Born: 18 December 1626, Sweden
Died: 19 April 1689
Country most active: Sweden, Italy, France
Also known as: Kristina Augusta; Christina Alexandra; Kristina Augusta; Kristina Wasa
This biography, written by Catherine Capel, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Christina, Queen of Sweden was perhaps one of the most enigmatic monarchs of seventeenth century Europe. She ruled from 1632, when she was just six years old, until her abdication in 1654. She was the only surviving child of King Gustav Adulphos and Maria Eleanora and was mistaken for a boy when she was born. Growing up, Christina enjoyed typically masculine pastimes such as hunting, fencing and horse riding.
Her father died in November 1632, during the Thirty Years War, and his corpse was bought home, but her mother would not allow for the king to be buried and his body began to decay.
Christina reached her majority in 1644 and she flourished as a patron of the arts and literature, with philosopher Rene Descartes being present at her court in 1649.
She famously dressed in men’s clothing and encouraged rumours that she was having a passionate relationship with Ebba Sparre. Christina declared she would never marry and so in 1649 she named her cousin, Charles Gustav, as her heir.
After her abdication in 1654, she converted to Catholicism and travelled widely around Europe. In her later life, Christina settled in Rome and continued her passions of learning and the theatre whilst remaining involved in political matters.
She died in 1689 and became one of only three women to be buried in the Vatican alongside Matilda of Canossa (d.1115) and Maria Clementia Sobieska (d.1735).
You can find out more about the representations of Christina of Sweden in this blog post by Amy Saunders!
Recommended Reading
Amy Saunders, “The Afterlife of Christina of Sweden: Gender and Sexuality in Heritage and Fiction,” Royal Studies Journal 6 (2019): 204-221
Amy Saunders, “Queen Christina of Sweden”, History Gems podcast, 12th May 2021, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/history-gems/id1541852649.
Valeria De Lucca, “Strategies of women patrons of music and theatre in Rome: Maria Mancini Colonna, Queen Christina of Sweden, and women of their circles,” Renaissance Studies 25 (2011): 374-392
Veronica Buckley, Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric (London: Harper Perennial, 2011).”
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626-1689), the only legitimate child of Gustavus Adolphus who survived infancy. She was but six years of age when her father died, and she was early separated from her mother. Her tutor was John Matthiae, the king’s court preacher, under whom she learned Greek, Latin and French, while her progress in accomplishments of every kind was remarkable. Her observers at this time declare that she valued nothing but honor and virtue, and predicted that her extraordinary merit alone would make her reign illustrious, independent of foreign conquest and the valor of her armies.
At the age of eighteen Christina assumed the exercise of sovereignty, and her reign was begun most auspiciously under the guidance of the great statesman Oxenstiern, but having lost favor with the queen, his influence was eclipsed by unworthy favorites. After ruling Sweden ten years during which her armies achieved many victories, Christina suddenly resolved to abdicate the throne in favor of her cousin Charles Gustavus. Though her hand had been sought by many princes, she resolutelv declined a matrimonial alliance, and the latter part of her reign was marred by her capricious and dissolute conduct. An independent life in other lands was now Christina’s great desire, and on June 6, 1654, the abdication took place, the council having assigned her an income of 240,000 rix dollars a year. At the ceremony she appeared in robes of state, with crown and sceptre, and after an address of farewell laid aside the various regalia. When she departed Oxenstiern wept and exclaimed: “She is daughter still of our great Gustavus.” Twelve ships of war had been equipped to convey her across the Baltic; but she took her way by land to Denmark, dismissing all her Swedish attendants except four. On reaching a brook which then formed the southern boundary of Sweden, she alighted from her carriage, and leaping across it, she cried, “Now I am free, and out of Sweden, which I trust never to see again.” Carrying with her everything curious or valuable from the palace of her fathers, she abandoned her country as the abode of ignorance and barbarism. She now visited various cities of Europe, often traveling in the dress of a man, and everywhere creating a sensation. In 1656 she went to Paris, and her talents and learning were the wonder of that capital, but she seemed to become more and more unsexed, and her masculine air and libertine conversation kept the women of delicacy at a distance.
