Source:
Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 31 to 46, by Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan
Kristina's letter of March 10/20 (Old Style), 1652 to her cousin the Landgrave Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt is here:
The essay:
CHAPTER III.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE LITERARY MEN UPON CHRISTINA; HER CONVERSION AND ABDICATION.
IT is a common observation, that a great national revival of literature usually coincides with the rise to great political importance of the country in which it takes place. The reigns of Elizabeth and of Anne in England, and of Louis XIV. in France, are the best-known illustrations of this fact; but the reign of Queen Christina in Sweden, though a less brilliant instance, is no exception to the general rule. During the century which preceded her accession, the state of learning and philosophy in Sweden was, as might have been expected, of no very high character; the Renaissance, and even the Reformation, produced scarcely any direct influence upon it; and though Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus endeavoured to promote their country's greatness, by inviting thither learned men from more favoured lands, it was not till the end of the latter king's reign that the national pride of Sweden, roused by the exploits of its armies in Germany, gave birth, amongst such scholars as it possessed, to a corresponding enthusiasm for the long-neglected literature and antiquities of their country. It was discovered that Scandinavia possessed unknown treasures and art and archæology in the Runic inscriptions and sagas, and men rushed eagerly into the new fields of learning which it was believed that the study of Swedish history and mythology would open to them. Some went so far as to assert, that the old Gothic legends threw light on the early history of mankind and the beginnings of the world, and propounded upon this subject the most absurd (Thus Stiernhelm declared that Adam was a Scandinavian, a theory which he proved by deriving his name from Af-dam, ex-pulvere, 'of-dust.') and grotesque theories. The character of the new learning was strictly Swedish and national. Archbishop Paulinus, of Upsala, in his Historia Arctoa, described the rise to greatness of the kingdom of Sweden; Olaus Rudbeck and Olaus Verelius worked at the antiquities of Scandinavia; and the famous jurist, Gyldenstolpe, at its charters and codes of law. Yet their writings, though useful as giving an impulse to learning, and as paving the way for wider knowledge, were disfigured by narrowness and pedantry; and in spite of their influence, Sweden was but little affected by the great mental movements of the age, and seems even to have been behind the rest of the world in classical culture. Whitelocke speaks with something of contempt of the scholarship of Upsala; and Gezelius tells us that Stiernhelm was accused of magic, because he had set fire to the beard of a peasant with a burning-glass, and on another occasion had terrified a learned professor of Dorpat by shewing him a louse through a magnifying-glass. The philosophy taught was, in spite of Lutheran theology, almost entirely scholastic. In the reign of Charles XI., the Cartesian doctrines were still regarded as dangerous heresies, and all new ideas or inventions brought from abroad were viewed with distrust, and persistently opposed by a priesthood whose power and intolerance had been but little diminished by the Reformation.
Christina, though she encouraged the national learning by the foundation of schools, and even of an university at Abo, was anxious to improve and widen it by the introduction of foreign knowledge; and as soon as the Westphalian treaty had given peace to Sweden, she set about her scheme of making the court of Stockholm a centre for the literary men of Europe. Holland, and especially the University of Leyden, was at that time the chief home of European learning; and thence, in 1649, she invited the well-known scholar and theologian, Isaac Vossius. Vossius was a man of profound erudition; he had travelled in Italy, was an authority on its antiquities and art, and was regarded as one of the best Greek scholars of his time. He gave Christina, whilst at Stockholm, regular lessons in Greek; and it is not unlikely that he inspired her with some of his own sceptical opinions, for he was an avowed unbeliever in religion, though credulous even to gullibility in every other subject. It is said that on one occasion, when in England, where Charles II., in spite of his opinions, made him a Canon of Windsor, he made himself ridiculous by repeating before the assembled court, with the gravity of profound conviction, some ludicrous and incredible marvels which he had heard about the Chinese. "Strange man", said the king, much amused, "he will believe anything in the world except the Bible."
