mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
Church of Saint Salvatore in Lauro, where before a crowd of cardinals,
nobles, and ambassadors, his priestly vestments were wrested from him.
Finally, his fate began to sink in. “Pray Lord God and the Holy Virgin
that they forgive every one of them for this great persecution!” he
shrieked. “God pardon them, pardon them. Great persecution! Great
persecution! Pardon to all, pardon from the heart. Be my witnesses that
I pardon them all!” 21 His howling was so unseemly in a church that his
guards shoved a gag into his mouth.
When he returned to his cell, Mascambruno found the Brothers of
Compassion there, members of the confraternity that comforted those
awaiting execution. When he bewailed his unjust fate, they consoled
him with the fact that he would not die unconfessed and unrepentant.
If death had struck him down still stained with his foul sins, he would
have gone to hell. Now, given holy absolution after confession, he would
spend only a little time in purgatory and still might make it into heaven.
Mascambruno took them at their word. His final confession lasted
seven hours, during which time he admitted countless acts of theft and
forgery that he had not even been charged with, including pilfering
35,000 scudi that had been set aside for Olimpia’s granddaughter, Olimpiuccia
Giustiniani, in 1650. Stealing from an innocent child of nine
was considered as low as a person could possibly sink.
The following day at dawn, the brothers conducted him to the prison
courtyard. Given Mascambruno’s frightful theatrics the day before, it
was decided to do the job with merciful speed. After the forger said
only one short prayer, the executioner pushed him down and struck off
his head. For its journey to the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge, the head was,
oddly enough, “sewn onto the body from which blood trickled and the
dogs licked it,” a spectator observed. 22 The body remained there from
eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, thronged by the curious,
the jeering, and the compassionate. Finally it was interred in a
nearby church.
The day of Mascambruno’s execution, the pope was seen sitting in
his Quirinal apartments, crying. The scandal was far-ranging. Dozens
of other offenders were in prison and would be tortured, executed, exiled,
fined, imprisoned, or sentenced to the galleys. By exiling Olimpia,
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