The Story of Civilization: Volume VII: The Age of Reason Begins

by Will Durant

  Despite all this she had some feminine charms. Pierre Huet, afterward Bishop of Avranches, reported (1653): “Her face is refined and pretty, her hair golden, her eyes flash. … She carries modesty written on her face, and shows it by the blushes which cover it at an immodest word.”13 “She cannot bear the idea of marriage, because she was born free and will die free,” reported the Jesuit confessor of the Spanish ambassador.14 She seems to have felt that coitus was, for a woman, a form of subjection; and doubtless, like Elizabeth of England, she knew that her husband would want to be king. She was sensitively aware of her faults, and acknowledged them bravely. “I was distrustful, suspicious, ambitious to excess. I was hot-tempered, proud, and impatient, contemptuous and satirical. I gave no quarter. I was too incredulous, and little of a devotee.”15 But she was generous to extravagance, and faithful to her tasks. “She spends only three or four hours in sleep,” said the Jesuit. “When she wakes she spends five hours in reading…. She never drinks anything but water; never has she been heard to speak of her food, whether it was well or ill cooked…. She attends her Council regularly…. During a fever twenty-eight days long she never neglected her state affairs. … Ambassadors treat only with her, without ever being passed on to secretary or minister.”16

  She wished to rival not only the youths in sports and the courtiers in politics, but also the scholars in learning, and these not merely in languages and literature but in science and philosophy as well. By the age of fourteen she knew German, French, Italian, and Spanish; by eighteen she knew Latin; later she studied Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. She read and loved the French and Italian poets, and envied the bright vivacity of French civilization. She corresponded eagerly with scholars, scientists, and philosophers in several lands. She brought together a splendid library, including rare ancient manuscripts which students came from many countries to consult. At her death connoisseurs were impressed by the fine taste she had shown in purchasing pictures, statues, enamels, engravings, and antiques. She collected savants as she collected art; she longed to have pundits and thinkers about her; she drew to her court Claudius Salmasius, Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Nicolaas Heinsius, and rewarded all of them lavishly. Those scholars who could not come sent her their books and paeans—Scarron, Guez de Balzac, Mlle. de Scudéry; and the grave Milton, while blasting her Salmasius, declared her “fit to govern not only Europe but the world.”17 Pascal sent her his calculating machine, with a remarkably beautiful letter complimenting her on being a queen in the realm of mind as well as of government.18

  Her penultimate passion was for philosophy. She corresponded with Gassendi, who, like a hundred others, congratulated her on realizing Plato’s dream of philosopher-kings. René Descartes, the outstanding philosopher of the age, came, saw, and marveled to hear her deduce his pet ideas from Plato.19 When he tried to convince her that all animals are mechanisms, she remarked that she had never seen her watch give birth to baby watches.20 But of this more later on.

  She did not neglect native talent. Sweden had then a true polymath, Georg Stjernhjelm, linguist, jurist, scientist, mathematician, historian, philosopher, the father of Swedish poetry and the center of Swedish intellectual life in this age. Gustavus Adolphus so admired him that he raised him to the peerage; Christina made him court poet, until he joined her enemies.21

  Attracted by the pedagogical theories of John Comenius, she brought him to Stockholm to reform the school system of Sweden. Like Elizabeth at Oxford and Cambridge, she visited Uppsala to encourage by her presence the teachers and pupils at the university; she listened there to Stjernhjelm and others discourse on the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. She built a college at Dorpat and gave it a library; she founded six other colleges; she developed into a university the college that her father had founded at Åbo (Turku) in Finland. She sent students to study abroad, some to Arabia to learn Oriental scholarship. She imported Dutch printers to establish a publishing house in Stockholm. She urged Swedish scientists to write in the vernacular, so that knowledge might spread among her people. She was, without question, one of the most enlightened rulers in history.

  Did she have a mind of her own, or was she the undiscriminating receptacle of the intellectual currents eddying about her? The unanimous testimony is that in government she did her own thinking, made her own decisions, ruled as well as reigned.22 We shall see, in a later chapter, how she vetoed Oxenstierna’s martial policy, labored for peace, and helped to end the Thirty Years’ War. Her fragmentary memoirs are vital and fascinating. The maxims which she left in manuscripts have nothing hackneyed about them. E.g.:

  One is, in proportion as one can love.