A far greater man than Vossius was soon to visit Sweden. Chanut, the French ambassador at Christina's court, was a friend of Descartes, and by his means the great philosopher was induced, in 1649, to make a pilgrimage to Stockholm. He was received with every honour; and so anxious was the queen that attention to State affairs might not interfere with her enjoyment of his society, that she used to send for him at five o'clock every morning to the palace, to discuss the philosophical system which he had founded. But though he admired her talents, he seems to have been disappointed at the manner in which she received his teaching. He had hoped that, by persuading her of the truth of his doctrines, he might have acquired for them a powerful patroness, whose support would have helped them to win a victory over the system they were struggling in all the Universities of Europe to displace; but Christina, though a clever woman, was not a profound philosophical intellect; she was interested and amused by the study of the different learned opinions which were going about Europe, but she was not possessed with a deep love of knowledge, and still less of truth for its own sake. How little she really was influenced by, or understood Descartes' philosophy, may be seen from the fact that she attributed to her acquaintance with him her first leanings towards Roman Catholicism; a result which at first sight seems almost paradoxical, if taken to apply to his philosophical teaching. Descartes did not long survive his visit to Sweden: the rigorous climate, and the visits he was obliged to pay to the palace in the cold morning air, affected his lungs, and in 1650 he died. Absurd stories were circulated as to the cause of his death; some ascribed it to disgust at the indifference with which the queen received his teaching; others to a quarrel with Christina, who was said to be jealous of the admiration felt by the philosopher for the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, whom he had known in Holland; whilst a third version represented him as a victim to priestly fanaticism, and declared that he had been poisoned by some bigoted Lutheran divines.
Christina seems, after the death of Descartes, to have been partly conscious of the loss to herself and to Europe. She wished at first to give him a pompous funeral in the mausoleum of the kings of Sweden; but was dissuaded from doing so by Chanut, for fear of offending the clergy. and the founder of modern philosophy was buried in the little cemetery of St. Olaus, whence sixteen years later his bones were removed with every honour to a worthier resting-place in his own land.
If Descartes was the first original thinker of the age, its most profoundly learned man was certainly Claude de Saumaise, or, as he is better known, Salmasius. Though chiefly famous amongst Englishmen of the present day for his controversy with Milton, which called forth the "Apologia pro populo Anglicano", Salmasius was in his own time regarded by all the savants of Europe with the most intense respect, and was pronounced infallible in all matters of classical and antiquarian knowledge. His industry was prodigious; he worked the whole of two nights out of three, to the great detriment of his health: and his acquaintance with Oriental languages was unrivalled in Western Europe. He occupied a professorial chair at Leyden when, in 1650, shortly after the death of Descartes, Christina invited him to Sweden.
He did not, however, remain there longer than a year; the University of Leyden declared that they could no more "do without Salmasius than without the sun;" and in 1651 he returned to Holland. His influence over Christina was not altogether good. He was, though a learned man, a quarrelsome and scurrilous pedant, and he seems to have pandered to some of the coarser traits in the queen's character.
To keep up his credit, after his departure from Stockholm, he recommended to her a friend of his, a French physician of the name of Mechon [sic] Bourdelot. This man was, if the accounts of him are to be trusted, a vicious and unscrupulous quack, with considerable talent for flattery and court intrigue, and with a knack of appearing clever and agreeable in society. Himself destitute of all accomplishments, save those of fiddling, cooking, and uttering flippant witticisms at the expense of wiser men, he endeavoured to draw away Christina's interest from the savants whom she had hitherto favoured, but whom he now tried to represent to her in an invidious or ridiculous light.
