Mistress of the Vatican Read Online Free

men,” inferior by nature and therefore incapable of leadership. Defective women, it was believed, had no place in business, politics, or finance. They certainly had no place in Christ’s church. The Latin word for woman— femina —was said to have come from fe for “faith” and minus for “less,” since women were thought to be too weak to hold and preserve the faith. Moreover, it was believed that women’s handling the holy Eucharist or stepping foot inside the Vatican would contaminate the holiness with their impurity.
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    The girl who would one day contaminate the holiness of the most holy Catholic Church was a born leader, a most unfortunate personality for a female. The only description of Olimpia as a child came from her first biographer, Gregorio Leti, who claimed to have spoken to people who knew her growing up.
    “As soon as she attained the age of reason she was ambitious of commanding,” he wrote. “Even at the most tender age, and as small as she was, she showed this inclination in childhood games. She always gave orders to the other children, and nothing was done without her com-
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    Eleanor Herman
    mands. As a child she was reported to be dominating by nature. She decided which games to play and always wanted to win.” 3
    Unfortunately, Olimpia had little education to back up her bossiness. She went to school in the medieval Convent of Saint Dominic in Vit-erbo, where her aunt was a nun. It was a rudimentary education at best. Times had changed since the early sixteenth century when women like the Roman poetess Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) held salons, encouraged the arts, and spoke several languages.
    Olimpia’s world was shaped by the 1563 Council of Trent—the belated Vatican response to accusations of Church abuse lobbed by Martin Luther and his followers forty years earlier—and reforming bishops decided that wifely virtues were threatened by female education. An educated female would be less satisfied managing her household and raising her children; she would want to go gadding about town, meddling in government and business. Up north, the heretics would laugh at Catholics who couldn’t even control their women. And so Olimpia would have learned to read and write Italian, do a bit of math, memo-rize the precepts of the Catholic religion, and sew.
    Though she knew little or nothing of art, literature, philosophy, and foreign languages, Olimpia had two skills uncommon in girls. With regards to financial matters, her mind worked as if it were an abacus, adding, multiplying, subtracting, and calculating percentages. Within seconds of examining an economic issue, she could figure out the best financial advantage, a trait she must have inherited from Sforza. Moreover, Olimpia had a fantastic memory. She had only to read or hear something once to remember it forever.
    Given her lifelong love of mathematical calculations and business, it is likely that Olimpia spent some time in her father’s tax office. Perhaps she sat inconspicuously in the corner, watching Sforza chatting pleasantly with the landowners about their tax bills. As he added up the value of land, livestock, and crops, perhaps she did the figures in her head, coming up with the answers before he did. We can imagine Olimpia studying her father with her dark eyes, proud of him, wanting to grow up and be just like him.
    While everyone acknowledged Olimpia’s intelligence, there is some
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    confusion as to her appearance during her girlhood. One source asserted that in her teens Olimpia was a “conspicuous beauty.” 4 Another disagreed, calling her “not beautiful, but blond [light-skinned] and thin, pleasing, vivacious and always smiling.” 5
    If she was not exactly beautiful, she was attractive and energetic, with an earthy sense of humor. From later likenesses we can extrapolate what Olimpia looked like as a girl. She was petite, with dark hair and chiseled features. She had a