mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
vacationing outside Rome his nephew appeared wearing the long dark
robes of a canon lawyer, and had lost the curls and frizz. After that,
his days and nights of debauchery were over, and a new, sober Gianbattista
won the immediate approval of his uncle and his church colleagues.
The new look boosted his career immediately. In 1601 Pope Clement
VIII, Uncle Girolamo’s good friend, appointed Gianbattista a consistorial
lawyer. Three years later, when Girolamo was named cardinal, the
pope arranged for Gianbattista to take his uncle’s position as an auditor
of the Rota, the Vatican court that heard civil cases relating to matrimony,
financial issues, and other matters.
When Olimpia first met Gianbattista, he was thirty-eight years old,
tall and well built, but not handsome like his brother. He had a wide
forehead, often puckered into a scowl, and small hazel eyes. Even in
youth his beard, that benchmark of seventeenth-century male beauty,
had never been thick and silky but rather was straggly and sparse.
Gianbattista was learned, courteous, and by now, sober. He was also
indecisive to the point of paralysis, deeply suspicious of others, and subject
to gloomy silent depressions. Over time, he had developed a highly
effective defense to prevent others from seeing the doubts that lurked
inside him—a wall of inscrutable dignity. Cloaked in ugly majesty, he
never showed his weaknesses to other men, whom he regarded as backstabbing
competitors.
Throughout his long life, Gianbattista was more prepared to trust
women than men, as women could not compete with him in a man’s
world. But it is likely that he was also searching for a surrogate mother,
having lost his own in 1580, when he was six. Gianbattista could confide
in women, let down his guard, and openly discuss his fears. He was
extremely close to an older sister, Agatha, a nun in Rome’s Tor de’ Specchi
Convent, and visited her frequently for long talks in the convent
parlor.
Suddenly, this new sister-in-law bolted into his life like a ray of sunshine.
Olimpia was charming, amusing, and highly intelligent. We can
imagine that one day over lunch, when Pamphilio was in his office in
the Campidoglio, Gianbattista first spoke to Olimpia of the lawsuits
[ 60 ]