Thus when, in 1652, Samuel Bochart visited Sweden, he found himself constantly opposed and thwarted by Bourdelot. Bochart was a French Calvinist minister at Caen, and had become famous by several learned works on Oriental antiquities, and especially on the geography and zoology of Palestine. Besides being well read, he was a man of high integrity, and of a strict and blameless life, qualities which, Heinsius says, were not always met with in the savants of the time. Bourdelot, however, disliked and distrusted him; and on one occasion, when he was to have read his "Phaleg", a work on sacred geography, before the court, succeeded in persuading Christina that her health, which had for some time past suffered from mental overwork, and from the violent exercise she was in the habit of taking, would not allow her to be present. Bochart was much mortified, for he valued the queen's opinion, and had counted for certain on her being present at his reading. On another occasion, Christina was induced by Bourdelot to order Meibomius, a Greek scholar, who had written on the "Music of the Ancients", but who had no voice himself, to carry his theories into practice by singing some Greek and Roman airs, to the tunes of which Naudæus, another learned professor, was to execute various classical dances on the principles laid down in Meibomius' work. The ludicrous scene may easily be pictured: Naudæus staggered awkwardly about the room, amidst the laughter of the assembled court, whilst Meibomius, who had completely broken down, and was furious at being made a butt, struck Bourdelot in the face, and was punished for the outrage by dismissal from the court.
Bourdelot, however, was not content with intriguing against the literary men; he strove to play an important part in politics, and set to work to undermine the Swedish nobles (such as Count Magnus de la Gardie), who enjoyed the queen's favour; and even to embroil the relations between her government and that of France. In this last scheme he found an able assistant. Don Antonio Pimentel, or Piementelle, ambassador of Spain at Stockholm, was a man of polished and insinuating manners, who, by his agreeable address, completely gained over the sympathies of the queen, once so lavishly bestowed upon the French, to the side of the house of Austria. His influence, and that of Bourdelot, appear to have gradually created in Christina a dislike to the institutions and religion of Sweden, which had been growing in her ever since her intimacy with the philosophers and other learned foreigners. The result was that the nobles and the clergy were bitterly offended; the latter body were especially indignant, for Bourdelot made no secret of his atheism, and ridiculed sacred subjects with such coarse profanity, as even to excite the disgust of Vossius, himself a free-thinker, though of a more serious and thoughtful kind. The leading divines of Stockholm began to speak of remonstrating with Christina on her conduct; but the queen-mother, who had ventured to represent to her daughter her folly in thus shocking public feeling, received so harsh and unfilial a reply, that she left the court in disgust, and retired to Nyköping. Nor did the departure or dismissal of Bourdelot mend matters much; for even men who took but little interest in what went on at the palace, were indignant at learning that this "miserable quack", as they called him, "after poisoning their queen's mind against her country and people, had carried away with him into France a sum of a hundred thousand dollars." Bourdelot pretended that he had been sent by the queen on a diplomatic mission; but, though dismissed with every honour, he was given to understand that he need not return, and he died some years later, in his own country, as Abbot of Massay.
The results of the life thus led by Christina, and of the society of the learned foreigners by whom she was surrounded, were threefold. In the first place, it increased her unpopularity with the Swedes of all classes, a fact of which so penetrating a woman must have been clearly aware, and which thus made her far less hopeful of being able herself to appease those popular discontents, which were one of the various reasons for her abdication: secondly, it had the effect of inspiring her with dislike to her own country; and this feeling was heightened by the contrast which she drew, in her own imagination, between her own cold, rough kingdom, with its ambitious nobility, bigoted priesthood, and disaffected lower classes, and the fertile, sunny lands of southern Europe, the home of science, of poetry, and of the arts, where she could live free from the quarrels of parties, and the cares of state, and pursue her favourite studies amidst the most congenital surroundings. This idea was strengthened by the consciousness of her unpopularity, and combined to dispose her more and more to the plan of abdication, which she had never quite given up, or rather, which she had always reserved as a last resource. A third, and even more important result, was a complete change in her religious belief. It was natural that the dislike and contempt which she had begun to feel for all the distinctive institutions of her country, should have extended to the Established Church; for that Church was, above all things, Swedish, and national in character, and with the maintenance of its system and doctrines the whole constitution and policy of her kingdom was in a peculiar manner bound up.
