Queen Christina of Sweden

Christina ( sv, Kristina, 18 December (New Style) 1626 – 19 April 1689), a member of the House of Vasa, was Queen of Sweden in her own right from 1632 until her abdication in 1654. She succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus upon his death at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, but began ruling the Swedish Empire when she reached the age of eighteen in 1644.

The Swedish queen is remembered as one of the most learned women of the 17th century. She was fond of books, manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures. With her interest in religion, philosophy, mathematics, and alchemy, she attracted many scientists to Stockholm, wanting the city to become the " Athens of the North". The Peace of Westphalia allowed her to establish an academy or university when and wherever she wanted.

In 1644, she began issuing copper in lumps as large as fifteen kilograms to serve as currency. Christina's financial extravagance brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy, and the financial difficulties caused public unrest. Christina argued for peace to end the Thirty Years' War and received indemnity. Meanwhile, she caused a scandal when she decided not to marry, and when she converted to Catholicism secretly in Brussels and publicly in Innsbruck. The "Minerva of the North" relinquished the throne to her cousin, and settled in Rome.Script from Clark.edu by Anita L. Fisher

Pope Alexander VII described Christina as "a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame." Notwithstanding, she played a leading part in the theatrical and musical community and protected many Baroque artists, composers, and musicians.

Being the guest of five consecutive popes, and a symbol of the Counter-Reformation, Christina is one of the few women buried in the Vatican grotto. Her unconventional lifestyle and occasional masculine style of dressing have been featured in countless novels, plays, operas, and film. In most biographies of Christina, her gender and cultural identity play an important role.

Early life

Christina was born in the royal castle Tre Kronor on . Her parents were the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and his German wife, Maria Eleonora. Gustavus shared Maria's interest in architecture and her love of music. They had already had three children: two daughters (a stillborn princess in 1621, then the first Princess Christina, who was born in 1623 and died the following year) and a stilborn son in May 1625. Excited expectations surrounded Maria Eleonora's fourth pregnancy in 1626. When the baby was born, it was first thought to be a boy as it was "hairy" and screamed "with a strong, hoarse voice." She later wrote in her autobiography that, "Deep embarrassment spread among the women when they discovered their mistake." The king, though, was very happy, stating, "She'll be clever, she has made fools of us all!" Gustav Adolf was closely attached to his daughter, whereas her mother remained aloof in her disappointment at the child being a girl. In the year after Christina's birth, Maria Eleonora was described as being in a state of hysteria owing to her husband's absences. She showed little affection for her daughter and was not allowed any influence in Christina's upbringing. He was worried that her instability might pass on to their daughter.

The Crown of Sweden was hereditary in the House of Vasa, but from King Charles IX's time onward (reigned 1604–11), it excluded Vasa princes descended from a deposed brother ( Eric XIV of Sweden) and a deposed nephew ( Sigismund III of Poland). Gustav Adolf's legitimate younger brothers had died years earlier. The one legitimate female left, his half-sister Catharine, came to be excluded in 1615 when she married John Casimir, a non-Lutheran. So Christina became the undisputed heir presumptive. From Christina's birth, King Gustav Adolph recognized her eligibility even as a female heir, and although called "queen", the official title she held as of her coronation by the Riksdag in February 1633 was king.

Regency

In June 1630, when Christina was three years old, Gustav Adolf left for Germany to defend Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War. He secured his daughter's right to inherit the throne, in case he never returned, and gave orders to Axel Gustafsson Banér, his marshal, that Christina should receive an education of the type normally only afforded to boys.

When Gustav Adolf did not come home as expected after the summer campaign of 1630, Maria wrote to John Casimir, her brother-in-law that she could not stand it, she wanted to die. She begged him to try to persuade the king to come home. It was decided that Maria would travel to Germany the following spring. She arrived on 10 July 1631, to Wolgast in Pomerania. On 11 January 1632 she met with her spouse, close to Hanau. The couple were spotted for the last time on 28 October 1632 at Erfurt. The very next day, Gustav Adolf broke camp and left. On 3 November Maria wrote to Axel Oxenstierna: "without H.R.M.'s presence, I am worth nothing, not even my life".

Her mother, of the House of Hohenzollern, was said to be the most beautiful queen in Europe, but she was also considered hysterical, unstable and overly emotional. It is suggested that she inherited madness, on both the paternal and maternal line. However, this image of the hysterical, depressive and profligate queen dowager, which has become part of historiography, has been put into perspective in more recent research, first in the 1980s by the archivist Åke Kromnov, among others, and more recently in the monograph "Drottningen som sa nej" by Moa Matthis, published in 2010.

