mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
would have committed a sin if he had not called to him his nephews.”
1
The pope sent word to his brother Mario and two nephews to join
him. Mario, who had worked in an administrative post in Tuscany, was
made governor of Rome, governor of Castel Sant’Angelo, and general of
the holy Church. Gregorio Leti scoffed, “Was it not a fine sight to see
Don Mario, who had never worn a sword in his life, declared Generalissimo
of the Holy Church?” 2
In the same vein, Alexander’s nephew Flavio, a hard-drinking womanizer,
took holy orders in preparation to become the cardinal nephew.
The pope decided that his other nephew, Agostino, would be the secular
member of the family and was appointed general of the guards. Alexander
took the precaution of moving the whole clan into the Vatican
Palace so he could keep an eye on them.
Olimpia must have been relieved to hear that the incorruptible pope
had caved in to the clamorous requests to bring his family to Rome.
Perhaps he was not so incorruptible after all, and if that were the case,
he would not be in such a hurry to point the finger at her.
In May, word would have reached Olimpia that the first cases of bubonic
plague had been confirmed in Naples. Plague had raged across
Europe every generation or so since it first struck in the Black Death of
1348, when a merchant ship from the Orient docked in Venice and unloaded
its cargo of destruction.
The first European exposure to the bacterium was so deadly that
some people were reported to fall down dead in the street in the
middle of a conversation before they felt any symptoms. An estimated
40 percent of Europe’s population died in the pandemic, and
epidemics flared up every thirty years or so in different parts of the
continent. While smallpox and measles offered lifelong immunity
to survivors, those who outlived the plague were not so fortunate.
Immunity lasted at least a year or two—the length of most epidemics—but
decreased over time. When the next epidemic washed over
a community decades later, those who had survived the plague
could catch it again. No one was safe, and for this reason plague
was more feared than war, famine, flood, or fire. Whenever the
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