The Reformation in Sweden had been primarily, like that in England, political, rather than religious. Sharing in the impulse which drove the Germanic nations into revolt against Rome, the kings who founded Swedish independence had looked upon Protestantism partly as a means of attacking the bishops, whose power might be dangerous to the Crown, and who were mostly on the side of Denmark, and partly as a national movement, first against Christian II., supported by Charles V. and the Pope, and later on, against Sigismund and his Polish adherents. The result of the national and monarchical character thus given to the Reformation by Gustavus Vasa and Charles IX., was not unlike that produced in England by the policy of the Tudors. In no Church which had accepted the Protestant doctrines, not even in the English, was the religious revolution less violently carried out. The episcopal hierarchy was kept up, a modified form of the Roman liturgy was adopted, and crucifixes, pictures, &c. (to the horror of the Puritan Whitelocke), retained in almost all the churches. The doctrinal changes were equally moderate. Gustavus Vasa persistently denied that he had introduced a new faith. John III., writing twenty years later to the Pope, declared that the mass of the people in Sweden "did yet consider themselves to be Catholics;" and even the strong wave of Lutheran feeling which followed the accession of Charles IX., produced nothing beyond the adoption of the Confession of Augsburg, the earliest and most conservative of all the Protestant creeds. The result of this, in many respects wisely temperate Reformation, was to leave the power of the clergy but slightly impaired; and this circumstance, combined with the readiness with which the whole nation had embraced Lutheranism, and the fact that the change in religion had not been accompanied by any great revival or increase of learning, gave to the Swedish Church a peculiarly narrow and intolerant character. The deductions made by Luther from his own study of Holy Writ, had been stereotyped into a stringent and minute confession of faith; and those deductions, some of which appeared more contrary to unassisted human reason, than the doctrines which the Romanist supported by an appeal to the unanimous consent of Catholic antiquity, were enforced with the strictest rigour. In some points, indeed, the Swedish Church seemed, to a restless and inquisitive mind, to differ from that of Rome, only in being unable to satisfy rationalistic doubts by pointing to an infallible authority; whilst of the two great principles which chiefly distinguished it from the older faith, the right of private judgment, and justification by faith alone, &c., the one seemed practically denied by the conduct of the clergy, whilst the other, by appearing to reduce man to a helpless instrument, and to cancel all merits, was rather revolting than otherwise to a proud and ambitious intellect, anxious to do some strikingly good or great deed, and to win for itself approbation and reward. It would have been difficult to find a religion less likely to attract a mind like Christina's, at once sceptical and romantic; nor is it surprising to find, on her own authority, that she never was at heart attached to the Lutheran Church. Their hostility to Matthiæ had always made her rather dislike the clergy; and she shewed her feelings by refusing their petition at the Diet of 1647, aimed in reality at him, and which demanded the adoption of a stricter and more elaborate catechism, known as the Formula Concordiæ, "that we may be distinguished from those secret Calvinists, who conceal themselves under the shelter of the Confession of Augsburg."
Her growing repugnance to the Lutheran Church was encouraged by the foreigners who surrounded the queen, some of them Catholics, but the greater part free-thinkers of various kinds. Attracted by what seemed to her a philosophical rationalism, she gradually reached a state of disbelief, not only in the distinctive dogmas of her own Church, but in almost all positive religion; and under the influence of men like Bourdelot and Vossius, acquired the habit of speaking of all forms of faith with a scoffing levity, which shocked the orthodox court of Sweden. Those who know the zest to some natures, of levelling witticisms and sarcasms at subjects usually held sacred, and remember that Christina was, as she herself tells us, unable to restrain herself from saying sharp and bitter things whenever they came into her head, will readily understand that she should have found the attractions of such conversation, and the feelings and ideas which it must produce, irresistible. Nor was the conduct of the clergy calculated to reconcile her to their faith. Long, tedious sermons, attendance on which the court ceremonial made necessary, and which were usually directed against herself or her friends, increased her disgust. A court-preacher, Eric, or Ericus, annoyed her by declaiming to her face, and before her whole court, against her irreligion, and "the learned men, falsely so-called", by whom she was surrounded. The queen revenged herself by ostentatious irreverence; whilst the church-service was going on, she played with her little dog, or read profane or frivolous books.
Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that Christina, from this time forth, either fell into absolute atheism, or was even entirely indifferent to religion. On the contrary, it was from this moment that can be clearly traced in her an increasing inclination towards the Roman Catholic Church. Perplexed by the doubts which — (partly from metaphysical controversies, partly from keen appreciation of the jests made by her literary friends at the expense of religion, and partly from a violent reaction against the intolerance of the clergy) — had arisen in her mind, she yet found nothing in the arguments which had shattered it to take the place of a faith whose doctrines she could no longer heartily believe in, and whose ministers were, for the most part, personally distasteful to her. The free-thinkers of that age, such as there were, applied themselves rather to ridiculing the more assailable points in orthodoxy, than to suggesting any rival principles; and no positive system of religion or morals seems as yet to have been taught, outside the limits of Christianity. It was this want for something positive [a want which a woman would be especially apt to feel] which made her attempt, whilst retaining all her repugnance for Lutheranism, to discover a more congenial basis of religion in some other form of Christianity. She spent hours in puzzling over the Fathers of the Church, and it is characteristic of her religious tendencies that she felt little liking for St. Augustine, from whose writings Luther and the Protestant Reformation in general had derived their theology, whilst she read with avidity St. Jerome (whose views on celibacy no doubt attracted her), and the Eastern Fathers, such as Origen and Gregory of Nazianzen. As yet, however, though she had talked with several Catholics, she had no very exact knowledge as to their doctrines; these doctrines, however, vaguely as she knew them, began to fascinate her more and more. The unity of the Roman Catholic Church, its claim to infallibility, its antiquity, its encouragement of meritorious works, were all powerful attractions to her mind. An expression of Cicero's, in his De Naturâ Deorum, that there must be one true religion ("In libris Tullii animadvertens.... veram religionem nonnisi unam, omnes falsas esse posse .... super hac parte, cogitando laboravit. In hanc sententiam venit Deum, hoc est optimum tyranno pejorem fore si conscientiæ morsibus acribus, sed falsis universum genus humanum cruciaret." ... ["Noting in the books of Tullius ... that there can be only one true religion, all [others] false ..., he laboured over this point, thinking. He came to the conclusion that God, that is, the best tyrant, would be worse off if He tortured the entire human race with the sharp, but false, bites of conscience."]), made a great impression upon her, and led her to ask, "Could God have left men entirely without the true religion? would He, the Highest Good, act more cruelly than a tyrant in exposing them to be tortured by insoluble doubts?" and if there was a true religion, where was it to be found, if not in that Church, which, amidst the confused wranglings of Protestant sects, had consistently claimed to be the teacher appointed by God, "whose members had the consolation of believing what so many noble spirits had believed for sixteen centuries, whose truth had been attested by so many millions of miracles and of martyrs; above all, by so many illustrious virgins, who had conquered the weaknesses of their sex, and consecrated their lives to God?" This last idea of the merits of celibacy, which had fascinated her in her childhood, awakened a chord of sympathy in her heart, and prepared it, as much as anything else, to receive the Catholic teaching. An opportunity soon presented itself to her, for becoming more closely acquainted with it.
