CRISTINA, Queen of Sweden. — Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, born in Stockholm on 8 December 1626, died in Rome on 19 April 1689. She was introduced to politics by the great chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, and by the age of sixteen she was already kept informed of public affairs, displaying not only a notable and impetuous independence of character but also a particular tendency to confront every situation with exaggerated confidence in her own abilities.
In 1642 she also took part in the council of regency. An indefatigable reader, gifted with great intelligence and eager to learn, she applied herself with genuine success to the study of political science, history, and theology. On 8 December 1644, at the age of eighteen, she assumed effective direction of the government, and two years later she was crowned queen. Almost immediately she achieved notable political success with the Treaty of Brömsebro (1645), which secured for Sweden possession of several Danish islands and two important Norwegian provinces. In 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, to which her country had contributed very heavily in bloodshed, C. multiplied her energetic interventions and succeeded in obtaining advantageous territorial compensations in Pomerania and absolute sovereignty over Bremen and Rügen. To the rather modest tone of the Swedish court and the traditional warrior simplicity of her habits, C. substituted the splendor of a modern royal court and surrounded herself with distinguished men such as Descartes, Grotius, Salmasius, and others.
For some years, also under the influence of Descartes, the Lutheran faith of the queen had evolved toward Catholicism. She requested, though without obtaining consent, to reign as a Catholic and to postpone the ceremony of abjuration to a later time. She then decided to abdicate in favor of her cousin Charles Gustavus (6 June 1654) and went to Brussels, where she performed her first acts of Catholic faith; thence she decided to go to Rome, where she arrived in September 1655 and was received by Alexander VII in the Vatican. Previously, at Innsbruck, the official ceremony of abjuration had taken place and notice of it had been sent to all European courts. In 1656 she went to France, where Mazarin received with great reserve the project of her assumption to the throne of Naples; during a second visit to Paris, she risked compromising herself irreparably with the French court by having Monaldeschi executed illegally in her palace (November 1657), who was about to reveal to the Spanish the project for Naples. She attempted to return to the Swedish throne upon the death of Charles Gustavus (1660), but she was clearly advised to desist from this plan, judged unattainable, and was even forbidden to remain in her homeland, whither she had gone. The years she spent again in Italy marked for C. a long period of brilliant activity. When difficulties arose with Innocent XI, who disapproved of the somewhat eccentric behavior of the former queen, and all hope of ascending the throne of Naples had vanished, C. turned to Poland and expressed her intention of succeeding the deceased King John Casimir, but met with a firm refusal. She then renounced all political activity and devoted herself exclusively to her favorite studies and learned conversations with her friends, foremost among whom was Cardinal Azzolino (or Azzolini), to whom she left all her possessions. In her salons she created the first nucleus of the Arcadia, which came to light after her death but which received from her its first impulses and necessary encouragement.
C. was also in contact with Molinos, though he did not become her spiritual director. In the notes that C. appended to the propositions of Molinos condemned by the Holy Office (which she received in copy, probably from Cardinal Azzolino), she does not appear fully convinced of the guilt of the Spanish quietist; she cannot but recognize that the mystical death “as presented by Molinos is a ‘chimera,’” and that it is “a blunder” in Catholic mystical theology not to aim, in the contemplative stage, at the love of God and the hope of salvation. C. does not, however, show much favor toward vocal prayer and reveals herself hostile to Ignatian asceticism: according to her, “in spiritual exercises nothing is practiced more than vanity and self-interest; as for the rest, one sleeps” (cf. G. Bandini, cited article). This writing and, in general, all her mystical and moralistic works illuminate, albeit indirectly, a moment in the broader religious history of seventeenth-century Europe.