  Fools are to be more feared than knaves.

  To undeceive men is to offend them.

  Extraordinary merit is a crime never forgiven.

  There is a star which unites souls of the first order, though ages and distances divide them.

  More courage is required for marriage than for war.

  One rises above all, when one no longer esteems or fears anything.

  He who loses his temper with the world has learned all he knows to no purpose.

  Philosophy neither changes men nor corrects men.23

  In the end, after sampling a dozen philosophies, perhaps after ceasing to be a Christian, she became a Catholic. She was accused of having imbibed atheism from her physician Bourdelot.24 A Swedish historian, echoed by Voltaire,25 thought her conversion a conscious farce: on this theory she had come to the conclusion that since truth cannot be known, one might as well adopt the religion that appeals most to the heart and the aesthetic sense,26 and gives most comfort to the people. But conversion to Catholicism is often a sincere reaction after extreme skepticism; in the depths of doubt mysticism may sink its well. There were mystic elements in Christina; her memoirs are intimately addressed to God. Belief is a protective garment; its complete divestiture leaves an intellectual nudity that longs to be clothed and warmed. And what warmer raiment than the colorful, sensuous Catholicism of France and Italy? “How,” she asked, “can one be a Christian without being a Catholic?”27

  She pondered long over the question, and over the many complications involved in conversion. If she abandoned Lutheranism she must, by the laws of her realm and her beloved father, abandon not only her throne but her country. What an anticlimax such a change of faith would be to her father’s heroic defense of Protestant Europe! But she was tired of her official duties, of the harangues of preachers and councilors, of the pedantic trivia of scholars, antiquaries, and historians. And perhaps Sweden was tired of her. Her alienation of Crown lands, her costly gifts to her favorites, had impoverished and consumed her revenues. A majority of the nobles were leagued against her policies. In 1651 there was a flurry of rebellion; the leaders were hastily executed,28 but an active resentment survived. Finally, she was sick. She had injured her health, probably by too much work and study. Frequently she suffered dangerous fevers, with symptoms of inflamed lungs. Several times she fainted, sometimes remaining unconscious for an hour. In 1648, during a severe illness, she says, she “made a vow to quit all and become a Catholic, should God preserve my life.”29 She was a Mediterranean soul shivering in the wintry north. She dreamed of Italian skies and French salons. How pleasant it would be to join the cultured women who were beginning their unique function of nursing the intellect of France! If she could take a substantial fortune with her …

  In 1652 she secretly sent to Rome an attaché of the Portuguese embassy to ask for Jesuits to come and discuss Catholic theology with her. They came in disguise. They were discouraged by some of the questions she asked—whether there was really a Providence, whether the soul could survive the body, whether there was any actual distinction between right and wrong except through utility. Then, when they were about to abandon her as lost, she comforted them: “What would you think if I were nearer to becoming a Catholic than you suppose?” “Hearing this,” said one of the Jesuits, “we felt like men raised from the dead.”30

>   To become a Catholic before abdicating was legally impossible. But before abdicating she desired to protect the hereditary character of the Swedish monarchy by persuading the Diet to ratify her choice of her cousin, Charles Gustavus, as her successor. Long negotiations delayed her abdication till June 6, 1654. The final ceremony was almost as moving as the abdication of Charles V ninety-nine years before. She took the crown from her head, discarded all regal insignia, removed her royal mantle, stood before the Diet in a dress of plain white silk, and bade her country and her people farewell in a speech that brought taciturn old nobles and phlegmatic burgesses to tears. The Council provided for her future income, and allowed her to keep the rights of a queen over her retinue.

  She left Stockholm at nightfall five days after her abdication, stopped at Nyköbing for a last visit with her mother, went on, sleepless, for two days, fell sick with pleurisy, recovered, and rode on to Halmstad. There she wrote to Gassendi, awarding him a pension and sending him a chain of gold. At the last moment she received an offer of marriage from the new-crowned Charles X; she refused it courteously. Then, disguised as a man and under the name of Count Dohna, she took ship for Denmark, not knowing that for thirty-five years more she would play a part in history.