There was in the suite of the Portuguese ambassador, Don Pinto de Pereira, a priest named Antonio Macedo. This man performed the office of confessor to the ambassador: and though, like all Catholic priests in Sweden, he habitually wore the dress of a layman, for fear of offending the clergy, it was rumoured at court that he was a member of the order of Jesuits. It so happened that the temporary illness of his secretary compelled Pereira, ignorant of all languages except his own, to make use of Macedo as interpreter in his interviews with the queen. The Jesuits were at that time regarded in Protestant countries with a mysterious kind of feeling, half-horror, half-admiration; and Christina, who shared in this feeling, and was, moreover, anxious to hear from a good authority about the doctrines of the Catholic Church, was at once deeply interested in the clerical diplomatist. At an interview with Pereira, during which the ambassador sat stolidly by, no doubt imagining that State affairs were being discussed, she contrived to let Macedo know something of the state of her mind, and hinted that she would like to talk with one of his order, provided it were possible to bring him to the court, without entrusting so dangerous a purpose to writing. The priest readily caught at these suggestions; and the queen, delighted with the romantic secrecy of the plot, had frequent private interviews with him whilst the rest of the court was at dinner. It was resolved that he should proceed to Rome, and consult with the General of the Jesuits; and when, on his asking for leave of absence on the ground of his health, he was refused it by Pereira, he suddenly and secretly escaped from Sweden. Christina excused herself for not sending to stop him; and, at the end of the year 1651, he arrived safely at Rome. The General of the Jesuits, to whom he brought the news of Christina's disposition, at once despatched to Sweden two of the ablest members of the order, Father Francis Malines, Professor of Theology at Turin, and Father Paul Cassati, Mathematical Lecturer at Rome. Disguised as Italian noblemen, the two priests easily escaped attention amidst the crowd of learned and distinguished strangers who at that time frequented the court. Christina's observant shrewdness, however, at once noticed a certain peculiarity in their manner, and guessed the object of their mission.
Waiting for them one evening in a long corridor, as the court came out of dinner, she eagerly asked them "whether they were the persons whom she was expecting;" and on their answering "yes", she at once arranged with them for a private interview, for the purpose of discussing certain curious and antique manuscripts" which they were supposed to have brought from Italy. These interviews lasted several months, and the Jesuits were astonished "to find in a princess of twenty-five so just a contempt for earthly grandeurs, and so correct an appreciation of all things." The questions she raised turned on the fundamental principles of religion and morality, as whether there was any essential difference between good and evil, except in so far as the one was useful, the other dangerous and pernicious? whether men might each observe the religion of their birth, and live according to their individual lights and the laws of nature? The Jesuits tried to persuade her that their faith was not contrary to, but above reason, but for a long time she continued uncertain, inclining first one way and then the other. So undecided was she during the period of her interviews with the Jesuits, that it was just at this time that she wrote to the Prince of Hesse, a Calvinist, to dissuade him from embracing that very religion which she herself was in a few months to accept. It is true that the arguments she used were what would be called purely worldly. "You cannot be ignorant", she writes, "that those who change their religion are hated by those from whose opinions they depart, and despised by those on whose side they range themselves." At one time she would tell the Jesuits that the adoption of Catholicism was not practicable; at another, different feelings again re-asserted themselves. It was not till April, 1652, that her resolution was finally taken.
Shortly afterwards, Cassati was sent to Rome to inform Pope Innocent X. of her design, and to arrange for her residence in his capital in the almost certain event of her being obliged to resign the crown. During the year and a-half which intervened between her decision, and her abdication, she kept the most profound silence about her intended change. Even Father Mannerschied, a Jesuit, who visited Sweden in 1653, was unable to get her to talk on religious subjects, and lamented that a queen who possessed so many virtues should be in ignorance of the only true faith. Her scant attendance at the Lutheran ceremonies was attributed to mere indifference by the large majority of visitors to the court, who were not aware that she had secretly resolved upon joining the Church of Rome.
