As so often had happened before, the emotional strain at length demanded physical payment. One evening, as she sat at supper with Magnus beside her, Christina suddenly collapsed. She gasped a farewell to him, and lapsed into unconsciousness. For an hour she lay still, her pulse so weak that she seemed to be dead – no one thought to try to revive her. When at last she showed a faint sign of life, her French doctor, Du Rietz, was hastily called. She recognized his face through a blur of pain and dizziness. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ she murmured.
The talk of succession and abdication had done nothing to solve the country’s financial problems. Through all the meetings and debates and correspondence, Christina had maintained her own priorities. She had achieved what she wanted, or most of it, but she had done little to answer the commoners’ pressing grievances. Rebellion still seemed all too likely. ‘All that’s lacking is a leader,’ growled one angry man. The Chancellor’s son Erik declared that when the nobles got home from the Riksdag, the peasants would break their necks. Whether he believed it or not, his father admitted that he was in no hurry for the moment to return to his house in the country. At court, a growing faction muttered discontentedly against the Queen.
At the end of 1651, the festering crisis was brought to a head by one of Christina’s own most favoured servants, Arnold Johan Messenius. He was a learned and outspoken man from a famously learned and outspoken line; within his family, imprisonment had become almost as strong a tradition as scholarship. His father, Johan, a celebrated historian, had been a mentor of Johan Matthiae during his student days. Subsequently imprisoned for nineteen years for seditious writings, he had managed nonetheless to continue a married life of sorts with his equally outspoken wife; the boy Arnold Johan was born and brought up in his father’s prison cell. On reaching adulthood, Arnold Johan had soon received a fifteen-year sentence of his own for the same offence. His criticisms had been directed against Axel Oxenstierna, and when Christina attained her majority, anxious to wield her own authority and only too happy to discomfit the Chancellor, she had pardoned Messenius, then ennobled him, enriched him vastly, and appointed him Historiographer Royal.
With the end of the year approaching, Karl Gustav had left with a party of followers to enjoy the hunting season on the island of Öland. While there, he received an anonymous letter exhorting him to depose the spendthrift Queen and her irresponsible ministers, including the Chancellor and Magnus and his father, who were, or so the writer claimed, leading the country to ruin. If necessary, he urged, the Queen’s life itself should be sacrificed. Karl Gustav lost no time in informing Christina, and despite her extravagant support of Messenius, she immediately suspected that the letter had been sent from him; his criticisms of her government had for some time been all too loudly in evidence. Messenius was arrested, but quietly, and not at once – it was hoped that caution might also entrap his accomplices. Karl Gustav, though alarmed enough to have informed the Queen, does not seem to have regarded the threat as really dangerous. Fearing her response, he wrote to Messenius and the other suspects, urging them to flee the kingdom. They did not, and as the plot slowly unravelled, it became clear that it involved some of the greatest men in the land.16 It seems they had wanted to send a warning to the Queen rather than to call for any real action against her, but her shock was nonetheless immense. Pride dampened her outrage – it could not be admitted publicly that dislike of her rule ran so deep, and so close. A second arrest was made, of Messenius’ twenty-two-year-old son, Arnold, once Karl Gustav’s page, but the other suspects remained free, too powerful or too popular to be charged. Christina exclaimed at the two men’s ‘ingratitude’ – how could they have behaved so, after all she had done for their family? Messenius at first denied his involvement, as did his son, but when confronted with the instruments of torture, both confessed: the father had known of the letter, the son had written it. Their trial involved no court of law. Too many great names had been implicated, and a legal hearing would have shone too bright a light on the government’s many failings. The Senate itself, and Christina, heard the confessions and passed sentence. As Karl Gustav had feared, Messenius and his son were condemned to death.
They were permitted to meet on the morning of their execution, and they made a dreadful farewell, the young man on his knees, weeping at his father’s feet. Messenius was beheaded, but his son was taken to be broken on the wheel, his limbs beaten to pieces as the wooden frame revolved. The body was left exposed at a crossroads, while one brave pastor shouted from his pulpit against the Queen’s injustice.
In a final act of loyalty or penance or bargaining, Messenius had bequeathed his marvellous collection of books to the Queen, begging her to ensure that his widow and daughters would be provided for. She took the books, but ignored the women, who quickly declined into a miserable poverty. At court, the biggest birds remained, their feathers ruffled, but unplucked. Karl Gustav, despite his sympathy for the culprits, received a handsome reward from the Queen: a portrait of herself, surrounded with diamonds.
Relations improved between the Queen and the Chancellor. A common cause had for once united them, and they remained for some time on better terms than they had been since the years of the regency. The rapprochement may have softened Christina: three years later, as she rode towards the ghastly crossroads, she was heard to express some regret for young Arnold Messenius, and she ordered his body to be taken down for burial.