After the king died on 6 November 1632 on the battlefield, Maria Eleonora returned to Sweden with the embalmed body of her husband. The 7-year-old Queen Christina came in solemn procession to Nyköping to receive her mother. Maria Eleonora declared that the burial should not take place during her lifetime - she often spoke of shortening her life - or at least should be postponed as long as possible. She also demanded that the coffin be kept open, and went to see it regularly, patting it and taking no notice of the putrefaction. They tried to persuade Maria not to visit the corpse so often. Axel Oxenstierna managed to have the corpse interred in Riddarholmen Church on 22 June 1634, but had to post guards after she tried to dig it up. The grief suggests mental instability.

Maria Eleanora had been indifferent to her daughter but now, belatedly, Christina became the center of her mother's attention. Gustav Adolf had decided that in the event of his death, his daughter should be cared for by his half-sister, Catherine of Sweden and half-brother Carl Gyllenhielm as regent. This solution did not suit Maria Eleonora, who had her sister-in-law banned from the castle. In 1634, the Instrument of Government, a new constitution, was introduced by Oxenstierna. The constitution stipulated that the "King" must have a Privy Council, which was headed by Oxenstierna himself.
Maria Eleonora was considered very difficult, and in 1636 she lost her parental rights to her daughter. The Riksråd motivated its decision by asserting that she neglected Christina and her upbringing, and that she had a bad influence on her daughter ... Chancellor Oxenstierna saw no other solution than to exile the widow to Gripsholm castle, while the governing regency council would decide when she was allowed to see her daughter. For the subsequent years, Christina thrived in the company of her aunt Catherine and her family.

In 1638, after the death of her aunt and foster mother, the Royal Regency Council under Axel Oxenstierna saw the need to appoint a new foster mother to the underage monarch, which resulted in a reorganization of the queen's household. In order to prevent the young queen from being dependent upon a single individual and favorite mother figure, the Royal Council decided to split the office of head lady-in-waiting (responsible for the queen's female courtiers) and the office royal governess (or foster-mother) in four, with two women appointed to share each office. Accordingly, Ebba Leijonhufvud and Christina Natt och Dag were appointed to share the position of royal governess and foster mother with the title ''Upptuktelse-Förestånderska'' ('Castigation Mistress'), while Beata Oxenstierna and Ebba Ryning were appointed to share the position of head lady-in-waiting, all four with the formal rank and title of ''Hovmästarinna''.Marie-Louise Rodén: Drottning Christina : en biografi (2008) p. 62

The Royal Council's method of giving Queen Christina several foster mothers to avoid her forming an attachment to a single person appears to have been effective, as Christina did not mention her foster mothers directly in her memoirs and did not seem to have formed an attachment to any of them; in fact, with only a few exceptions, such as Ebba Sparre, Lady Jane Ruthven and Louise van der Nooth, Christina did not show any interest in any of her female courtiers, and she generally mentions them in her memoirs only to compare herself favorably toward them by referring to herself as more masculine than they.

Christina was educated as a royal male would have been. The theologian Johannes Matthiae Gothus became her tutor; he gave her lessons in religion, philosophy, Greek and Latin. Chancellor Oxenstierna taught her politics and discussed Tacitus with her. Oxenstierna wrote proudly of the 14-year-old girl that, "She is not at all like a female" and that she had "a bright intelligence". Christina seemed happy to study ten hours a day. Besides Swedish and German she learned at least six more languages: Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew.

Reign

In 1644, Christina was declared an adult, although the coronation was postponed because of the Torstenson War. In the Treaty of Brömsebro Denmark added the isles of Gotland and Ösel to Christina's domain while Norway lost the districts of Jämtland and Härjedalen to her. Under Christina's rule, Sweden, now virtually controlling the Baltic Sea, had unrestricted access to the North Sea and was no longer encircled by Denmark–Norway.

Chancellor Oxenstierna soon discovered that her political views differed from his own. In 1645, he sent his son, Johan Oxenstierna, to the Peace Congress in the Westphalian city of Osnabrück, to argue against peace with the Holy Roman Empire. Christina, however, wanted peace at any cost and sent her own delegate, Johan Adler Salvius.

