Free Mistress of the Vatican by Eleanor Herman Page A

bidder—usually a cardinal—who integrated them into his own palazzo.
    Despite the flurry of building, by the time Olimpia came to Rome in 1612, the city boasted only 100,000 inhabitants. The center of Christen-dom was only half the size of London and a fourth the size of Paris. Most neighborhoods were semirural in character. In the south and east of the city were orchards and farms. Monasteries and convents, set in large gardens, covered much of the western section.
    Olimpia’s house was in the most urban area of Rome. It was a short carriage ride from the Piazza Navona to the street of locksmiths, the street of booksellers, and streets reserved for rosary makers, glove makers, jewelers, carriage mechanics, and barbers who could shave a man’s face, open a vein, and pull his rotten tooth with equal aplomb. Each establishment had a sign depicting the services offered within—a pipe for the tobacconist, a bleeding arm for the surgeon—so that illiterate Romans could find the shop they needed.
    Rome made no products for export, such as cloth, ships, or guns. The economy was primarily focused on the church and its bureaucrats and the services that supported them. Architects, masons, carpenters, painters,
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    M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
    and roofers built palaces for high-level Vatican officials. Cabinetmakers and drapers furnished them. Artists, sculptors, and gardeners adorned them. Tailors, seamstresses, hatmakers, cloak makers, and shoemakers dressed those who lived and worked in them. Grocers, butchers, bakers, and fishmongers fed them. A large chunk of the population worked as domestic servants for the rich—a cardinal usually employed a staff of two hundred individuals, many of whom took care of his one hundred horses and numerous carriages.
    But Rome had countless poor citizens unable to find work in wealthy households. In Olimpia’s time, the disparity between rich and poor was as great as it would ever be. The rich few lived in sumptuous palaces, gorged themselves to vomiting at banquets, rode in the finest carriages, and wore satins and silks embroidered with gold and pearls. The poor fretted over the number of ounces in the brown bread they bought on the street, a small loaf called the pagnotta. The price was fixed at one bajocco, which might translate into a penny, but the weight of the bread was determined by papal decree.
    When Rome enjoyed peace and plentiful harvests, bread “rose” from its usual eight ounces to ten or twelve ounces. The poor survived well enough, working where they could and having just enough to buy bread, lettuce, and a little oil as salad dressing. But whenever Rome and its surrounding countryside suffered war, drought, flood, or epidemic— or when the pope withdrew Vatican bread subsidies to give the money to his greedy relatives—bread “fell” to six or even four ounces. Then the poor starved, dying on the street in a disheveled heap of ribs and rags.
    The social safety net of the times was created not by the government, which did little to help the poor, but by confraternities—charitable orga-nizations of laypeople attached to a particular neighborhood church. Each confraternity had its own special form of charity. Many attended the sick and dying. Some fed the hungry. Others provided dowries to poor girls or helped orphans and widows. One confraternity focused on reforming prostitutes, perhaps the most challenging job. Another one counseled death row prisoners in their cells, accompanied them in the tumbrel to the place of execution, and stood next to them as the execution took place.
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    Eleanor Herman
    But the generosity of confraternities was never enough to ease the boundless suffering in Rome.
    Working-class Romans usually lived their lives outside. Markets were held in every square. Artisans worked in front of their shops. Women set up spinning wheels in front of their homes and yelled to their neigh-bors and passersby. The main occupation of