The philosophical writers of the eighteenth century, such as Voltaire, D'Alembert, &c., have affected to regard the conversion of Christina as nothing more or less than a mere piece of politic hypocrisy. Thoroughly convinced at heart, they pretend, of the folly of all Christianity, and resolved in any case to abdicate and retire to Italy, she felt that her Lutheranism would cause her to be looked on coldly in the city of the Popes; whilst a profession of Catholicism would not only secure her from the importunities of proselytisers, but would even, especially if represented as the motive for her resignation, increase her credit and repute. This supposition, though taken up by many writers, is hardly borne out by facts; it proceeds, indeed, on the incorrect assumption that Christina had firmly resolved to abdicate long before she ever had any thoughts of changing her religion; whereas, in point of fact, it would seem that the wish to change her religion was one of many concurrent reasons which produced her abdication. Her long discussions with the Jesuits, her inquiry whether the Pope could not grant her a dispensation to receive the Sacrament once a-year from a Lutheran priest, can hardly be accounted for, if the danger of such interviews is considered, by ascribing it to mere curiosity or love of acting. The fact, again, that, before her first abortive proposal to abdicate, she had already sent Macedo to Rome, seems to prove that her leanings toward Catholicism must have begun about the middle of the year 1651, three years, that is to say, before she finally resigned the crown. Had she been contemptuously indifferent to all religious questions, she would hardly have given herself the dangerous trouble of sifting them as she did. Had she adopted Catholicism merely as an afterthought, why should she have begun to draw towards it so long before she resigned her crown? In fact, the whole tone of Christina's subsequent life and writings bears strongly against the supposition that she was devoid of all religion. A few remarks of hers have been cited, such as her replying to a priest at Louvain, who said that she should have a place among the saints, "that she would rather be among the sages", to prove that she was, in spite of her profession, still a pagan at heart. But any one who reads her Vie faite par elle Même, or her Ouvrage de Loisir, cannot fail to discover in them a strong Catholic, not to say Christian tone. She was, it is true, far from being priest-ridden. "One must not", she says, "be the dupe of confessors or directors;" and her dislike of bigoted zeal, and her contempt for the private character of individual popes, are proofs both of her freedom from sectarian narrowness, and of her not being actuated by any hypocritical wish to curry favour at the Vatican. Yet her reflections on the duty of obeying God and believing in the Church, in themselves commonplace enough, are expressed in strong and almost exaggerated language. "Without God", she says, "one can do nothing: the noblest sacrifice one can offer Him is that of one's own free-will, and one is never so free as when one depends unreservedly upon Him. We must submit to the Church because God wishes it, and believe our mysteries without attempting to sound them. There is no salvation outside the Roman Church; the sovereign authority of the Pope and his infallibility are the solid and unshakeable bases of the Roman Catholic religion. Men are ordered to believe, and not to know; philosophy can neither change nor correct them." It should also be remembered that by becoming a Catholic, she not only shut herself out from all hopes of being restored to the throne of Sweden, should she feel inclined to return to her country, but also exposed herself (as was, in fact, very nearly the case) to losing the revenues which she drew from her former kingdom, — two circumstances of such importance, which, if taken together with what is known of the rest of her character, are a sufficient testimony to the sincerity of her change of religion.
The queen's resolve to embrace Catholicism finally decided her to take the step which from many other motives she had long been meditating, and to resign her crown. Harassed by political and financial difficulties, and weary of a throne which she had occupied ever since she could remember, and which did not therefore bring with it the charm of novelty or of realised ambition, she was now more than ever impatient to exchange the government of a kingdom, in which nobility, clergy, and people, were equally dissatisfied with her rule, for the applause of poets and philosophers in some quiet retirement in Italy. Before the year 1653 was far advanced[,] the whole court knew of her design, and the remonstrances of her ministers, and of those foreign ambassadors whom she admitted to her confidence, were powerless to divert her from it. "It is my love for the people", she told Whitelocke, "which causeth me to think of providing a better government for them than a poor woman can be, and it is somewhat of love to myself, to please my own fancy by private retirement." The last year of her reign was chiefly spent in settling certain necessary negotiations, partly with England, partly with Spain, whose side she had for some time past been inclined to take (through the influence of Piementelle) in the war which was being waged against it by France. Less addicted than formerly to literary studies, she indulged freely in balls, masques, hunting parties, and other pleasures of the kind, which, though they served yet further to impoverish her exchequer, yet gave a gayer [more cheerful] and more lively character to the somewhat stiff and heavy court of Sweden, where the amusements of the younger nobles were usually of a slightly coarse and riotous description, and where the dulness of wearisome ceremonial dinners was only enlivened by the scarcely less wearisome drinking of innumerable healths.
