Source:
Six Thousand Years of History, volume 5 (Famous Women), pages 240 to 243, by Edgar Sanderson et al., 1900; original at Pennsylvania State University
The biography:
The collections she had brought from Sweden she now arranged and enlarged with liberal purchases, showing so much good judgment that her palace surpassed in its treasures the houses of the ancient nobles, and the pursuit was raised at once out of the lines of curiosity into those of profound scholarship. Sante Bartolo described her cameos. Havercamp has described her coins in his work, "Nummophylacium Reginæ Christinæ["] (in the Museum Odescaleum); Spanheim wrote on her coins and medals; and Schroder wrote his "Berichte über die Gemählde und Statuen der Königen Christine." Her collection of paintings by Correggio made her name forever famous among students of the old masters. Her collection of manuscripts and autographs is now in the Vatican Library. She spent nearly all of her working time in labors of this kind, which were vastly for the good of history, and built herself a solid and durable name, so that, after all, her earthly desire for a greater celebrity than could come to a small northern sovereign was answered more favorably than she could know.
When the learned Doctor Borelli was exiled because he had studied the mechanics of animal motion, he was compelled to teach in his extreme age. Not only did Christina come to his assistance with a pension, but she printed at her own cost his work, which instantly became renowned, and overturned some of the theories of the time.
Ranke, in his "Lives of the Popes", thinks that, when her character and intellect had been improved and matured, she exercised an efficient and enduring influence on Italian literature. "The labyrinth of perverted metaphor, inflated extravagance, labored conceit, and vapid triviality", says he, "into which Italian poetry had then wandered is well known. Christina was too highly cultivated and too solidly endowed to be ensnared by such a fashion — it was her utter aversion. In the year 1680 she founded an academy in her own residence for the discussion of literary and political subjects. The first rule of this institution was, that its members should carefully abstain from the turgid style, overloaded with false ornament, which prevailed at the time, and be guided only by sound sense. From the Queen's academy proceeded such men as Alessandro Guido, who had been previously addicted to the style then used, but, after some time passed in the society of Christina, not only resolved to abandon it, but formed a league to abolish it altogether." The celebrated Arcadia at Rome grew out of Christina's labors.
In the politics of Rome she warmly attached herself to Cardinal Azzolini, chief of the Squadronisti party. She held that Azzolini was the most God-like and spiritual-minded man in the world — the only person she would exalt above her father's Chancellor, Oxenstiern. Ranke says she desired to do Azzolini justice in her memoirs, but that was accomplished only in part, yet sufficiently "to give proof of earnestness and uprightness of purpose in her dealings with herself, with a freedom and firmness of mind before which all calumny is silenced."
Arckenholtz has collected Christina's apothegms and leisure-hour thoughts. They betoken great knowledge of the world, and an acquaintance with the passions, such as could be attained by experience only, with the most subtle remarks on them. She had a vital conviction of the power of self-direction residing in the mind, and was a believer in the high nobility of the better order of human beings. She sought to follow only her own ideas of what would satisfy the Creator.
She died in high regard at Rome in 1689, aged 63, and was buried with pomp in St. Peter's, the Pope himself writing her epitaph. Her monument to-day may be seen in the Chapel of St. Colonna. It is decorated with a representation of her abjuration of Protestantism in Inspruck Cathedral in 1665 [sic]. Her manuscripts went to the Vatican, and a part of her paintings and antiques was purchased by Odeschalchi, nephew of Pope Innocent XI. The other part went to France, being purchased by the Regent Duke of Orleans in the minority of Louis XV, and may now be found in the Louvre.
A Swedish historian, Fryxell, in accounting for the vagaries of Christina's earlier years, which almost disappeared in the end, traces the cause to a taint of insanity in the blood of the royal line of Sweden. Erik, the poet, before her, and Charles XII, after her, were worse afflicted with similar misfortunes.
We have here reviewed briefly the career of a woman who, when all is said, made a vast sacrifice in order to satisfy her conscience. Whatever the anger of Protestants, and however serious the imputations caused by her eccentricities, she gave an example of doing right according to her conscience that must remain as a bright example to the race. She had the mettle that Joan of Arc possessed in a darker age, and she was more soundly trained in art, thought and learning than any woman of these pages this side of Aspasia. She ought not to be ranked with the women of greatest literary genius, yet she probably was the most scholarly and meditative woman who has worn a crown in Christendom.
Above: Kristina.
Note: Kristina died at age 62, not 63.
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