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There's a group of families in Rome who are older than Italy itself, older than France, older than Germany, older than almost every country on the map. And they are still here. They gave the Catholic Church its popes. They ran the Vatican's money. And when the world collapsed, they did something that no one had ever seen. They boycotted an entire nation from the inside. For 60 years, they shut their palace doors and pretended the country of Italy simply did not exist. And they are known as the Black Nobility. And today, we are following their thousand year paper trail through papal thrones bought with family money. A deal signed with Mussolini himself, a secret Swiss bank account, underhanded deals and dual citizenship in the most secretive sovereign state on earth. Every empire that ever ruled these families is gone. Rome, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Italy, Mussolini himself. And these families have outlasted all of them. So the question isn't whether the Black Nobility ever stopped. It's what does their power look like now? And who are these families that are actually pulling the strings? Well, today we're going to find that out. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you so much for joining me in my tent, where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world. From all time, forever. Yes. That is what I do here in this tent is I like to go on deep dives down crazy, mysterious rabbit holes that I am personally fascinated by. This is in many ways the, you know, kind of like the sports center for conspiracy theories. That's the way I look at it. I don't believe every conspiracy, but, oh, boy, am I fascinated by all of them. And if you know anything about me, you know that my mother was a prominent conspiracy theorist. So I'm classically trained in the conspiracy realm. And today we have a fascinating episode that goes through, I mean, history and religion and mystery and all sorts of crazy stuff. And it is qu. Quite titillating, let me say. Now, before we begin, I just want to say thank you so much to you. Yeah, dude. Slash woman. Slash Whoever you are and however you identify, I want to say thanks for tuning in to this episode. Because every time you click on an episode or comment or like, or literally interact with our channel at all, you signal to the algorithm, hey, this is content that is worth watching. And you help the show grow. You help my dreams come true. You keep the lights on the tent, and you keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Now, I also want to give a big thanks to the guy sitting right next to me. No, it is not the Greek freak himself, Christos Papadopados. It is my good pal Rafni, the Dominican legend. We didn't get a better nickname for you. Rafni. I mean, is there Papyra? Oh, I like that, dude. Nice. Rafni. Papi. Rafa. Now, what is that? The Dominican term you told me the last time we talked. Well, Raffani's here helping me put all the pretty lights on and make sure the cameras are working. Now, let's talk about a little family called the Black Nobility. It's not one family. It is multiple families. Now, this idea of the Black Nobility was actually born in the late 1800s out of the single worst day of the Papacy. Here's how it all went down. So over a thousand years, the Pope wasn't just a religious leader, okay, he was basically also a king, making religious and political decisions for what was called the Papal States. Now, the Papal States stretched all across Italy. It was a real country with borders and taxes and courts and an army, all ruled by Rome, by the Pope. And for most of the 1800s, while the rest of the peninsula stitched itself into a single, unified kingdom, the Papal States held out as the last piece of the puzzle that the new country of Italy couldn't have. That is, until September 20, 1870. You see, that morning, the army of the Kingdom of Italy, led by the Royal House of Savoy, blasted through the walls of Rome, overwhelmed the Pope's forces, and took the city. The Papal States were erased from the map, and the Quirinal palace was seized for Italy's new king. And 11 centuries of the Pope being the guy who ruled over central Italy was all of a sudden over. But Pope Pius IX refused to accept any of this. He wouldn't recognize the Kingdom of Italy. He wouldn't negotiate with it. Instead, he retreated behind the walls of the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican. Now, this put Rome's aristocracy in a really tough spot. These were families that the Popes themselves had made rich and made noble over centuries. Families like the Orsini The Colonna, the Massimo dynasties, whose fortunes and titles and identities were, like, very closely intertwined with the papal throne. And now these really rich families kind of had to choose. The new Italian kingdom was the future. And the authority of the Pope was, by every measure of the time, basically done. Everyone understood which way the wind was blowing, but the families actually sided with the Pope in a coordinated public display of mourning. The families shut the great front doors of their Roman palazzos and left them shut. No grand ball, no reception, no appearances at the new royal court. As far as they were concerned, the kingdom of Italy just didn't exist, and they refused to recognize it. So Romans, watching all this unfold, gave their protest a name. They literally called it the nobletanera. This is the black nobility. Black for the mourning that they wore for the Pope's lost kingdom, literally sort of