Source:
Christina of Sweden, pages 29 to 34, by Ada Harrison, 1929
The biography:
To every cultured Teuton or Anglo-Saxon, the Latin charm is strong. Rome is an idea half familiar, half remote, which calls insistently for exploration. The north is a blond and fascinating mystery to southerners; but to northerners, some time in their lives, the south is a necessity. Christina was peculiarly susceptible to its claim. It was almost enough that she was captive in Sweden; but she was also deeply cultured, she knew the Latin languages, she was unusually capable of appreciating the envoys who came north to her from the promised lands, and of contrasting their brilliance and elegance with the boorishness with which she was surrounded. Part of the southern nature, she realised, was its religion. She was not of a temperament to leave that part unexplored, nor, brought up against it, was she able, as some northerners in her place would have been, to turn her back on it, and so convince herself that it did not exist.
Christina was by nature susceptible to religious doubts. She was inquiring, philosophical and highly educated. Her instinctive tendency to look about was encouraged by certain irritating features of Lutheranism. The chief of these was the interminable sermons her pastors preached her. The queen, whose mind was brilliant and whose habit was to terminate on the instant any intercourse which she did not find pleasing or profitable, writhed under the harangues of these simple, prosy men. While they preached she fidgeted, played with her lapdog; at which they steadily preached more. Yawning, she asked herself if this could possibly be the will of God, or what, if not, the will of God might be. She was inclined towards religion, and was certain that there must be one true faith, but was tortured to know which it was.
The choice before her was not large, and she turned naturally to the examination of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The fact that Descartes, so important and so eminently rational a man, was a practising Roman Catholic, must have impressed her deeply. Christina's attitude towards religion was entirely rational. She did not look for voices or a sign; she proposed to examine doctrine and to reckon points; and she confessed she found it much in favour of the Church of Rome that so many illustrious and brilliant men in the past had belonged to it. Certain minor aspects of the Roman Church appealed to her as much as certain aspects of the Lutheran repelled. The unmarried state had merit with Rome; the Roman faith seemed designed to honour virgins like herself, who rose above the frailties of their sex.
It is difficult to say just when Christina's thoughts began to turn to Roman Catholicism. Writing after her adoption of the faith, and passionately on the defensive about it, she almost challenges us to deny that her first rational impulse was towards it. A Roman Catholic biographer records that when, at the age of nine, the queen was told that the unmarried state was meritorious in the church, she exclaimed, 'How fine that is! It is of that religion I will be!' and clung to her opinion in the face of a stiff Lutheran reprimand. However that may be, it is likely her mind early challenged her hereditary faith, as it challenged everything with which it came in contact, and there is no doubt that from 1650 onwards religion greatly occupied her.
From this year all things began to work in Christina to bring her to the end of her first stage. In 1649, against senatorial opposition, and in spite of the protests of the Prince himself, she had made Charles Gustavus her successor. She thus sealed beyond redemption her determination not to marry, and cut herself off from continuing in Sweden in the persons of her heirs.
The fact that the end was visible, and that the end was no greater than the beginning, must have had its weight. She was now queen; she would die queen. There would be no advance in glory. Having freed herself of the blind impulse to hold on for the sake of her own posterity, she began, according to her nature, which could never remain static, to consider breaking away. The intertwined notions of abdication, of Roman Catholicism, of escape to the brilliant Latin lands, of spending profitably the remainder of her youth, all began to grow together in the queen's mind.
If, however, Descartes had given a particular fillip to this growth, it was not yet very evident. These matters were not to be embarked on lightly, even by Christina. If speculations and possibilities lifted their heads, they must be thrust back again, to grow strongly perhaps, but subterraneously.
Meanwhile, the ostensible purpose of Descartes' visit, his philosophy, bore obvious fruit. He was succeeded at the court by a train of learned men. Stockholm became the home of twenty savants, among whom was Salmasius, whose presence had been insistently sought for, and who stayed at the palace a year.
As a result of these devotions, Christina became extremely ill. This was scarcely surprising, for she continued with her regular affairs, and worked in as overtime the rigorous entertainments of the savants. And as she had not the feminine gift of hearing the wise men without listening to them, but wished actually to understand what they said, her overtaxed mind and body refused their work. Her complaint, which to-day would have been recognised as a nervous collapse, did not yield to the treatment then in vogue. Physic and bleeding made no impression on it. It was left to one Bourdelot to effect a cure, which he did in a manner vastly shocking to the susceptibilities of Sweden. Bourdelot was a Frenchman, an adventurer, the son of a barber, and a quackish man of science. Whatever his qualifications were, he had the wit to offer a sensible prescription. He ordered a complete change.
Christina took to the new physician, as public opinion did not. Accepting his prescription, she saw to it that in its discharge there should be no half measures. The queen's life was transformed. Books were abandoned, business abandoned, philosophers temporarily suspended. The chase, the shuttlecock, every devisable frivolity took their places. The court looked on astonished, but the queen continued to be strenuously and freakishly gay [cheerful]. She and the new favourite were now self-designated the plaisants compagnons, and within the comfortable latitude of this title everything was included except displeasure and work. In the end, Bourdelot, with the hearty co-operation of his patient, was successful. The cure was as complete as the over-restless nature of the queen would allow, and Christina, sensible of her debt to her impromptu physician, continued for many years to correspond with him and ask his advice.
Restored to health[,] she began once again to face the future. Bourdelot had insisted on laughing at everything, at great nations and religions included, so that Christina's serious preoccupations had been left in abeyance. Now she returned to them. In 1651 she got as far as to broach to the Senate a project of transferring the crown to Charles Gustavus before her death. The Senate was horrified, and at their earnest appeal she withdrew the suggestion. To them she was still, and all her life remained, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and any attempt she made to tamper with her own state seemed a reflection on Sweden. In return Christina exacted from the Senate a promise to finish once and for all with the subject of her marriage, for which they still hopefully pressed. It was a moment of truce.
Christina had as yet breathed no word in public of her religious waverings, although the ascendancy of foreigners, especially that of Descartes, had already given the Senate uneasiness. It was a portentous subject. It was more than a reigning Protestant sovereign entertaining the idea of Roman Catholicism. It was the daughter of the very ace of Protestantism deserting to the enemy's camp. The Thirty Years' War had been a religious war, and Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded in fighting in it something like the religious spirit. He had not been a nominal[,] but a convinced Protestant, and had fought with the name of God honestly on his lips. The Treaty of Westphalia was but three years old. Christina dared not yet go back on it and what it represented.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Pierre Bourdelot.
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