Source:
Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 62 to 69, by Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan
The essay:
The reign of Charles X. in Sweden had been almost entirely taken up with foreign wars. He had had to face a powerful coalition: Brandenburg, Denmark, and Poland had been provoked by his insolence into becoming his enemies; but he had been completely victorious over them. He had marched far into Poland, and driven John Casimir before him, almost up to the Austrian frontiers; he had repeatedly defeated in Pomerania the troops sent against him by the Elector of Brandenburg. Finally, he had succeeded in conquering Denmark, by a military achievement unsurpassed in history. Crossing in mid-winter the frozen channels which separate the Danish islands from the mainland, and from one another, and dragging all his baggage and artillery across the ice, he had suddenly appeared before Copenhagen, and dictated an humiliating peace to the panic-stricken government of Denmark. He had even talked of carrying out a scheme, long nourished by his predecessors, and by Christina, of dismembering the Danish monarchy, and annexing Zealand to the crown of Sweden. But his insatiate demands had overreached themselves. Denmark, driven to despair, had risen against him; and, supported by a Dutch fleet, had defeated the Swedes at Nyborg. In the midst of his preparations to avenge this defeat, King Charles died early in 1660, at Gottenburg. He left, by his will, to his brother, Prince Adolphus, the guardianship of his infant heir, who was proclaimed king as Charles XI. But the aristocracy of Sweden were resolved not to lose the chance of recovering the power which they had lost. The late king's will was declared null and void, on the ground that it had not been sanctioned by the Estates; and in accordance with the principles of the "Form of Government", the five great officers of State and the Senate took complete possession of the administration. Like John Casimir, of Zweibrücken, in Christina's minority, Prince Adolphus was excluded by the jealousy of the dominant nobility from all share in the government. The state of affairs was, in fact, not unlike that after Lützen. Once more the king had died in the midst of a glorious foreign war; once more the tender years of his infant-successor had left the whole state in the hands of an all-powerful oligarchy. It was not to be supposed, under such circumstances, that the Senate would see with pleasure the arrival in Sweden of Christina, an ambitious, intriguing woman, with ulterior claims to the crown. Who could be certain that she might not constitute a centre, round which the democratical party, the party of the Skyttes, of Terserus, and of the petitioners of 1650, might rally, and thus, by their aid, overthrow the reviving power of the nobles, and, perhaps seize the crown? That very year had witnessed a revolution of the same kind in Denmark; the ruin of the aristocracy, the establishment of monarchical despotism on a popular basis, had been, to a great extent, brought about by the intrigues of a woman. The fact that the internal politics of Sweden and Denmark were, as regards the relations of parties, then, as now, much the same, afforded good grounds for fears like these, which were, indeed, amply justified by the events of 1680. There is no reason to suppose that Christina meditated any such conspiracy, or that she had any object in coming to Sweden, beyond the wish to re-visit her native country, and to settle the question of her revenue. At the same time, her pretensions might at any moment become dangerous, more especially as she openly declared that if the young king should die without heirs, she herself would become de jure successor to the crown.
Fortunately for the Senate, Christina's change of faith had completely estranged her from the mass of the Swedish people; and the reports which reached them from time to time of her life and conduct at foreign courts, had strengthened their feelings against her. The clergy were especially hostile to her, and their influence over the lower classes was almost unbounded. How strongly her conversion to Catholicism was disapproved of may be gathered from the letter addressed to her on the subject by her former tutor, the good and gentle Bishop Matthiæ. The charity of this excellent man was of a kind rare in his age and country; he longed for the reunion of all Christian, or at the very least, of all Protestant Churches. "He hoped", he tells Christina, "that her reported submission to the Church of Rome was merely a distorted account of a scheme on her part, glorious and worthy of her, of inducing the Pope to co-operate with her in a plan for reconciling all Christian Churches, in order that the fatal religious schism might be abolished, and that all those who hoped to unite in the service of God in heaven might unite together in it on earth."