dawning themselves like a funeral. A boycott of an entire nation held by the very people living inside the country. But a boycott like that isn't free. If you refuse to participate in the new Italy, meaning refusing the favors and the offices and all the wealth, opportunities, I mean, that's a huge sacrifice. Anybody in these families just, like, abstained from Italy, and they did that for generations. And in order to pull that off, you need money that doesn't depend on any government. And how do you have this money? Well, the money is actually older than the nation itself. And where does it come from? Well, flashback. Roughly 800 years before any of this went down. Italy doesn't exist. What does exist is a patchwork of fiercely independent city states. I mean, like Venice and Genoa and Rome. Each of them is a world and a kingdom in and of itself, competing for trade and territory and survival. This is the world that built the black nobility's fortunes. But the families themselves love to claim roots that go even deeper. So, for example, the Massimo family traces its ancestry all the way back to ancient Rome, to the Gens Fabia, one of the oldest patrician clans of the republic. And even if you don't actually, like, buy that claim, the verifiable histories are still staggering. So, for example, the Orsini family, like their documented line, begins in the late 900-00 a.d. with a figure that's named Orsus de Paro, an unbroken recorded history of over a thousand years. But the real driving force of their power isn't ancestry or bloodline. It's actually geography. So medieval Italy sat at the exact hinge point between Europe and the East. And of course, you know, silk, spices, grain, gold, all of it moved between continents. And it moved through these Italian ports. And these Italian merchants, these ancient families, capitalized ruthlessly, completely monopolizing Mediterranean trade routes and building something that Europe had never seen before. This is systems of credit. So we're talking like loans and exchanges and like basically early banking. The financial machinery that runs the modern world was, was kind of being invented piece by piece in the very counting houses of these early Italian dynasties. So think about what that means. Before France is France in any modern sense, before Germany existed, before anyone had drawn the borders that you see today on a map in a classroom, these Italian families were already designing the building blocks that would be the foundation of international finance for the next 1500 years. But here's the problem that they ran into with the money. It can be taxed and it can be seized and it can be burned in a war or confiscated by whichever, you know, prince or king basically conquers your city next. So across centuries of invasions and plagues and, you know, regimes rising and falling, pure material wealth was never enough to actually guarantee survival because someone could just come in, be like, hey, we control Venice now and all of your stuff is actually property of the new king. So to become truly untouchable, these families needed to fuse their fortunes and into one institution in Europe that no army could destroy and no border could contain. An institution with not just material power, but economic and political and, I mean, frankly, the power of God as well. They needed the church. Hey, real quick. Most people who watch this channel aren't subscribed. And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop, religion, camp, history camp, and camp Gagnon. Now let's get back to it. So from roughly the 12th century onward, the great Roman families pulled off what might be the most successful long term power strategy ever seen in European history. They didn't just, like, become friends with the Pope. They didn't like fund it or, you know, serve it or like marry into the orbit of the. They. They became it, basically. I mean, the numbers alone are shocking. The orsini family produced three popes. Celestine III, Nicholas III and Benedict VII, and no fewer than 34 cardinals. If you don't know anything about church history, the cardinals kind of are like a level under the Pope and then you got like bishops and then, you know, the whole thing. So for century after century, when the College of Cardinals gathered to choose the next, you know, vicar of Christ, the next pope, the same last names kept appearing in that room and coincidentally, on the throne and every papacy was an opportunity so in 1605, a man named Camilo Borgesi was elected pope, taking the name Paul V. And the Borghese family rose from that moment. As papal rule became family leverage, the family leverage became massive land holdings funneled straight into the Borghesi family and all their relatives. This wasn't even considered scandalous at the time. It was just like how it worked. And nobody understood this system better than them. Then, as the centuries rolled on, a newer family clawed its way into the inner circle. This is the Torlonia family. They started as merchants and debt collectors, about as unglamorous as wealth gets, and worked their way up until by the 18th century, they held one of the most powerful positions in all of Europe. They were the personal bankers to the Vatican. And then came the ultimate consolidation move. The Torlonia merged with the Borghese through marriage, uniting papal political power and papal banking power, all under one family dynasty. Now, let's take a step back and kind of look at the whole picture here. So you have these families that are funding the papal states wars. They managed the papacy's