mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Eleanor Herman
a matter of selecting the most educated, diligent, and moral men of the
church for the honor. The first consideration was political—France
would be angling to have a French cardinal created, or at least an Italian
cardinal who had served as nuncio to France and was known to be sympathetic
to the national interests. Whenever France learned it would not
be getting a cardinal, the French started mumbling darkly about Henry
VIII. In 1533, when Pope Clement VII wouldn’t grant Henry a divorce
to marry his mistress, the king severed ties with Rome, declared himself
the head of the Church of England, and never sent the Vatican another
dime.
If France got a cardinal, Spain would screech shrilly if it did not get
to choose one, too, and might, perhaps, rattle sabers loudly enough in
Naples to make sure the request was heard in Rome. Venice and Florence,
though smaller and less important than the “great powers” of
France and Spain, would come flapping in pushing their own candidates,
their dispatches laced with flattery, threats, and bribes. The Holy
Roman Emperor in Austria, fighting to his west the heretics in what
would become known as the Thirty Years’ War and to his east the advancing
Muslim Turks, would also insist on naming a cardinal. Every
now and then a king of Poland would clamor for a cap for his brother,
and it was hard to turn down the ruler of the last Catholic bastion next
to Orthodox Russia.
Then there were the pope’s family members—brothers and nephews,
usually, though some popes into the sixteenth century nominated
their own sons. In addition to these considerations, in the first list of
cardinals publicized after his election, the pope was expected to name
someone from the family of the pope who had created him cardinal
decades earlier, as a way of expressing the Christian virtue of gratitude.
And if a pope’s niece married into a powerful Italian family, etiquette
demanded that the pope name the groom’s brother a cardinal as part of
the marriage treaty.
And then, when all these positions had been filled, the pope could
look around for a couple of truly brilliant, dedicated clerics from lesserknown
families who had worked their way up in the church. It is not
surprising that many popes were elected from among these cardinals of
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