mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
Donkeys drank from three low fountains, one of them in front of Olimpia’s
main entrance. Farmers loudly hawked their produce, and at the
end of the day the piazza was littered with manure, wilted lettuce, rotten
tomatoes, and the enormous horseflies that buzzed around them.
Olimpia detested the market.
Just as bad as the noise and crowds from the market out front were
the noise and crowds around the statue of Pasquino located just behind
her house. In 1501 when the Orsini family was expanding their palace,
workmen unearthed a noseless, armless, horribly mutilated fragment of
a third-century b.c. Greek sculpture of Hercules. It had almost certainly
once been part of the statuary adorning the Domitian stadium. The
statue was placed on a pedestal and began to be called Pasquino after a
nearby papal tailor who, it was said, couldn’t keep his mouth shut about
Vatican gossip.
Almost immediately students began hanging virulently antigovernment
poems and placards on the statue. These anonymous insults—on
papal corruption, gluttony, sodomy, and incest—became known as pasquinades.
Given the absence of a free press, by Olimpia’s time writing a
pasquinade was the only opportunity to express one’s negative opinion
of the government and have fellow citizens read it. And read it they did.
They gathered around the statue at all times of the day and night to
laugh, drink, socialize, and copy down the cruel poems so they could be
read in taverns.
Pasquino had a friend. In the sixteenth century, a mostly intact colossal
statue of a reclining river god was unearthed and placed at the foot
of Capitoline Hill. He was called Marforio because he had been found
in the forum ( foro) of the temple of Mars. Marforio would “talk” to
Pasquino, asking him his opinion of the pope, a cardinal, or a foreign
ambassador. People would then run across town to see Pasquino’s response.
By the time they raced back to Marforio, his response to Pasquino’s
response would be posted. Other statues began talking to
Pasquino.
Most popes usually let Pasquino and his friends have their say as a
means of venting popular discontent against high taxes and injustice. But
a few particularly annoying pasquinade writers had been incinerated at
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