Donna Olimpia

The vices of the rich are never forgotten by the people, and the traditions that still are current in Rome about Donna Olimpia are such that I have had to refuse to listen to them. But I feel bound to mention them here, because it is curious that they should so live on for more than two hundred years (the traditions of Sciarra Colonna, however, are six hundred years old). They have, doubtless, rather gained than lost in transmission. Cardinal Camillo Pamfili, Donna Olimpia's son, presents one of those rare instances of which history has only five or six in all to record, in which, for the sake of keeping up the succession to a noble or royal house, it has been permitted to leave the ecclesiastical state for married life. The singularity of this incident has impressed it in the memory of the people, and her promotion of it has contributed to magnify, not only the fantastic element in their narratives, but also the popular feeling against her; thus she is accused of having had a second object in promoting it, namely, to get the place in the pontifical household thus vacated filled by a very simple nephew, and thus increase her own importance at the papal court. The pasquinades written about her in her own age were such that Cancellieri tells us 'spies were set, dressed in silk attire, to discover the authors of such lampoons (motti vituperosi).'