mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
possessions. She ordered covered wagons to roll up to the courtyard of
the Quirinal in the wee hours and had her servants carry down the
fine tapestries, inlaid mahogany furniture, bed hangings, silverware,
candlesticks—every single item of any value except the bed.
Olimpia’s third goal was to steal the papal treasury. Usually the gold
reserve of the Papal States was kept in the heavily fortified Castel
Sant’Angelo. But in the event of the pope’s illness or death, the guards
would never allow her to simply walk off with the entire Vatican treasury.
Somehow she had convinced the pope to take the gold out of Castel
Sant’Angelo and hide it under his bed. This was a secret known only
to Innocent—who had probably forgotten by this time—and Olimpia.
During the pope’s last illness, every day Olimpia was quietly sneaking
the gold out of his room. The public sedan-chair carriers took her
into the pope’s apartments shortly after dawn, left her chair there, and
came back for her at midnight. Throughout the day, when the pope
was asleep or raving, she would crawl under the bed, drag out one of the
chests, and put as much gold as possible into sacks. These she would put
inside the sedan chair. The porters began telling stories in taverns of
how much heavier Donna Olimpia was to carry at night than she had
been in the morning.
Olimpia would have liked to stay in the pope’s bedchamber around
the clock to keep her eye on the gold. Etiquette, however, demanded
that she return home every night if only for a few hours; spies and journalists
stood outside the Quirinal Palace and noted what time she left.
She was deeply concerned that during her absence a servant or perhaps
the doctor would peer under the bed and find the treasure chests. To
prevent such an occurrence, when she left the Quirinal at midnight, she
locked the pope in his bedroom alone. No matter how sick he was, no
matter how urgently he needed water, a piece of bread, or a chamber
pot, he would have to wait for assistance until she returned at sunrise
the next morning.
Though the pope didn’t know it, in Brussels on Christmas Eve,
Queen Christina of Sweden was privately received into the Catholic
Church, abjuring her Lutheran religion. She would convert publicly
in the coming months. It was another tragedy of Innocent’s reign that
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