bestowed free of charge on worthy prelates as a reward for
years of hard service. Many clerics, having worked for decades in poor
parishes comforting the sick and feeding the hungry, came to Rome to
make it known that they would like some modest bequest—the income
that came with running a small diocese, perhaps. Church committees
were supposed to investigate these requests and grant them to worthy
candidates. But for centuries the pope’s family members had sold even
the most minor positions, pocketing the sales price.
By seventeenth-century standards, Innocent was thought to be financially
incorrupt. Though he had given and received bribes on the
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