The Peace of Westphalia was signed between May and October 1648, effectively ending the European wars of religion. Sweden received an indemnity of five million thalers, used primarily to pay its troops. Sweden further received Western Pomerania (henceforth Swedish Pomerania), Wismar, the Archbishopric of Bremen, and the Bishopric of Verden as hereditary fiefs, thus gaining a seat and vote in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire and in the respective diets (''Kreistag'') of three Imperial Circles: the Upper Saxon Circle, Lower Saxon Circle, and Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle; the city of Bremen was disputed.

Shortly before the conclusion of the peace settlement, she admitted Salvius into the council, against Oxenstierna's wishes. Salvius was no aristocrat, but Christina wanted the opposition to the aristocracy present. In 1649, with the help of her uncle, John Casimir, Christina tried to reduce the influence of Oxenstierna, when she declared her cousin Charles Gustav as her heir presumptive. The following year, Christina resisted demands from the other estates (clergy, burghers, and peasants) in the Riksdag of the Estates for the reduction of the number of noble landholdings that were tax-exempt. She never implemented such a policy. In 1649, Louis de Geer founded the Swedish Africa Company and in 1650, Christina hired Hendrik Carloff to improve trade on Gold Coast.

Patronage of the arts

In 1645, Christina invited Hugo Grotius to become her librarian, but he died on his way in Rostock. That same year she founded '' Ordinari Post Tijdender'' ("Regular Mail Times"), the oldest currently published newspaper in the world. In 1647, Johann Freinsheim was appointed as her librarian. After the Battle of Prague (1648), where her armies looted Prague Castle, many of the treasures collected by Rudolph II were brought back to Stockholm. Hence Christina acquired for her library a number of valuable illustrated works and rare manuscripts. The inventory drawn up at the time mentions 100 ''an allerhand Kunstbüchern'' ("a hundred art books of different kinds"), among them two world-famous manuscripts: the and the .

In 1649, 760 paintings, 170 marble and 100 bronze statues, 33,000 coins and medallions, 600 pieces of crystal, 300 scientific instruments, manuscripts and books (including the by Rabanus Maurus) were transported to Stockholm. The art, from Prague Castle, had belonged to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and was captured by Hans Christoff von Königsmarck during the Battle of Prague and the negotiations of the Peace of Westphalia. By 1649–1650, "her desire to collect men of learning round her, as well as books and rare manuscripts, became almost a mania," Goldsmith wrote. To catalogue her new collection she asked Isaac Vossius to come to Sweden and Heinsius to purchase more books on the market.

Her ambitions naturally demanded a wide-ranging correspondence. Not infrequently, she sat and wrote far into the night, while the servants came and went with new wax candles. The "Semiramis from the North" corresponded with Pierre Gassendi, her favorite author. Blaise Pascal offered her a copy of his pascaline. She had a firm grasp of classical history and philosophy.Waithe, Mary Ellen (1991
''Modern women philosophers, 1600–1900''
(Springer) Christina studied Neostoicism, the Church Fathers, and Islam; she systematically looked for a copy of the ''Treatise of the Three Impostors'', a work bestowing doubt on all organized religion. In 1651, the kabbalist Menasseh ben Israel offered to become her agent or librarian for Hebrew books and manuscripts; they discussed his messianic ideas as he had recently spelled them out in his latest book, ''Hope of Israel''. Other illustrious scholars who came to visit were Claude Saumaise, Johannes Schefferus, Olaus Rudbeck, Johann Heinrich Boeckler, Gabriel Naudé, Christian Ravis, Nicolaas Heinsius and Samuel Bochart, together with Pierre Daniel Huet and Marcus Meibomius, who wrote a book about Greek dance.

Christina was interested in theatre, especially the plays of Pierre Corneille; she was herself an amateur actress.Leif Jonsson, Ann-Marie Nilsson & Greger Andersson: Musiken i Sverige. Från forntiden till stormaktstidens slut 1720 (Enligsh: "Music in Sweden. From Antiquity to the end of the Great power era 1720") Lars Löfgren: ''Svensk teater'' (English: "Swedish Theatre") From 1638 Oxenstierna employed a French ballet troupe under Antoine de Beaulieu, who also had to teach Christina to move around more elegantly. In 1647, the Italian architect Antonio Brunati was ordered to build a theatrical setting in one of the larger rooms of the palace. In 1648, she commissioned 35 paintings from Jacob Jordaens for a ceiling in Uppsala Castle. The court poet Georg Stiernhielm wrote several plays in the Swedish language, such as ''Den fångne Cupido eller Laviancu de Diane'', performed with Christina in the main part of the goddess Diana. She invited foreign companies to play at Bollhuset, such as an Italian opera troupe in 1652 with Vincenzo Albrici and Angelo Michele Bartolotti, a guitarist. A Dutch theater troupe with Ariana Nozeman and Susanna van Lee visited her in 1653. Among the French artists she employed was Anne Chabanceau de La Barre, who was made court singer.