  III. POLAND GOES TO CANOSSA: 1569–1648

  Poland too, in this age, made her peace with the Roman Church, and it is instructive to see how Catholicism so quickly recovered in that kingdom nearly all the ground it had lost in the Reformation. But first let us note, with our usual haste, the political background of the cultural evolution.

  1. The State

  The period begins with an outstanding achievement of statesmanship. Southeast of Poland lay the grand duchy of Lithuania, ruled by its own dukes, and extending from the Baltic through Kiev and the Ukraine to Odessa and the Black Sea. The growth of Russian power threatened Lithuania with the loss of its autonomy. Though its Greek Orthodox Christianity largely agreed with Russia’s, it reluctantly decided that a merger with Roman Catholic Poland would better preserve its self-rule than an embrace by the Russian bear. Sigismund II signalized his reign by signing the historic Union of Lublin (July 1, 1569). Lithuania acknowledged the King of Poland as its grand duke, sent delegates to the Sejm at Warsaw, and accepted that diet, or parliament, as its government in all external relations; but it kept its own religion, its own laws, its own control of its internal affairs. Poland, so enlarged, had now a population of eleven million from Danzig to Odessa, from sea to sea. It was unquestionably one of the Great Powers.

  The death of Sigismund II (1572), leaving no male heir, brought to an end that Jagellon dynasty which had begun in 1386 and had given Poland a line of creative kings and a civilization of religious toleration and humanistic enlightenment. The nobles had always resented hereditary monarchy as a violation of their feudal rights and liberties; now they resolved to keep power in their own hands by making the monarchy elective; they established a republic of nobles and made Poland’s future kings the servants of the Sejm. Since the Sejm included not only the greater nobles, or magnates, but also the gentry (szlachta), or lesser nobility, the plan seemed to realize Aristotle’s ideal of a government mingling monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements in mutual checks and balances. In the context of the time, however, the new constitution meant a feudal reaction, a fragmentation of authority and leadership while Poland’s Baltic competitors, Sweden and Russia, were being forged into martial unities by hereditary monarchies privileged to think in terms of generations. Every royal election now became an auction of noble votes to the highest bidder among rival candidates financed, usually, by foreign powers. So French agents, by distributing gifts with both hands, bought the Polish crown for the degenerate Henry of Valois (1573)—only to have him called back a year later to misrule France as Henry III.

  The electoral Diet redeemed itself when, after a chaotic interregnum, it chose Stephen Báthory as king (1575). As Prince of Transylvania he had already made a name for himself in politics and war. His agents in Warsaw had promised that if elected he would pay the national debt, put 200,000 florins into the treasury, recover all territory that Poland had lost to Russia, and sacrifice his life on the battlefield, if necessary, for Poland’s honor and glory. Who could resist such an offer? Whereas a few rich nobles supported the candidacy of Maximilian II of Austria, seven thousand members of the electoral Diet cried out for Báthory. He rode up with 2,500 troops, won many hearts by marrying Anna Jagellon, led an army against Danzig (which had refused to acknowledge him), and forced the proud port to pay a fine of 200,000 gulden into the national treasury.

  Even so, the nobles were not sure that they liked the new King, with his sharply penetrating eyes, his realistic mind, his frightening mustache and authoritative beard. He despised pomp and ceremony, dressed simply, wore patches, and made beef and cabbage his favorite dish. When he called for funds for a campaign against Russia they granted him inadequate supplies grudgingly. Relying upon subsidies from Transylvania, he advanced with a small army and laid siege to Pskov, then the third in size of Russian cities. Ivan IV, though Terrible to his people, felt too old to meet so vigorous a foe. He sued for peace, yielded Livonia to Poland, and allowed Russia to be cut off from the Baltic (1582). When Ivan died (1584) Báthory proposed to Sixtus V to conquer all Russia, unite it with Poland, drive the Turks from Europe, and bring all Eastern Europe to the papal obedience. The Pope made no objections, but amid laborious preparations for this crusade Báthory died (1586). When he had ceased to trouble her, Poland recognized him as one of her greatest kings.