In 1660, on the death of the King of Sweden, she went to Stockholm, and began to intrigue for the recovery of the crown, but was compelled to sign another formal act of abdication. She spent the rest of her life in Rome, in the culture of letters and in correspondence with learned men, made vast collections of works of art and of books, and founded the Arcadian academy. She bequeathed her fortune to Cardinal Azzolini and was interred in the Church of St. Peter, where a magnificent monument was erected in her memory. Her collections of art were sold and scattered about the world. She left some writings, which, says Geijer, the historian, “exhibit a soul ardent and untamed by years, striving in all things after the extreme and the supreme, but submitting at last. The feminine virtues which she despised, avenge themselves upon her good name; yet was she better than her reputation.”
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
She was born in Stockholm, the only child of King Gustavus Adolphus. At the age of six she became Queen of Sweden upon the death of her father in the battle of Liitzen in 1632 . Her mother, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, was considered unfit, because of her hysterical nature, to conduct the education of her daughter, and the government entrusted this task to the Countess Palatine Katarina, an aunt of Christina. Supervision of her studies was exercised by the court chaplain, Johannes Matthiae Gothus. At mature age she had mastered seven foreign languages and was versed in theology and philosophy. Axel Oxenstierna, the great Swedish chancellor of the period, initiated her into the study of politics, and at the early age of sixteen she began to attend the Councils of State. Included in her education were physical training, ridings hunting and similar sports. For womanly pursuits she had little taste. While intellectiiaily a true daughter of her father, she had evidently inherited her mother’s character and disposition, as she revealed early a capricious, willful and hard nature. When, at the age of eighteen, she took over the reins of Government, being headstrong and masterful, she soon threw off the control of the Chancellor. For the social problems of her time, for the increasing hostility between the nobility and the unprivileged classes, she was not able to furnish a solution. For matrimony the Queen showed no inclination.
So the plans of the Government that she should marry her cousin, Karl Gustaf, of the Pfalz-Zweibriicken dynasty, failed. In order to settle the question of the succession, she forced the Riksdag and the Government to acknowledge her cousin as successor in 1650. After that time her political interest declined, and science, literature and art became the center of her attention. She invited to the court several foreign scholars, among them the famous philosopher, Carthesius. Christina had never been a Lutheran.
Through the influence of this scholar, she turned toward Catholicism. As her convictions ripened, it became evident to her that a change of faith would necessitate her abdication. The definite step was taken on June 6, 1654. In Innsbruck, in 1655, she was officially converted to the Catholic religion and in December of the same year made her solemn entry into Rome, where she adopted the name of Alexandra, after the new Pope, thereafter signing herself Christina Alexandra. Politics now occupied the greater part of her interest. She went to Sweden to guard her interests after the death of the King, Karl Gustaf X. Her claim to the succession was, however, denied by the Swedish Government. In 1667, she was subjected to severe restrictions in the exercise of her religion, and she decided to leave the country immediately and forever. During a stay in Hamburg she made vain efforts to gain the Polish crown after the abdication of Johan Kasimir. In 1668, she returned to Rome, where she resided in the Palazzo Riario (now Palazzo Corsini) until her death. A stabilizing influence on her life, in general, was exercised by Cardinal Decio Azzolino. Christina had become acquainted with him on her first visit in Rome. He was, as far as it is possible to judge, the only man she ever loved; letters to him throw a remarkable light on her personality. The Queen’s collection of literature and art was most excellent. She was patron of art and science and in 1674 founded the Accademia Reale in Rome (later reestablished as the Accademia degli Arcadi), which had as its aim the purification of the Italian language and the refinement of art. She also edited some literary works. In her later years the Cardinal Azzolino was her only friend; her cold, egoistic, and one-sidedly intellectual nature had created a repellent barrier around her.
The following is excerpted from Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World, designed and Arranged by William C. King, published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.
Christina, queen of Sweden, only child of the great Gustavus Adolphus, was born on December 17, 1626, and succeeded her father in 1632, when only six years old. Distinguished equally by beauty and the possession of a lively imagination, a good memory, and uncommon intelligence, she received a man’s rather than a woman’s education, and to this may partly be attributed the many eccentricities of her life.
