Source:
Six Thousand Years of History, volume 5 (Famous Women), pages 234 to 236, by Edgar Sanderson et al., 1900; original at Pennsylvania State University
The biography:
June 24 [sic], 1654, the last direct scion of the race of Vasa stood before her Senate. The aged Count Brahé refused to take the crown from her head which he had placed there a few years before. He considered the bond between Prince and subject to be indissoluble, and held the proceedings before him to be unlawful. It was in opposition to the will of God, to the common right of nations, and to the oath by which she was bound to the realm of Sweden and to her subjects — he was no honest man who had given her Majesty such counsel (Schlözer's Swedische Biographie, article Peter Brahé.). The Queen was on this account compelled to lift the crown from her own head, as this was the only way the aged statesman would receive it. With crown and scepter laid aside, in a plain white dress, Christina then received the last homage of her estates, or houses. The speaker of the House of Peasants knelt before her, shook her hand and kissed it repeatedly, burst into tears, and thus departed from the daughter of his adored Gustavus Adolphus. This was the very moving sentimental side of the scene, but the machinations of the Jesuits were known to at least a few, and the operations of Christina were carefully watched, so that she feared her plans might yet miscarry. A fleet awaited her, but while she intrusted her property to the ships, she did not intend to so intrust her person. She was by this time almost a foe of her country, and the Swedes did well to be careful. The blunt warriors of the Northland had made a jest of Christina's dead languages; her disputes about vortices, innate ideas, etc.; her taste for medals, statues, pictures; her payments to the makers of books, like Salmasius. In this way she had come to despise her fellow-countrymen as barbarians. She took everything curious or valuable out of the royal palace, put it on the ship, and then, giving everybody the slip, set out by carriage for Hamburg. When she came to a little brook that then separated Sweden from Denmark, she got out of her carriage, and, leaping to the other side, cried out: "At last I am free, and out of Sweden, whither, I hope, I shall never return." She dismissed her women and assumed the dress of a man, not an unusual thing to do when traveling in those times. "I would become a man", she said, "yet I do not love men because they are men, but because they are not women." She prepared to publicly embrace the ancient faith at Brussels, and solemnly renounced Lutheranism at Innspruck. Her act was the reigning sensation in France. At Brussels she met the great Condé, who made that city his asylum. "Cousin", said she, "who would have thought, ten years ago, that we should have met at this distance from our countries?" "How great is the magnanimity of a Princess", said he, "who could so easily give up that for which the rest of mankind are continually destroying each other, and pursue throughout their whole lives without attaining?" The venerable Pope Innocent, suspecting that a public reception at Rome would be expensive, saved his money and reserved the honor for his successor, Alexander VII, by suggesting delay. When Alexander invited her, promising his benediction, she hastened towards Rome, and offered her crown and scepter to the Virgin at Loretto. All the cities of the Roman states gave her a public reception, and the new Pope, whose ambition was gratified by this Catholic triumph over Protestantism, exhausted the apostolic treasury to celebrate with due solemnity the conversion of the learned daughter of the great heretic. It was at Rome, that, in honor of the Pope, she adopted the second name of Alexandra, which she afterward bore. She rode on horseback in Amazon costume[,] and the vast crowds that Rome turns out were astir with exultation. Triumphal arches, illuminations, feasts, flags, and processions celebrated her act of homage to the Pope.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Pope Alexander VII.
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