  After a year of bargaining the Diet gave the throne to Sigismund III, who, as heir to the Swedish crown, might unite the two countries to control the Baltic and check the expansion of Russia. Half his reign, as we have seen, was consumed in vain efforts to establish his authority, and the Catholic faith, in Sweden. The sudden death of Boris Godunov (1605), plunging Russia into a defenseless chaos, gave Sigismund another opportunity. Without consulting the Sejm, he announced his candidacy for the Muscovite throne and advanced with an army into Russia. While he spent two years besieging Smolensk, his general Stanislas Zolkiewski defeated the Russians at Klushino, marched to Moscow, and persuaded the Russian nobles to accept Sigismund’s son Ladislas as their king (1610). But Sigismund repudiated this arrangement; he, not his son, should be czar. Having at last taken Smolensk (1611), he marched toward Moscow. He never reached it, for winter caught up with his dilatory advance. His unpaid soldiers rebelled, and in December 1612, two centuries before Napoleon, his army retreated, amid disorder and suffering, from Russia into Poland. All that remained from the costly campaigns was the possession of Smolensk and Severski, and a strong infusion of Polish influence into Russian life.

  The rest of Sigismund’s reign was a succession of disastrous wars. His alliance with the Hapsburgs involved him, to the Emperor’s delight, in an expensive struggle with the Turks, in which Poland was saved only by the skill of her generals and the courage of her troops. Gustavus Adolphus took advantage of Poland’s preoccupation in the south to invade Livonia; and the Peace of Altmark (1629) left Sweden master of Livonia and the Baltic Sea. Sigismund died a broken man (1632).

  The Diet gave the crown to his son, for Ladislas (Wladyslaw) IV, now thirty-seven, had shown his mettle as a general and had won many friends by his frank and cheerful character. He offended the Pope by tolerating Protestantism in Poland and the Greek Orthodox Church in Lithuania; and at Thorn (Toruń) he allowed a peaceful public debate of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist clergymen (1645). He encouraged art and music, bought Rubens pictures and Gobelin tapestries, established the first permanent Polish theater, and staged Italian operas. He corresponded with the imprisoned Galileo, and invited the Protestant scholar Grotius to his court. He died (1648) just as a great Cossack revolt threatened the life of the Polish state.

  2. The Civilization

  The Polish economy was still medieval. Internal trade was in the peddler stage; foreign commerce was la
rgely confined to Danzig and Riga; the merchant class was negligible in wealth and rarely found admittance to the Sejm. The nobles controlled the Diet, the king, and the economy. The large estates were tilled by peasants subject to feudal regulations in some ways more severe than on the manors of medieval France. The noble owner made these regulations himself and enforced them with his own soldiery. He forbade his tenants to leave his jurisdiction without his consent; he transferred them from place to place; he increased or diminished their lands at his own will; he exacted several days of unpaid labor from them yearly; he obliged them to buy and sell only from or to him; he compelled them to buy from him a certain annual quantity of badly brewed ale; he could conscript their children to serve him in peace or war. Legally they were free; they could own and bequeath property; but the Jesuit Father Skarga described them as slaves.31

  Life was mostly rural. The nobles gathered in Warsaw to vote their collective will, but they lived on their estates, hunting, quarreling, loving, feasting, giving one another openhanded hospitality, and training themselves for war. Marriages were arranged by the parents; the girl was rarely asked, and she rarely resisted; it was assumed that love generated by marriage and parentage would be more enduring than marriage generated by love. Women were modest and industrious. Sexual morality was firmly maintained; we hear of no extramarital love affairs before the eighteenth century.32 Men, rather than women, molded manners, except that Cecilia Renata, who married Ladislas IV in 1637, refreshed the Italian influences imported by artists and clergymen in earlier times; and Louise Marie de Gonzague, whom he married in 1648, brought with her a wave of French manners and speech that lasted till the twentieth century. Polish dances had a grave grace that as early as 1647 led a Frenchman to speak with admiration of the polonaise.