During Christina’s minority, the kingdom was governed by the five highest officers of state, the principal being Chancellor Oxenstiern. In 1644 she assumed the reins of power, and in 1650 was crowned with the title of king. She previously declared her cousin, Charles Gustavus, her successor. For four years thereafter she ruled the kingdom with vigor, and was remarkable for her patronage of learned men, such as Grotius, Salmasius and Descartes. In 1654, however, at the age of twenty-eight, weary of the personal restraint which royalty imposed on her, the abdicated in favor of her cousin, reserving herself sufficient revenues, entire independence, and supreme authority over her suite and household.
Upon leaving Sweden, she proceeded to Brussels, where she embraced the Roman Catholic religion. She next went to Rome, which she entered on horseback, in the costume of an Amazon, with great pomp. Confirmed by Pope Alexander VII, she adopted the surname of Alesandra. She next visited Paris; and there in 1657 she caused her grand equerry, Monaldeschi, who had enjoyed her entire confidence, to be put to death in her own household for treason. The death of the king in 1660 caused her to hasten from Rome to Sweden, but failing in her attempt to be reinstated on the throne, she again left the country. In 1666 she aspired to the crown of Poland, but was unnoticed by the Poles.
The remainder of her life was spent in Rome in artistic and scientific pursuits. Here she lived for some twenty years, quarreling, intriguing, and collecting; corresponding with men of letters and founding academics; consumed by the desire for that political power which she had thrown away, and endeavoring to assert her vanished influence to the last. She wrote a great deal, but her Maxims and Sentences, and Reflections on the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great, are all that have been preserved.
Her death occurred in Rome, April 19, 1689, and she was buried under a sonorous epitaph, in St. Peter’s.
Her magnificent library was purchased by Alexander VIII, her collection of antiquities and part of her paintings by a nephew of the Pope, and the remainder of her pictures by the regent of Orleans.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
Daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and of Maria Eleonora of Brandenburgh, was born December 18th., 1626. Her father was very fond of her, and carried her about with him in all his journeys. When she was about two years old she was taken to Calmar, the governor of which hesitated, on her account, whether to give the king the usual salute, but Gustavus exclaimed, “Fire! the girl is a soldier’s daughter, and should be accustomed to it betimes.” The noise delighted the princess, who clapped her hands, and, in her infantile language, cried, “More, more!” showing thus early her peculiarly bold and masculine turn of mind.
Her father died in 1633, and Christina, a girl of seven years old, was placed upon the throne, and even at that early age she appeared to be conscious of her high destiny, and in all trying circumstances conducted herself with great firmness and dignity.
The queen-mother was a woman of weak judgment and capricious temper, and her injudicious management of the young Christina was doubtless the first cause of her dislike for her own sex, which was farther increased by the manner of her education. She early displayed an “antipathy,” to use her own words, “to all that women do and say;” but she was an excellent classical scholar, admired the Greeks and Romans, and all the heroes of antiquity, particularly Homer and Alexander the Great. At the age of fourteen, she read Thucydides in the original; she rode and hunted, and harangued the senate, and dictated to her ministers. But in the gentler graces and virtues of her own sex she was deficient. She grew up self-willed, arrogant, and impatient; and yet was flattered because she was a queen. She understood this, and observed that “Princesses are flattered even in their cradles; men fear their memory as well as their power; they handle them timidly, as they do young lions, who can only scratch now, but may hereafter bite and devour.”
When Christina had assumed the reins of government, in 1644, many of the most distinguished kings and princes of Europe aspired to her hand; but she uniformly rejected all their proposals, and caused one of her suitors, her cousin Charles Gustavus, to be appointed her successor. Her love of independence and impatience of control had exhibited themselves from childhood in a distaste to marriage. “Do not,” said she to the states, “compel me to make a choice: should I bear a son, it is equally probable that he might prove a Nero as an Augustus.”
Christina had an opportunity to display her magnanimity in the early part of her reign. While she was engaged in her devotions in the chapel of the castle at Stockholm, a lunatic rushed through the crowd, and attempted to stab her with a knife. He was seized, and Christina calmly continued her devotions. Learning that the man was insane, she merely had him put under restraint.
One of the most important events of Christina’s reign was the peace of Westphalia, to which her influence greatly contributed. It was settled October, 1648, and by this treaty Sweden was confirmed in the possession of many important countries. The services of Salvius, one of her plenipotentiaries on this occasion, were rewarded by the dignity of senator; a prerogative which had till then belonged to birth, but to which the queen thought merit had a better claim.