The conclusion of the diplomatic negotiations removed the last delay in the way of the queen's design. Early in 1654 she officially informed the Senate of her intention to abdicate, and on May 11th of the same year, announced it to the Estates assembled in Diet, in the great hall of Upsala. "It had long been her determination", she told them, "to resign the Crown, and it was fortunate that such provision for the succession had been made, as would enable the Prince Palatine to take possession of the government, which she was ready to offer him. The best test which the Diet could give of their loyalty to her person, and of their appreciation of her ten years' rule, would be their readiness to become parties to a scheme which nothing could now induce her to abandon." When the queen had done speaking, the Archbishop of Upsala, and the Marshals of the nobility, and burgesses, came forward one after another, and endeavoured to dissuade her, in the name of their respective orders, from persisting in her plan. Last of all came the Marshal of the Order of Peasants, "a plain country fellow, in his clouted shoon and all other habits answerable." His speech, which is given very fully and graphically in Whitelocke's admirable account of the scene, was made without bow or ceremony of any kind. "O Lord God, Madam", he began, "what do you mean to do! It troubles us to hear you speak of forsaking those that love you as well as we do! Can you be better than you are? you are queen of all these countries, and if you leave this large kingdom, where will you get such another. ... If you should do it (as I hope you won't for all this), both you and we shall have cause when it is too late to be sorry for it. ... Continue in your gears, good Madam", he went on, "and be the forehorse as long as you live, and we will help you the best we can to bear your burden. Your father was an honest gentleman and a good king, and very stirring in the world; we obeyed him, and loved him as long as he lived; and you are his own child, and have governed us very well, and we love you with all our heart; and the prince is an honest gentleman, and when his time comes we shall be ready to do our duties to him as we do to you; but as long as you live we are not willing to part with you, and therefore I pray, Madam, do not part with us." "When the boor", continues Whitelocke, "had ended his speech, he waddled up to the queen without any ceremony, took her by the hand, and shook it heartily, and kissed it two or three times; then, turning his back upon her, he pulled out of his pocket a foul handkerchief, and wiped the tears from his eyes, and in the same posture as he came up he returned to his own place again." It now merely remained to settle the income to be assigned to the queen after her retirement from public life. After some discussion it was arranged that she should have the revenues of Oëland, Gottland, Oësel and Pomerania, with Norköping and various minor domains in Sweden; and on the 6th of June the final ceremony of abdication was performed. Divesting herself of the crown, and other emblems of royalty, Christina bade farewell to the Estates, and in a plain white dress stepped down from the throne. Some tears were shed, for, in spite of the troubles of the latter part of her reign, and of the deep discontents which her extravagance had called forth, she was still revered by the mass of the nation as the daughter of the Great Gustavus, and as the last descendant in the direct line of that royal House of Vasa, which had laid the foundations of the independence and greatness of Sweden, but which was now to give place to a new half-foreign dynasty. That same afternoon the Prince Palatine was solemnly proclaimed king. The reign of Christina had come to an end, and the sovereign of Sweden was now Charles X.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Karl Gustav.
Above: Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge.
Notes: Dorpat is the old German and Swedish name for the Estonian city of Tartu.
Åbo is the Swedish name for the Finnish city of Turku, in the Southwest Finland/Finland Proper region.
The English translation of the quote from Cicero is my own translation.
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