Christina

Queen of Sweden (r. 1644-1654)

• Born: December 8, 1626
• Birthplace: Stockholm, Sweden
• Died: April 19, 1689
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Under Christina’s rule, Sweden benefited politically through the Treaty of Westphalia, which brought an end to the devastating Thirty Years’ War, and it benefited culturally by the importation of many works of art and manuscripts from throughout Europe. During her residence in Rome, Christina was an enthusiastic patron of the arts and scholarship, founding the learned society Accademia Reale, a precursor to the Accademia dell’Arcadia of eighteenth century Italy.

Early Life

Christina was the daughter of the beloved King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden and Maria Eleonora, daughter of the elector of Brandenburg. Gustavus not only was a war hero of epic proportions but also was the famed Protestant king and commander of the Swedish troops in the Thirty Years’ War as well as the last male member of the Protestant branch of the royal Wasa family.

Christina was the only one of the couple’s children to survive beyond her first year and was convinced that she was hated by her mother because of her gender—both mother and father had hoped for a male heir to the throne. Yet Gustavus accorded all the ceremony and honor to his daughter that a prince would have received, and he made her his heir before the Riksdag in 1630. When Gustavus was killed at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, his five-year-old princess became queen, although she did not begin ruling until she reached eighteen years of age.

The young Christina showed an intellectual bent thought to be unusual for females of her time; she spent long hours studying and, apparently, preferred this activity to all others. The young queen displayed the same talent for languages that her father had possessed; she learned German, French, and Latin rapidly, reading Livy, Terence, Cicero, and Sallust. Soon she developed a liking for Cornelius Tacitus, who was one of her father’s favorite writers and not an easy one to comprehend.

Christina’s appearance also set her apart from other women. Her gait was confident; she spoke in a deep, booming voice; and she showed a lack of interest in fine clothing and adornment. This latter trait developed in later years into a penchant for wearing (often shabby or dirty) men’s clothes with little or no jewelry. She was decidedly homely, though portraits reveal large, beautiful eyes. In addition, her exceptional skill in horseback riding surpassed that of most men of her court.

Major figures in the young queen’s life included the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, her tutor in statesmanship, who essentially ruled in her minority; Bishop John Matthiae, her religious instructor, who was primarily responsible for teaching her tolerance of other religions; and Countess Catherine Palatine, her paternal aunt, who came closest to providing the young girl with a normal mother figure until Christina’s mother sent her away. Maria Eleonora seems to have been too warped by grief to be able to nurture her child properly; in addition, the Queen Mother kept so-called dwarves and buffoons at court, characters that frightened Christina, who was also misshapen. Oxenstierna and other advisers to the late king removed Maria Eleonora to Uppsala, fearing that her mental instability and prolonged, ostentatious grief would prove harmful to her daughter. Christina’s childhood was therefore essentially lonely and devoid of a proper family environment.

An early romantic interest blossomed for Christina in her early teens, and she and her cousin Charles Gustav (later King Charles X Gustav of Sweden) became secretly engaged. By the time she reached the throne, however, her feelings for him had cooled, possibly as a result of her passionate if unanswered affection for the courtier and count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; they never married. During this time, she also made the acquaintance of Countess Ebba Sparre, her best female friend, who may have been Christina’s lover.

Life’s Work

Christina’s adult life lends itself to a discussion of two distinct time periods: her Swedish reign and her postabdication travels and eventual permanent residence in Rome. She came to power in Sweden during a particularly difficult time. The Thirty Years’ War had been raging for twenty-six years, a situation that had taxed the Swedish population in terms of both people and money. In addition, the politics at the court itself featured a strengthened nobility worried about possible land confiscations to improve the royal finances.

Christina proved herself to be an astute politician and strategist but a profligate spender with little comprehension of economic affairs. She improved Sweden’s diplomatic relations with France, to some degree through her personal friendship with the French minister (later ambassador) Pierre-Hector Chanut, and brought her country to temporary, welcome peace by the Treaty of Westphalia. She strengthened the power of the Crown vis-à-vis the nobility by means of clever strategies, aligning herself with the estates of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Yet the royal finances continued to deteriorate.

For all of her enjoyment of diplomatic intrigues and political power (things she did not cease to seek even after her abdication), her spiritual life was apparently lacking. She had been reared in the Lutheran faith but had been repelled by its austerity and sternness; her religious instructor, Matthiae, had taught her religious tolerance. The war booty from the Continent, which boasted sumptuous Italian paintings, vibrant tapestries, and volumes of hitherto (in Sweden) unknown literature, introduced her to the cultural wealth, lacking in her native land, that the more southerly countries of Europe had to offer. Although Christina called, among others, foreign artists, musicians, doctors, and philosophers (including René Descartes ) to her court to try to fill the cultural void, she soon realized that she could not remain in spartan Sweden. She chose to abdicate, a decision to which her unrequited love for De la Gardie may have contributed.

She prepared for this step with great care, ensuring that her own candidate for the succession, her cousin and former fiancé Charles Gustavus, was officially accepted by the Riksdag as the heir to her throne. During this time, she became attracted to the Catholic religion, a faith with greater appeal to her aesthetic sense than Protestantism (it is recorded that she actually subscribed to her own private religion), and received instruction in secret from Italian Jesuit priests, for Catholicism was still illegal in Sweden at the time. Although the Riksdag refused initially to accept her bid for abdication, she persisted, citing as grounds her intention never to marry, her “weaker” gender, and her wish to retreat into private life. She also probably allowed an inkling of her Catholic interest to be perceived. It would have been a terrible embarrassment to Sweden if the daughter of its Protestant hero had converted to the opposing religion. To retain her on the throne would have been unthinkable. Her decision was accepted, and she abdicated on June 6, 1654.