The Road to Rome
Plague had been threatening Stockholm, and Christina had withdrawn to the country. In the autumn of 1653, the danger over, she returned to an empty court, empty, at least, of all that had held her interest. Most of her scholars had departed, driven away by boredom and snow and, above all, by the end of the civil war in France. The boy-King was on his throne again, with Cardinal Mazarin securely perched behind him. Christina wandered alone through the chilly rooms of the castle. All her pretty swallows, so carefully fed, had flown south. The high summer of her reign was drawing to a close.
She had done her own work to hasten its end. Her talk of abdication had sown seeds of change in many otherwise conservative heads. Her lavish way of life and fitful rule had encouraged public discontent in a time of hardship. But, above all, she had by now been involved for more than two years in secret discussions with Jesuit priests from several different countries. They had talked about the old gods and the one God, about the nature of the world and the nature of mankind, about reason and freewill and celibacy, and about the possibility of a Lutheran Queen abandoning her faith, and becoming a Roman Catholic.
It was a perilous journey to be making in Sweden. Catholicism had driven Christina’s uncle from the throne; the battle against it had cost tens of thousands of Swedish lives, including the life of her own father. As monarch, she was officially head of the Swedish Lutheran Church. The practice of Catholicism was illegal, and punishments could be severe: during her own childhood, Swedish Catholics and foreign missionaries alike were arrested and sometimes tortured; two had been executed shortly before her birth. Banishment from the country and the confiscation of property remained the standard penalty. Swedish subjects were forbidden to attend the masses held in the private chapels of foreign Catholic diplomats, and even these masses were sometimes interrupted by zealous Lutheran officials.
Christina’s own attitude, apart from one burst of bigotry early in her girlhood, had always been relaxed. Her friendship with Ambassador Chanut had dispelled the purplest myths about Catholicism that she had assimilated in the Protestant North, and her own doubts about Lutheranism, and indeed about Christianity as a whole, had encouraged her tolerance. Saumaise and Bourdelot and others from free-spirited France had persuaded her that a greater intellectual liberty would be possible within the Catholic fold. Christina was not yet convinced, but she was interested. Her agents were still hunting down copies of banned books for her, including Porphyry’s Against the Christians, the Jesuit Father Garasse’s ‘incautious’ book on atheism, an
d the infamous though apocryphal Three Imposters – namely, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus. She had long outgrown any loyalty to Swedish Lutheranism, whether as a personal conviction or as a state religion. She was temperamentally drawn to the strongly hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church, which corresponded perfectly with her own ideal of the perfect secular state – effectively, an absolute monarchy. She spoke disdainfully of the ‘weak’ forms of government – oligarchy and elective monarchy – that Sweden had known in the past; in later years she would describe herself proudly as the country’s ‘most absolute’ ruler. In any case, the Catholics had all the best cities, above all, Rome. With most of her foreign birds flown, and nothing to look forward to but more ice and snow, Christina was becoming desperate. She felt almost a prisoner in her dreary northern outpost, and besides, the business of government bored her. There were too many compromises, too many views to consider, too many financial problems, too many Oxenstiernas. Ruling was one thing, so long as it meant commanding. Governing, by contrast, held little charm.
Far better to lay her crown aside, once and for all. Karl Gustav was already her heir, and if anything happened to him, Klaes Tott would do – he was a cousin, too, of sorts, and a promising young man. Why should she wait any longer? She was 26 years old, still quite young enough to be pressured into marrying, if not Karl Gustav himself, then some other prince. Friedrich Wilhelm had carried on his suit for fifteen years, and then there had been Karl Ludwig of the Palatinate, and Leopold of Habsburg, and now the Emperor Ferdinand was pressing her to marry his eldest son. It was never going to end, as long as she was Queen. If she abdicated now, she would not have to marry at all. It was the only way she could be sure of avoiding the most repellent of all possible futures. Had not Luther made the fate of Protestant women clear? Let them bear children unto death! he had cried. No, this she would not do. She would not bear children at all. She would not be used by any man ‘as a peasant uses his fields’, and besides, what kind of child might she have, with her sicknesses and her ambiguous attractions and her silly, hysterical mother? ‘I could as easily give birth to a Nero as to an Augustus,’ Christina had said. The Catholic Church could protect her from it all. That would be the place for her. They at least valued the celibate life. In this, she felt, they practised ‘a lovely religion’. It was probably broader, too, better for someone clever like herself. Bourdelot had said so, and Saumaise, and even Descartes had preferred to stay within its fold.
