Source:
Some Historic Women; or, Biographical Studies of Women Who Have Made History, pages 285 to 286, by William Henry Davenport Adams, 1890-1899; original at the University of Toronto - Robarts Library
Above: Kristina.
The biography:
Among others who repaired "from all parts" to behold this "fair heroine", this "pattern of all the royal virtues", were the scholars Vossius, Bochart, and Huet, John Paulinus, Franconius, and Rudbeck — men of learning and ability who are now, for most of us, merely "nominum umbræ." They all enjoyed the intelligent patronage of the Queen. Franconius was a physician of merit, and by her express request delivered lectures and performed dissections in the presence of his pupils. To encourage them in their attendance, she was always present at the more important examinations at the University of Upsala. Stiernholm [sic], the mathematician, and Paulinus, an accomplished lawyer, she ennobled. Olaus Rudbeck, the anatomist, she sent at her own expense to visit the great anatomical schools of Germany and Holland.
With some distinguished foreigners — as with Ménage, Benserade, and Scarron — she maintained a lively correspondence, in which she by no means appeared at a disadvantage.
"There has seldom been a court", says her English biographer, "where individual character had so much play as in that of Christina. No cold formality brought genius and mediocrity to the same dull level. Sometimes the speculations of philosophy prevailed, sometimes the fire of wit: the gay [cheerful] young Queen was ever ready for intellectual exercise: she drew out every one, and made her palace a stage on which the most opposite characters figured: they followed in quick succession, dazzling, delighting, or provoking: but ever in the centre was the same bright, intelligent face; the eyes which seemed to penetrate the thoughts of every speaker before they found utterance; the mind by which the subtlest arguments were understood as soon as stated, nay, divined when only half expressed."
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