Source:
Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 71 to 74, by Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan
The essay:
In 1668 she returned to Rome, where the new pope gave her a splendid reception. She continued to reside there during the remaining twenty years of her life, and witnessed the election of two more Popes, Clement X. and Innocent XI. She now gradually became less restless and eccentric; an abortive scheme, in 1668, to obtain possession of the vacant throne of Poland, closed her series of attempts to regain that royal power which she had thrown away, and to the loss of which she became[,] as she advanced in years, more and more resigned. At Rome she spent her time almost entirely in literary pursuits; and the learned society which she established there for the cultivation of the poetry of Italy, became the foundation of the "Academy of Arcadian Shepherds", famous in afterdays as an artistic and literary club. Amongst the men of science and letters who frequented her palace, were Church dignitaries like Albani (afterwards Clement XI.) and Pallavicini, and poets such as Alessandro Guidi and Vincenzio Filicaia, who, though now hardly known out of Italy, were looked upon at that time as some of the most accomplished men of the day. All these men were treated by Christina with that liberality and kindness which redeemed many of her eccentricities. Thus she educated the two sons of Filicaia at her own cost, but would not allow it to be talked of, that she might not have to blush for doing so little for a man whom she so highly esteemed.
Engrossed in these pursuits, Christina, as she advanced in age, ceased more and more to take, or wish to take, a part in the troubled politics of Europe. She had long given up all ideas of ever returning to Sweden, and lived to see that country reduced, under Charles XI., to the condition of an absolute monarchy. On rare occasions, however, she still have signs that her interest in the great events of her age, though less active, was not less deep than formerly. When John Sobieski relieved Vienna in 1683, she wrote to him a letter, which recalls her old correspondence with Condé; and a few years later, her old hatred of intolerance and persecution, the fruit, perhaps, to a great extent, of the teaching of Matthiæ, broke out again on the occasion of the persecution of the Protestants in France, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., an act, the cruelty and faithlessness (deloyauté) of which she denounced in bold, unsparing terms.
But, on the whole, her latter years especially, if compared with her former life, were singularly peaceful; the only trouble which ever disturbed them being a quarrel with the Pope (Innocent XI.), on the subject of her right to the "franchise" or "liberty" of the square surrounding her palace. This quarrel resulted in her being deprived of the pension of 12,000 scudi, which she had drawn from the Papal coffers ever since the time of Alexander VII. She still, however, enjoyed great consideration at Rome, and got to be regarded there as the next person in rank to the Pope: strangers of distinction made their first visit to the Vatican, and their second to Queen Christina's palace. This position she continued to enjoy till, in 1689, at the age of sixty-three, she closed her strange career.
The affected simplicity of the inscription on Christina's tomb "vixit Christina annos lxiii." has been ridiculed by D'Alembert, but in truth it would have been difficult to present within the narrow compass of an epitaph a just or fitting summary of her life. Her character has been as loudly praised by admirers as attacked by hostile critics; and each have been able to shew a plausible case for their views of it; in fact, it presents throughout a series of contradictions. Christina had many great qualities, but they were all neutralized by the fantastic used to which she applied them, and by the exaggerated contempt for conventionality and public opinion, which was one of her chief defects, and a principal element in the failure of her career. Her encouragement of literature, which was not, as is often the case with sovereigns, a mere ostentatious parade, is one of her best titles to respect; yet, in this capacity, she furnished the character of Philaminte to Moliere's "femmes Savantes", and it must be confessed that she sometimes out-did the patroness of Trissotin in pedantry and eccentric caprice. As a political figure she was a failure; her abdication, though partly forced on her by her difficulties, and therefore no proof of a calm indifference to worldly dignities, was the greatest mistake of her life, and to compare her[,] as some have done, on the ground of a few striking resemblances in character, with Elizabeth of England, is in the highest degree absurd. It is true that she lacked the training which the struggles and dangers of her early life afforded Elizabeth; a nominal queen almost from her birth, and from the age of eighteen practically supreme, she was raised above ambition, and above the experience which those who strive to realise ambition must sooner or later acquire. It is this which explains her readiness to throw away a position which was the only one that she had ever known, and which induced her to apply her talents, to the acquisition of frequently pedantic accomplishments, rather than to the discharge of her legitimate duties as a queen. Indeed, except for the revival or rise of learning in Sweden, for her promotion of which she deserves all praise, her direct influence on the course of her country's history was less than that of almost any other sovereign of the House of Vasa: yet her reign will always be associated with the climax of Swedish greatness; not[,] indeed[,] for any share which she herself had in it, but because it was during her occupation of the throne, that the harvest sown by her great predecessors was reaped, and because within a few years after her abdication began that great and lasting change in the relations of the Powers of the North — the decline of the ascendancy of Sweden and the gradual transfer to the rising monarchy of Prussia, of that championship of Protestantism and German freedom which had been the strength and the glory of Gustavus.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Queen Elizabeth I.
Note: Kristina died at age 62, not 63. It seems that even as late as at the 17th century, at least when writing in Latin, that some people used the ancient Roman age reckoning system that one was already one year old at birth, similar to traditional Chinese age reckoning both in the past and still today.
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