OLYMPIA PAMFILI.
(1594—1656.)
Pope Joan rediviva—Olympia's outlook on life—Her mode of "opening the oyster"—She succeeds in opening it—Olympia's son—Olympia at home in the Vatican—Her trade—A Cardinal's escape from the purple—Olympia under a cloud—Is once more at the head of the field—And in at the death—A conclave—Olympia's star wanes—Pœna pede claudo.
In the ninth century, the outlying Catholic world to the north of the Alps was horrified by reports, that a woman was occupying the chair of Peter, and the office of Heaven's vicegerent. A fact so scandalous and so extraordinary found ready credence among the monks and prelates of Germany. The reports of pious pilgrims who had returned from Rome, and testified that Christ's church was governed by a woman, were cited with every appearance of good faith and authenticity. And the story of Pope Joan, thus generated, rapidly acquired a worldwide acceptation, and was for ages believed, both within and without the pale of the Church, as a veritable historical fact. And a vast mass of learned, satirical, controversial, scandalous, and antiquarian letter–press has resulted from it.
THE POPE JOAN STORY.
But the huge fiction, which grew to be so large and so strong as to require the united efforts of several able literary men armed with many heavy volumes to kill it, was, like so many another dangerous mistake, a very small and innocent error at its birth. The pious pilgrim had come back from Rome. He had brought with him a whole budget of stories of the scandalous corruptions and wickedness he had witnessed in the metropolis of Christendom. He had asserted, and probably frequently repeated, that a female ruled the Church. He had asserted the astounding fact, that a woman was now Pope of Rome. And the scandalised reporter of the abominations he had witnessed in that far distant southern land across the mountains, spoke with all sincerity. He little dreamed of letting loose a falsehood, which as soon as ever it had escaped from "the enclosure of his teeth," as old Homer says, forthwith began to race with unovertakeable swiftness round the world, like the unbagged demon of a mediæval goblin–story. He simply spoke figuratively. And his simple–minded, untravelled, wonder–loving auditor or auditors received his words literally.
That was all! But with what a mass of infinitely more deadly error has that same little difference between the speaker and his hearers, filled the world!
The ninth century pilgrim merely intended to convey to his hearers, in the strongest manner he could, the fact that the Pontiff was so wholly influenced and governed by a woman, that she held all the power in her hands, and might be said, indeed, to be Pope herself, rather than the weak puppet who was her slave.