After her abdication, Christina left in disguise for the Spanish Netherlands; the sponsor of her conversion to Catholicism was King Philip IV of Spain. After a stay in Brussels, she continued to Innsbruck, where she made her formal profession of the Catholic faith on November 3, 1655; Pope Alexander VII received her in Rome with lavish ceremonies on December 23 of the same year. There she met Cardinal Decio Azzolino, who later became her closest friend and, some believe, her paramour; he supported her with advice and friendship for the remainder of her life, dying two months after she did as her sole heir.

Christina was not content to live quietly in Rome, practicing her new faith. Her interest in politics kept her in touch with the most powerful figures of Europe; on a more prosaic level, she needed money to maintain her extravagant lifestyle. Although she thought that she had provided for steady financial support by securing for herself the income from Sweden’s Baltic possessions and other lands, political unrest and poor or dishonest administration of these areas made her financial situation shaky at best. For these reasons, she went to France in 1656 and entered into secret negotiations with Cardinal Jules Mazarin to place her on the throne of Naples, a political dream that was foiled, partially through the treachery of a member of her entourage, Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi. She had him murdered at Fontainebleau on November 10, 1657, an act that later prevented her from ascending the Polish throne (to which she actually had some claim) and which gave her a reputation for bloodthirstiness. In 1660 and 1667, Christina made trips to Sweden, primarily to protect her financial interests. Finally, in 1668, she returned to Rome, where she remained until her death.

In her adopted home, the now-round, stout queen, eccentric as ever, continued her involvement in politics and culture; she supported certain papal candidates during conclaves and founded learned societies, in particular the Accademia Reale. She invited singers and other musicians to her rented palace, the Palazzo Riario, and bought works of art that were displayed there. Christina worked on her autobiography (of which there are several drafts extant) and began writing aphorisms, which are often rather unoriginal but occasionally revelatory of her feelings toward Azzolino. She died as a result of a stroke on April 19, 1689.

Significance

Christina has never quite died in terms of controversy over her reputation. She has been by turns slandered and revered, seen as a murderer of her lovers and as a saint who sacrificed her crown for religion. Clearly, that she was female and was never married contributes to the fascination surrounding her. She was an anachronism in some ways; a woman with a strong personality and a sharp intellect would fit into the modern world much more smoothly than into the Baroque Age. It was perhaps partly her own inability to feel comfortable in her time that made her restlessly give up one crown, go on to seek two or three others, and change religions and homelands.

Her attractive personality reaches across time to pull modern readers and historians into her sphere, as the physically plain queen was able to attract young courtiers, cardinals, and even noblewomen to her. Christina remains enigmatic, and perhaps this is why much of what has been written about her has focused on the questions of whether she had sexual relations with Sparre, Azzolino, Monaldeschi, or other members of her court, or on questions of her alleged hermaphroditism or lesbian sexuality.

Yet Christina made a lasting contribution to Swedish and Italian cultural life. She commanded that libraries from the Continent be bought and shipped to Sweden, modeled the Swedish court on that of Louis XIV , and surrounded herself with many talented minds. In Rome, she continued to support the arts to the extent that her reduced means allowed, making her home a meeting place for culture and scholarship.

Bibliography

kerman, Susanna. Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine. New York: E. J. Brill, 1991. kerman discusses Christina’s abdication, her conversion to Catholicism, and her attempt to become queen of Naples as the consequence of her heretical religious beliefs.

Buckley, Veronica. Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric. New York: Fourth Estate, 2004. A portrait of Christina, focusing on her decision to abdicate. Buckley argues that Christina did not renounce the Swedish throne for religious reasons but because she loved art and ancient Roman culture.

Findlen, Paula. “Ideas in the Mind: Gender and Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century.” Hypatia 17, no. 1 (Winter, 2002). Using modern critical editions of the writings of women in the seventeenth century, Findlen analyzes the works to explore the connections between gender and knowledge in that time period.

Garstein, Oskar. Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden, 1622-1656. New York: E. J. Brill, 1992. This work completes Garstein’s earlier study of the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia from 1537 until 1622. The book recounts an underground campaign, funded by the Holy See, to lure Scandinavian students to attend Jesuit colleges. Campaign supporters hoped the students would return to Scandinavia and infiltrate the area’s political and religious life. Garstein evaluates the success of this campaign.

Goldsmith, Margaret. Christina of Sweden: A Psychological Biography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1933. A straightforward biography that is, despite its title, not particularly psychological. The thesis and conclusion, that Christina left no mark on history, leads one to wonder why the author decided to write about this important figure.

Gribble, Francis. The Court of Christina of Sweden and the Later Adventures of the Queen in Exile. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913. A biography of Christina with a good discussion of her aphorisms presented in the last two chapters. Gribble sees Christina’s relationship with Azzolino as the most important aspect of Christina’s life.

Masson, Georgina. Queen Christina. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968. An excellent, informative introduction that proceeds chronologically from a brief overview of Gustavus’s career to Clement XI’s funding a monument to Christina in 1701. Masson gives succinct and helpful explanations of the often confusing historical events of the seventeenth century.

Woodhead, Henry. Memoirs of Christina, Queen of Sweden. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1863. This standard, two-volume work is indispensable for the interested student. It is well documented and gives a full picture of the political and historical climate surrounding Christina. The author takes the view that, despite her personal flaws, Christina made a considerable contribution to society. Contains a selection of her aphorisms translated into English.