Christina, Queen of Sweden

CHRISTINA, Queen of Sweden. - Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, b. in Stockholm on 8 Dec. 1626, d. in Rome on 19 Apr. 1689. Introduced to politics by the great chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, by the age of sixteen she was already keeping abreast of public affairs, displaying, besides a notable and impetuous independence of character, a particular tendency to confront every situation with exaggerated confidence in her own abilities.

In 1642 she also took part in the council of the regency. A tireless reader, endowed with great intelligence and eager to learn, she applied herself with genuine success to the study of political science, history and theology. On 8 Dec. 1644, at the age of eighteen, she assumed the effective direction of the government and two years later was crowned queen. She achieved an almost immediate notable political success with the treaty of Brömsebro (1645), which gave Sweden possession of certain Danish islands and two important Norwegian provinces. In 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, to which her country had contributed very high bloodshed, C. multiplied her energetic interventions, managing to obtain advantageous territorial compensations in Pomerania and absolute sovereignty over Bremen and Rügen. For the rather modest tone of the Swedish court and the traditional warrior simplicity of its habits, C. substituted the splendor of a modern royal palace and surrounded herself with distinguished men such as Descartes, Grotius, Salmasius, etc.

For some years, also through the influence of Descartes, the queen's Lutheran faith had undergone an evolution toward Catholicism. She asked, without however obtaining consent, to reign as a Catholic and to postpone the ceremony of abjuration to another time. She then decided on abdication in favor of her cousin Charles Gustavus (6 June 1654) and betook herself to Brussels, where she performed the first acts of the Catholic faith; then she decided to go to Rome, where she arrived in Sept. 1655 and was hosted in the Vatican by Alexander VII. Previously, at Innsbruck, the official ceremony of abjuration had been carried out and the relative notification had been made to all the European courts. In 1656 she went to France, where Mazarin received with much reserve the project of her accession to the throne of Naples; during a second journey made to Paris, she risked compromising herself irreparably with the French court for having had Monaldeschi illegally executed in her palace (Nov. 1657), who would have revealed the plan for Naples to the Spaniards. She attempted to return to the Swedish throne upon the death of Charles Gustavus (1660), but was clearly advised to desist from such a purpose, judged unfeasible, and was even forbidden to remain in her homeland, where 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 was displeased by the somewhat eccentric attitudes of the former queen, and every hope of ascending the throne of Naples had faded, C. turned to Poland and manifested the intention of succeeding the deceased King John Casimir, obtaining however a blunt refusal. She then renounced all political activity and devoted herself exclusively to her favorite studies and to learned conversations with friends, first among them Card. Azzolino (or Azzolini), to whom she left all her possessions. In her salons the first nucleus of the Arcadia was created, which saw the light after her death, but which received from her the first impulses and the necessary encouragements.

C. was also in contact with Molinos, who however did not become her spiritual director. In the notes that C. appended to the propositions of Molinos condemned by the Holy Office (and which she received in copy probably from Card. Azzolino) she does not show herself completely persuaded 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 "nonsense" in Catholic mystical theology not to tend, in the contemplative stage, toward the love of God and the hope of salvation. C. does not, however, show herself very favorable to vocal prayer and shows herself hostile to Ignatian asceticism: according to her, "in the spiritual exercises nothing is practiced more than vanity and self-interest: as for the rest, one sleeps" (cf. G. Bandini, article cited). This writing and in general all her mystical and moralistic works illuminate, albeit obliquely, a moment in the more general European religious history of the seventeenth century.

Mario Zazzetta-Massimo Petrocchi