Sidney Dark's biography of Kristina, year 1929, part 5

Source:

Twelve Royal Ladies, pages 170 to 171, by Sidney Dark, illustrations by Mabel Pugh, 1929; original at the University of California

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3477474&seq=182

The account:

In the seventeenth century men found no difficulty in speaking evil of dignitaries whom they disliked, and few women have been so steadily maligned and libelled. Indeed, the thirty-five years of Christina's later life were an anti-climax. She grew "very fat and round, with a double chin and a laughing air and very obliging manners." She was visited in Rome by Bishop Burnet, who wrote: "This princess, who will always reign among those who are endowed with wit and learning, keeps up in her ante-chamber the finest Court of strangers in Rome. The civility and great diversity of matters furnished by her conversation make her among all the rare sights of Rome the rarest, not to say among all the antiquities, which is the term she made use of in doing me the honour to speak to me."

She remained a keen judge of European affairs, and, good Catholic as she had become, her tongue lost nothing of its sharpness. "The Church", she said to Burnet, "must certainly be governed by the Holy Spirit, for since I have been at Rome I have seen four Popes, and I swear not one of them had common sense." Just before her death, in Rome in 1689, she apparently repented of such harsh criticisms, and sent to the Pope asking for his forgiveness. She was buried in the Basilica of St. Peter, and, as Mr. F. W. Bain has said, it is one of the ironies of history that the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the fierce and famous Protestant champion, should lie in the central church of Catholic Christendom.

Above: Kristina.

Above: Sidney Dark.

Note: Bishop Burnet = Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III (formerly Willem of Orange; 1650-1702) confided.