But, wide as was Matthiæ's charity, he spoke of Christina's conversion in the strongest terms. "All good men", he writes, "were seized with horror at the very suspicion of such an act from so great a Princess; others deplore this sad event, and burst into sobs and groans; most of us appeal to Heaven and earth against the men who have abused your majesty's goodness, and induced you to commit the enormous crime of treason against God." If such were the sentiments of a man whose liberality made him hateful to the stricter Lutherans, it may easily be conceived what were the feelings of the mass of the clergy and people. Christina was soon to have convincing proofs of their ill-will towards herself and her religion.
She landed at Helsingborg on the 27th of September, 1660, (after a short stay at Copenhagen, where she was splendidly received by King Frederick III.), and was met at Halmstad by Marshal Linde, who escorted her with every honour to Stockholm. Shortly after her arrival the Estates assembled. At their first meeting Christina placed before them certain "demands" on the subject of her revenues under the new Government. She asked that the agreement made at Upsala in 1654 should be confirmed; and required a clear assurance that her right to enjoy her revenues should be in no way altered by her change of faith. She was further to be recognised as absolutely free, and responsible to no earthly authority. The debts contracted during her reign, were to be paid, not by her, but by the reigning king; and certain domains and towns, Norköping, Oesel, Bergholm [sic], &c., were, as agreed at Upsala, to be assigned for her maintenance.
These demands were publicly read before the Senate and Estates. The nobility thought them just; Oxenstyerna (son of the Chancellor) warmly declared that they would not even require to discuss them; and the order of Burgesses was equally favourable to them. The peasants, always disposed to grumble at any lavish use of the revenues of the kingdom, might have been expected to oppose them; they seem, indeed, only to have abstained from doing so from indifference and lack of arguments; for they avoided giving a direct assent, and merely said, as was very true, that such matters were beyond their comprehension. The real resistance came from the clergy. They first said that the matter was far too grave and serious to be hurriedly disposed of; and demanded a few days' leisure to discuss the Recess. Their request was granted; and when they reassembled on the following Monday, it was plain that they had resolved to oppose the queen's demands altogether, or at least to accept them with very stringent limitations. Their contention was, that Christina had lost all right to her estates. "When we read", they said, "the will of Gustavus I., the Recess of Norköping, and other fundamental laws, we find that whosoever leaves our Church to join that of the Papists, is by that very act deprived of all right, all inheritance, all legal claims in Sweden. We are willing, however, that the queen should enjoy her revenues; not because of the Recess, but on account of our personal respect for her. At the same time, we must impose certain conditions for the protection of the religion of the country." Though this was very different from what Christina had expected, and seemed only to allow her the precarious enjoyment of her revenues subject to the favour of the clergy, the Senate answered that her Majesty would be ready to consent to such conditions as might be needful for the safety of the Church. Some of the clergy seemed disposed to agree to this; but the majority were in no mood for concessions. Christina had foolishly paraded her Italian chaplains in Stockholm; and by the ill-advised step of publicly assisting at the Roman Catholic rites on the preceding day (Sunday), had stirred the Protestant zeal of the more fanatical among the priests. Of this section, Terserus, Bishop of Abo, was the leader. He had known Christina well in the earlier part of her reign; and when Dean of Westeras, had been one of the chiefs of the popular party in the Diet of 1650. His complicity with the Messenian conspiracy had lost him her favour; but he had only been punished by a short imprisonment, and had soon, by his eloquence and influence with the lower classes, regained a high position. He now argued that Christina could not be trusted. She "had sworn at Inspruck to promote the Catholic religion; and no confidence could be placed in the promises of Papists, whose maxim it was that no faith need be kept with heretics. She had been false to the traditions of Sweden; she had abjured the name of Augusta, given her in honour of her father, the Protestant hero; and had taken that of Alexandra, from Pope Alexander, the enemy of her country and its faith. Unity in religion was the secret of Sweden's strength; to this unity there must be no exception; it was a principle bound up with all the laws and traditions of the country; and to grant Christina's demand, would be to violate it, and to undo all the institutions of the kingdom, in Church as well as in State."