Descartes

In 1646, Christina's good friend, the French ambassador Pierre Chanut, met and corresponded with the philosopher René Descartes, asking him for a copy of his ''Meditations''. Upon showing the queen some of the letters, Christina became interested in beginning a correspondence with Descartes. She invited him to Sweden, but Descartes was reluctant until she asked him to organize a scientific academy. Christina sent a ship to pick up the philosopher and 2,000 books. Descartes arrived on 4 October 1649. He resided with Chanut, and finished his ''Passions of the Soul''. It is highly unlikely Descartes wrote a "Ballet de la Naissance de la Paix", performed on her birthday. On the day after, 19 December 1649, he probably started his private lessons for the queen. With Christina's strict schedule he was invited to the cold and draughty castle at 5:00 AM daily to discuss philosophy and religion. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she disapproved of his mechanical view, and he did not appreciate her interest in Ancient Greek. On 15 January Descartes wrote he had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1 February 1650 Descartes caught a cold. He died ten days later, early in the morning on 11 February 1650, and according to Chanut the cause of his death was pneumonia.

Marriage issue

Already at the age of nine Christina was impressed by the Catholic religion and the merits of celibacy. She read a biography on the virgin queen Elizabeth I of England with interest. Christina understood that it was expected of her to provide an heir to the Swedish throne. Her first cousin Charles was infatuated with her, and they became secretly engaged before he left in 1642 to serve in the Swedish army in Germany for three years. Christina revealed in her autobiography that she felt "an insurmountable distaste for marriage" and "for all the things that females talked about and did." She once stated, "It takes more courage to marry than to go to war." As she was chiefly occupied with her studies, she slept three to four hours a night, forgot to comb her hair, donned her clothes in a hurry and wore men's shoes for the sake of convenience. (In fact, her permanent bed-head became her trademark look in paintings.) When Christina left Sweden, she continued to write passionate letters to her intimate friend Ebba Sparre, in which she told her that she would always love her. However, such emotional letters were relatively common at that time, and Christina would use the same style when writing to women she had never met, but whose writings she admired.

Coronation

Christina's coronation took place on 22 October 1650. Christina went to the castle of Jacobsdal where she entered in a coronation carriage draped in black velvet embroidered in gold and pulled by three white horses. The procession to Storkyrkan was so long that when the first carriages arrived, the last ones had not yet left Jacobsdal (a distance of roughly 10.5 km or 6.5 miles). All four estates were invited to dine at the castle. Fountains at the marketplace splashed out wine for three days, a whole roast ox was served, and illuminations sparkled, followed by a themed parade (''The Illustrious Splendors of Felicity'') on 24 October.

Religion and health

Her tutor, Johannes Matthiae, influenced by John Dury and Comenius, who since 1638 had been working on a new Swedish school system, represented a gentler attitude than most Lutherans. In 1644, he suggested a new church order, but it was voted down as this was interpreted as Crypto-Calvinism. Queen Christina defended him against the advice of Chancellor Oxenstierna, but three years later, the proposal had to be withdrawn. In 1647, the clergy wanted to introduce the Book of Concord ( sv, Konkordieboken) – a book defining correct Lutheranism versus heresy, making some aspects of free theological thinking impossible. Matthiae was strongly opposed to this and was again backed by Christina. The Book of Concord was not introduced.

In 1651, after reigning almost twenty years, working at least ten hours a day, Christina had what some have interpreted as a nervous breakdown. For an hour she seemed to be dead. She suffered from high blood pressure, complained about bad eyesight and a crooked back. She had seen already many court physicians. In February 1652, the French doctor Pierre Bourdelot arrived in Stockholm. Unlike most doctors of that time, he held no faith in blood-letting; instead, he ordered sufficient sleep, warm baths, and healthy meals, as opposed to Christina's hitherto ascetic way of life. She was only twenty-five and advising that she should take more pleasure in life, Bourdelot asked her to stop studying and working so hard and to remove the books from her apartments. For years, Christina knew by heart all the sonnets from the Ars Amatoria and was keen on the works by Martial and Petronius

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