During the remainder of her reign, a wise administration and a profound peace, reflect upon Christina a higher praise than can be derived from subtle negotiations or successful wars; she enjoyed the entire confidence and love of her people. All persons distinguished for their genius or talents, were attracted by her liberality to the Swedish court; and although her favour was sometimes controlled by her partialities or prejudices, and withheld from the deserving while it was lavished on those who flattered her foibles, yet she soon discovered and repaired such mistakes.
She, at length, began to feel her rank, and the duties it devolved upon her, a burden, and to sigh for freedom and leisure. In 1652, she communicated to the senate her resolution of abdicating the throne; but the remonstrances of the whole people, in which Charles Gustavus, her successor, joined, induced her to wear the crown for two years longer; when she resumed her purpose and carried it into effect, to the great grief of the whole nation.
In leaving the scene of her regal power, she appeared to rejoice as though she had escaped from imprisonment. Having arrived at a small brook which separated Sweden from Denmark, she alighted from her carriage, and leaping over it, exclaimed, “At length I am free, and out of Sweden, whither I hope never to return.” Dismissing with her women the habit of her sex, she assumed male attire. “I would become a man,” said she; “but it is not that I love men because they are men, but merely that they are not women.”
On her arrival at Brussels she publicly and solemnly abjured the Lutheran faith, in which she was educated, and joined the Roman Catholic communion. From Brussels she went to Rome, which she entered with great pomp. She was received with splendid hospitality by the pope, and the Jesuits affirmed that she ought to be placed by the church among the saints: “I had rather,” said Christina, “be placed among the sages.”
She then went to France, where she was received with royal honours, which she never forgot to claim, by Louis the Fourteenth. But she disturbed the quiet of all the places she visited, by her passion for interfering and controlling, not only political affairs, but the petty cabals of the court. She also disgusted the people by her violation of all the decencies and proprieties of life, by her continuing to wear the dress of the other sex, and of her open contempt for her own. But the act that roused the horror and indignation of Louis the Fourteenth and his whole court, and obliged Christina to leave France, was the murder of Monaldeschi, an Italian, and her master of the horse, who is supposed to have been her lover, and to have betrayed the intrigue, though the fault for which he suffered was never disclosed by Christina. This event occurred in November, 1657, while she was residing in the royal palace of Fontainebleau. Monaldeschi, after having been allowed only about two hours from the time that the queen had made known to him her discovery of his perfidy, was put to death, by her orders, in the gallery aux Cerfs of the palace, by three men.
Louis the Fourteenth was highly indignant at this violation of justice in his dominions; but Christina sustained her act, and stated that she had reserved supreme power over her suite, and that wherever she went she was still a queen. She was, however, obliged to return to Rome, where she soon involved herself in a quarrel with the pope, Alexander the Seventh. She then went to Sweden; but she was not well received there, and soon left for Hamburgh, and from thence to Rome. She again returned to Sweden, but met with a still colder reception than before. It is said that her journeys to Sweden were undertaken for the purpose of resuming the crown, as Charles Gustavus had died in 1660. But this can hardly be true, as her adopted religion, to which she always remained constant, would be an insuperable obstacle, by the laws and constitution of Sweden, to her re-assuming the government.
After many wanderings, Christina died at Rome, April 15th., 1689, aged sixty-three. She was interred in the church of St Peter, and the pope erected a monument to her, with a long inscription, although she had requested that these words, Vixit Christina annos LXIII., should be the only inscription on her tomb. Her principal heir was her attendant, Cardinal Azzolini. Her library was bought by the pope, who placed nine hundred manuscripts of this collection in the Vatican, and gave the rest of the books to his family. Christina wrote a great deal; but her “Maxims and Sentences,” and “Reflections on the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great,” are all that have been preserved. She had good business talents, and a wonderful firmness of purpose. The great defects of her character, and the errors of her life, may be traced to her injudicious education, including the dislike she felt for women, and her contempt of feminine virtues and pursuits. She should be a warning to all those aspiring females, who would put off the dignity, delicacy, and dress of their own sex, in the vain hope that, by masculine freedom of deportment and attire, they should gain strength, wisdom, and enjoyment.