Terserus' speech was loudly applauded; and he was assured of support in the Senate; where[,] on political grounds, he was not without sympathisers. Instead of granting the queen's demands, it was now suggested that a deputation of the clergy, headed by the archbishop and bishops, should wait on Christina, and remonstrate with her on her celebration of Popish rites at Stockholm, and on her change of religion in general. As might have been expected, this only made her more angry; she burst into tears of rage at the speeches of the prelates, whom she loaded with abuse. "We know", said the Archbishop, "the wicked wiles of the Pope; we know that he watches eagerly for every chance of destroying both our bodies and our souls." "I know him better than you do", she answered with passion, "and can tell you that as for your souls, he would not give four dollars for the whole lot of them." It was a natural result of a discussion such as this, that the queen should have been "embittered and hardened more and more." Two days later another deputation was tried; again the Bishops of Abo and Linkoping reproached the queen with the scandal she gave by the public exercise of her "Papistic idolatry." She insisted on her rights as a sovereign, and appealed to the nobles present, promising to perform her Mass within shut doors, to allow no stranger to come to it, and offering to forfeit all her revenues if she broke her word, or attempted to convert a single Swede to the Roman Catholic Church. The tears and prayers of this woman who had once been their queen, her appeals to their feelings of generosity, were powerless against the unbending bigotry of the priesthood; they would be blamed, they roughly answered, by the whole Protestant word as being "neither hot nor cold", if they were to grant her demands. On the following Saturday, the Senate, which was on the whole on the side of the clergy, gave orders at their request, that the queen's temporary Roman Catholic chapel should be pulled down, and her chaplains and other Italian servants at once expelled from Sweden. This done, her revenues were confirmed to her, and she was allowed to appoint from out of the senators, a "governor-general" of her domains in Sweden, and a certain number of stewards appointed by him; the only condition being, that they should profess the Lutheran faith.
Although Christina had done much to provoke them by an unnecessary exhibition of Catholic zeal, the conduct of the Senate and clergy was undoubtedly harsh and unjust. It was natural that they should object to the public performance of religious rites proscribed by law, but there could have been no harm in allowing Christina, who was not a Swedish subject, to celebrate her services, as she promised to do, within closed doors. This permission had always been granted to foreign ambassadors, nor had it ever, in their case, rendered the Swedish bishops liable to the extremely undeserved imputation of Laodicean indifference to the interests of their Church. There were, however, causes at work in the matter far deeper than mere ecclesiastical intolerance; the Senate feared and hated Christina, and was glad to make use of the bigotry of the clergy, whose zeal they secretly inflamed, in order to drive her from the kingdom. She had been foolish enough to present to them a memoir, in which she claimed that if Charles XI. should die without male heirs, she should succeed to the crown. Such a claim was utterly indefensible; the law of 1604, that very law by which Gustavus Adolphus had been able to transmit the crown to her, to the detriment of the Polish branch of the Vasas, had specially excluded all non-Lutherans from the succession; and she must have been aware that her pretensions would have been rejected by the Senate. It was now found necessary, to secure the kingdom from any plots on her part, to extort from her a second "Act of Renunciation:" as, however, the Senate felt, that so long as she remained in Sweden, she would always be a centre for intrigue, they passed a decree, forbidding her to have Mass said, even upon her own domain of Norköping, whither she had retired in Dec. 1660, and where she had hitherto been allowed to have it celebrated in private. This act of tyranny had its effect. Christina left Sweden in the spring, and repaired to Hamburg, with the intention of returning, in the autumn, by way of Holland, into Italy. At Halmstad she met Nicholas Heinsius, whom she received with every mark of kindness. She now no longer indulged in the rough gaiety of her youth; she seemed, he tells us, deeply mortified at her treatment in Sweden, and spoke with great bitterness of the policy of its government.
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Above: Kristina.
Notes: Ösel is the old German and Swedish name for the Estonian island of Saaremaa.
Åbo is the Swedish name for the Finnish city of Turku, in the Southwest Finland/Finland Proper region.
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