money. They received land grants directly from the Vatican. They supplied the Church's princes and the cardinals and the generals of the Church. Regularly, the Pope himself would go to them. Kingdoms could rise and fall around them, but it would never really matter. Their wealth was anchored to an institution that claimed its authority was not from any earthly crown or from any geography. It was from God himself. So for hundreds of years, it was the safest bed in Europe. Dynasties collapsed, republics burned, Napoleon swept through, and then Napoleon was gone. And the Roman families endured because their fortresses, they weren't made of stone or of gold. It was made of faith and marriage and maybe above all, compound interest. And then on a September morning in 1870, it all came crashing down. Finally, the one thing that could take down the Pope started to actually bubble up. A new Italy formed, a new government and a new army. And the safest bet in all of Europe was actually starting to collapse. Which brings us to the fall of the Pope and the families that went down with him. And to the question of what happens to a thousand year old dynasty like that. Because these people are not just going to want it to go away overnight. Well, it doesn't actually mean that their power went away at all. Here's where it gets interesting. Hey guys, I just want to take a break really quick to tell you about Cash App. I love Cash App. I use it all the time. If you know anything about me, I try to make my life less chaotic. Because I travel a lot, I got kid, I got a wife, and I'm just doing stuff. I'm buying coffee, I'm just living my life. And Cash App makes it so easy. And it just makes my everyday life moments super simple. And the Cash App card is super cool because it's not just a boring debit card. It's not something that your dad got from a Bank in 2002. You can customize it, add it to your digital wallet and boop it everywhere and use it for just everyday spending. If I could pick my perfect Cash App discount, I'd probably do like coffee, airport food, and I even customize my card so it has like a little, you know, camp logo on it. It's pretty sick. If you weren't up to speed already, Cash App is way more than just a safe way to send and receive money. With the Cash App card, you unlock perks without all the hidden fees, including discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you are probably already spending money on. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money moves and easier. Cash App also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. If your card is ever lost or stolen, you can lock it with just one tap right on the app. Spend with confidence with the Cash App card today. And new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CASH APP10. That is CASH APP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton bank member fdic. Visit Cash App legal podcast for full disclosures. Thank you so much for Cash App for supporting the show. Now let's get back to it. So this boycott began in the 1870s, and it was total. The Black Nobility refused any invitation to the new royal court, and they refused to acknowledge the House of Savoy as legitimate rulers of Rome. And they kept their palazzo doors shut in mourning. Season after season, decade after decade, children were literally born and grew up and had children of their own all inside of this little, like, protected kingdom that for them never ended. And the Pope stayed. His own kind of prisoner, Pius ix, died, still refusing to recognize Italy as a country. So did his successor. And his successor in this standoff hardened into one of the weirdest cold wars in European history. Two governments occupying basically the same city, just pretending that the other didn't exist. And finally it took a dictator to end it. Yeah. In 1929, 59 years after the boycott started, Benito Mussolini and the Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty. The deal created the sovereign state of Vatican City, a mini country within the country of Italy. And it guaranteed the Pope's political independence forever and officially ended the war between church and state in Italy. But buried in that settlement was a very interesting deal. The black nobility, the families who had stood by the Pope through six decades of self imposed exile, they were actually granted dual citizenship, citizens of Italy and of the Vatican at the same time. Their loyalty had literally been written into international law. So what happens? The doors reopen. This period of mourning ended. And for a few decades, the old families got to reclaim some of their former glory. So, princes of the papal court with hereditary titles and uniforms glittering with centuries of immaculate honors. And then came 1968. It all comes crashing down again. But this time it was actually the Church that pulled the rug. That year, Pope Paul VI issued a decree called Pontificalis Domus, the Pontifical Household, and basically abolished the hereditary papal court outright. Ancient roles like the prince's assistant to the papal throne, held by families like the Orsini and the Colonna for centuries were just eliminated. The Noble Guard, the highest ranking military unit in the Pope's service, was just disbanded. All the medals, the uniforms, the automatic access to the Vatican that these families had carried basically as a birthright, codified into the law, gone. After a thousand years, the institution that black nobility had bound themselves to had finally shown them the door. Now, this is where most aristocratic