mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
and Mascambruno found himself in the enviable position of selling
papal indulgences and offices without having to split the money with
a member of the pope’s family.
Throughout history, art has been a primary tool of propaganda, a means
the powerful used to awe their subjects into submissive obedience. When
poor wretches stood blinking in wonder at temples, pyramids, statues,
and obelisks, they meekly emptied their pockets of their last penny to
give to the tax man. It was clearly no use arguing with a power that
could produce such marvels.
Art was also a means of grasping at eternity from beyond the grave.
Olimpia knew that the pope would not live forever. Even worse, she
would not live forever. And the line started by Camillo might dwindle
and die out, as so many noble families did. But if she left behind her
extraordinary palaces, gardens, and fountains, a part of Olimpia Maidalchini
Pamphili would live for all eternity, proclaiming the wealth,
power, and position to which the dowerless girl from Viterbo had
risen.
As work finished up on her magnificent Piazza Navona palace,
Olimpia took a long hard look out her front windows and didn’t like
what she saw. The vegetable sellers were long gone, by papal decree. But
the plain fountains in the piazza—low enough for donkeys and horses
to drink from—were unimpressive. She resolved to turn the area into a
worthy replacement of Emperor Domitian’s grand marble stadium.
There was no room for a garden, of course, in the highly trafficked
piazza, but Olimpia could create pleasure grounds nonetheless, complete
with a resplendent fountain in the center, unique in all the world.
When she discussed her plan with the pope, Innocent liked the idea of
a fountain. He was also interested in resurrecting an obelisk that the
emperor Caligula had brought to Rome from Egypt in the first century.
The obelisk had been knocked down by Totila the Goth in a.d. 547
and now lay in five pieces, poking out of the dirt outside the Saint Sebastian
Gate. Innocent decided to incorporate the obelisk into the design
of the fountain.
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