stories will end. But you've seen how these families operate. They survive. And the 1968 reform might have stripped them of their roles in the Vatican, but it still didn't touch their generations of wealth aggregation. Their money was still there. And as a result, their power didn't disappear. It just kind of changed. So the descendants of the Borgesi, the Torlonia and the Massimo remain generally wealthy. They manage vast historical real estate portfolios in one of the most expensive cities on Earth. They hold art collections that, I mean, museums like, dream about. And their financial lives run through the most private channels that exist. Deep, longstanding ties to Swiss and European private banking. This is the kind of like wealth management designed above all else to never be seen. So if you walk through Rome today, their names are everywhere on streets and villas, even one of the most famous art museums in the world. Their power and influence is just as embedded in the culture and, of course, the inner workings of high class society, as ever. And that is exactly why the modern world can't stop talking about them. Because look at what the Black Nobility is from the outside. These are bloodlines over a thousand years old, fortunes that you can't even really measure. And a documented history of banking for the Vatican. Dual citizenship in the world's most secretive sovereign state. Political, economic, social and religious power that stretches back thousands of years. I mean, that's pretty interesting if you ask me. I mean, modern allegations paint the Borghesi Torloni alliance as a banking mafia. And they get accused of all sorts of stuff from, like, money laundering through offshore accounts and quietly operating as the hidden treasures of the Vatican to this very day. Yet other allegations go even deeper, claiming that the Black Nobility sits even above governments, above central banks, above the visible billionaires that we all talk about, and that they are actually the oldest hands on the oldest levers, still calling the shots with power and influence and wealth that is so embedded in the infrastructure that you don't even know where it begins and where it ends. And the truth is, right now, these claims are the kind that can't even be verified. And honestly, that's what private wealth is for. No leaked ledger has ever proven a Black Nobility shadow government. And skeptics make a fair point. Secrecy isn't evidence. The lack of evidence isn't evidence in and of itself. Old money hiding from taxes can look identical to old money hiding from, you know, something, well, more nefarious. Who can actually know? But to be fair to the suspicions themselves, the verified history is precisely what causes people to be suspicious. These families really did control papal finance for hundreds of years. They really did merge banking and political power for centuries, and they really did survive by staying close to power while also staying out of sight. So the conspiracy theories around them aren't inventing that pattern. The question is, did it ever really stop? Or did it just take a shape that we can't really see? And at the end of the day, that's what this story is really about. A group of families who, through centuries have found a way to adapt and survive and still maintain their wealth and continue to grow their influence. And their place in history and society hasn't gone away either. It just changed how it looks. And it's really quite astonishing. I mean, a small circle of families that watch the Papal States rise and fall and kingdoms and republics and dictatorships come and go, but yet they adapt their money through every single collapse for over a thousand years. And I mean, to be honest, it's kind of remarkable. You kind of gotta be like, hey, Cheers. Y' all did it. I mean, think about it. Every power that has ever ruled these families is gone. The Roman Empire that they claim to descend from, gone. The medieval city states that, you know, they kind of built their fortunes in the Papal States that made them princes. The Kingdom of Italy that they boycotted Mussolini, the dictator himself, who signed their citizenship into law. Even the papal court that they served for a millennium was abolished by the church. All those structures, over time have dissipated and changed or maybe have just completely vanished, but yet the families are still there. And that's what makes the Black Nobility way more interesting, and I mean, potentially even more dangerous than any other elite society that we've ever looked at. And the truth is, this is not the end of their story. In some ways, it's still the beginning, because we haven't even touched on the official investigations, the death, the infiltration, the condemning documents that all kind of implicate these families as their power and their influence continues to this very day as we're talking right now. But that's a story that we'll dig into another time for now, remember how these families held on through every collapse and outlasted everyone and every power structure around them. Because they're not alone. There are other families. There are families in America who operate the exact same way. Again, the Black Nobility never really left. They just changed how we see them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief history on the Black Nobility and ultimately who they are, what the families are that we know of, and where they came from, and ultimately where they are now. It's an interesting question, because when you think about these families, it's. It's so hard to hold on to wealth for such a long period of time, but yet they've done it. And I'm so curious what the inner workings are like. Like, what is it like to be born into a family like this? And who are these people now? Like, what kind of jobs do they have? Do they even have jobs? And I wonder if being a part of, like, old historical families helps keep you out of these things, because you're basically royalty, you know, Like, I'm sure you probably have friends that are maybe super wealthy, and their grandfather was the one that actually created the wealth, and then their dad is the one that managed the wealth, and then your friend that, you know, is addicted to pills or something, like, in three or four generations, it kind of all falls apart. So I wonder how these families were able to maintain that level of, you know, secrecy and power and authority. And my assumption is it's probably like estate building, living out of estates that you don't really have access to the money that the estate has to approve it. You have lawyers and other people on the outside that kind of approve how the money gets dissipated. So it's not just like, hey, here's a billion dollars, go have fun. It's like, but what are you going to do? You're also brought up in like elite institutions. So you're going to the most pristine colleges and high schools and all the way to kindergarten, the most elite kindergartens around the world. You're probably raised in all sorts of different countries and you're learning all sorts of different languages. And then you're probably given some type of position within the family estate that is now your job. And if you want to start a business, you have the capital to do it. But it's probably got to be approved through the estate in some way. That's my assumption, but who knows. And then I imagine that there's all sorts of scandals and cover ups that happens. And because they're tight with the newspaper and with the press, they're like, hey, we're not going to run that story about my kid getting a dui. Let's just of take that off. And it's not just, you know, in Italy, it's not just the black nobility there. It is every aristocratic family around the world. They all kind of function the same way. And I'm curious who the ones are in America. I mean you think about the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and all these like old money American families. I'd be so curious to know what, what is the actual day to day as being like a teenager in these families? Is it, does the pressure get to you? Does the, you know, does the, the opportunity and the ability to do whatever you want, is it exciting? Does it inspire more ambition? Or does it kind of, you know, nerf you as you're growing up? Being like, I don't even really know what I want to do. I'd be so curious to know. I mean, if you know anyone in these families, if you are a part of these families yourself, it's possible that, you know, the Massimo's are listening to this right now. What's up Bongiorno? Or whatever y' all say. I'd love to know what your thoughts are. Please drop a comment. I read all of them. Even if I don't respond to all of them, someone else will and it'll be helpful for the conversation. I just will ask if you're commenting. We have A really nice kind of enclave, you know, on the Internet, where there's so much vitriol and anger and hate and this little, you know, this little pocket of the Internet that not that many people know about is really nice. It's really sweet. And the. The commentary is I. Is very charming, and I enjoy everyone's contribution. So let's just try to keep it that way. Keep it civil. Also, I have great news. If you were interested in, you know, other crazy stories, like, you know, things going back all the way to, you know, early history. Well, we have history camp, and that's where we deep dive on every crazy historical topic ever. If you're interested in religious topics, you know, like the Pope and the Vatican, well, amongst many other religions, well, we have religion camp. You can check that out as well. And we also have a secret society that is. Patreon.com campgagnon yes, you're going to get every episode of this show, plus all of our other channels, completely ad free. So if you don't like the ads, great news. We have an outlet. Also, you're going to get monthly zooms with me and the rest of the squad. You're also going to get access to episodes early, and you're also going to get access to episodes that never go out to the public where we all just kind of chop it up about the inner workings happening here at the campsite. And that's patreon.com Camp Gagnon. And it's about the price of a cup of coffee. Five bucks a month, and you're gonna get all that and more. Now, if you just like to rock with crazy deep dives, mysteries, conspiracies, and all sorts of wild stuff that happens in the world today. Well, you are in the right place. We drop episodes on this channel twice a week. Interviews with interesting people way more interesting than me, as well as deep dives like this one. So make sure you subscribe and keep a lookout for future content. God bless you all. Thank you so much for tuning to another episode of Camp, and I will see you in my tent very soon. Peace. Hey, guys, if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history, well, I want to invite you to check out signal 33. This is a companion pod to our podcast here at camp. It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows, and I choose the topics every single week. So check it out, subscribe and start the dialogue in the comment section.