And it had to be admitted, the Jesuits were certainly clever fellows. They knew everything, it seemed, astronomy and Hebrew and law, and they were somehow never at a loss for an answer, even when she went right up close to them and looked them straight in the eye, they were never daunted, they always came back with some silky reply. Christina felt there must be something in it, if men like that could be part of it all. She was enraptured by the thought of Rome, the thought of living there in the warmth, among the paintings and the beautiful squares and palazzi. Stockholm was nothing by comparison; it was boring, and sterile, and there was no new thinking, no vibrancy, no life. People’s thoughts just froze solid, like the water in wintertime – she was sure Descartes had felt so. The best idea that anyone had there was simply to leave. All the best people left. Even Descartes had left, in his way.
Christina’s path, then, was obvious. She must leave, too, and not wait until she died of the flu or the plague or just – just expired of absolute ennui. And if she was to leave, she must of necessity relinquish her crown.
Abdication was thus inevitable for Christina. Catholicism, however, was not. There were many possibilities for a wealthy noblewoman without the restraint of husband or child. She might have travelled, made a ‘grand tour’ as Karl Gustav and Magnus had done, then lived a scholar’s life like the Princess Elisabeth or Anna Maria van Schurman. She might have established herself privately in a handsome country manor, and husbanded her lands in quiet prosperity. She might have become a public advocate for religious toleration; it was her instinct, after all, and her father’s prestige alone would have carried her voice far. But none of this was for Christina. For all her curiosity and cleverness, for all her robust days of riding and hunting, she did not have the patience or the tenacity required for a life of sustained purpose. Her nature was restless and impulsive, and surprisingly dependent. Her constant bravado notwithstanding, she took no steps without a confidant, and usually had several. Christina had her role to play as the daughter of the great Gustav Adolf, but there was much in her of her mother, too. She drew her sense of self from those about her, and looked to others to affirm her own desperate need for greatness. She could not simply abdicate and retire to private life. She wanted to give up the crown, but she needed to remain the Queen. She wanted to be at the centre of things, and that centre, or so it seemed to her, was Rome.
Her first contact with the Jesuits had occurred in the spring of 1651. It had come about by chance, through the unwitting mediation of the Portuguese Ambassador, José Pinto de Pereira. Pereira had been in Stockholm since shortly before Christina’s coronation. He had come to negotiate terms for Sweden’s trade in Portugal’s West African colonies. Chancellor Oxenstierna had handled most of the discussions, but when more pressing matters drew his attention elsewhere, Christina stepped in to take his place.
Pereira’s supposed secretary was one Antonio Macedo, in fact a Jesuit priest, and it was he who led the discussions with the Queen. It seems that this was part of a ruse on Pereira’s part to persuade the Swedes that he himself was something of a simpleton – overconfidence might lead them to make mistakes that would be to Portugal’s advantage. The talk was in Latin, which Pereira did not understand well, or so at least he pretended. It did not long concern West Africa. In theory, Christina wanted a leading hand in all the affairs of state, but in practice she had neither taste nor flair for government. She had never been interested in anything to do with trade, and she did not suddenly become so now. But she liked Macedo, and he knew a good deal about things which really did interest her. For one thing, they had a friend in common: Christina’s former Ambassador to Lisbon was a Catholic convert and a Franciscan friar; he knew Macedo well, and there was no doubt plenty to say about the old life and the new life of Brother Lars Skytte. From here their talk seems to have flowed quite naturally to the great questions of philosophy which had underlain Skytte’s conversion.
Christina was particularly interested in the Church’s attitude to the new scientific thinking. How could Catholic teaching be reconciled, she asked, with what Copernicus and Bacon and Galileo had said? What about the Inquisition? Its reputation was terrifying. What kind of intellectual liberty could be expected, with such a force against it? Macedo demurred. He was not an expert, of course, but he could assure Her Majesty that, though the outward forms had still to be observed, a Roman Catholic might think freely enough in private. Galileo’s work had been permitted, indeed encouraged, at times even financed by cardinal princes of the Church. His mistake had been to challenge the Church openly. But he must advise Her Majesty to seek further elucidation. There were many fine scholars within the Society of Jesus. One, or several, could certainly be sent for. Her Majesty had only to command.
Her Majesty decided to do so. Macedo records that, one late summer day, she drew him aside ‘into the most remote rooms of her private apartment’, and there whispered into his ear the greatest secret of her life, and of his. She was thinking of abjuring the Lutheran faith, she said, and converting to Roman Catholicism. Macedo was the first and only Jesuit she had known; he was an able man and a man of integrity, and she felt she could trust him to carry this dangerous information to Rome, and send back to her ‘two Italians of your Society’ with whom she might further her knowledge.
Macedo set off rejoicing – tutto giubilante, he records – and decided that he must request a period of leave from his Ambassador. The secret could not be entrusted to him. Macedo would say that he wanted to spend a bit of time in Hamburg. Pereira was suspicio
us. Whether he had understood the Latin conversations or not, he had begun to think that Macedo was in some way betraying him. Why did he want to go to Hamburg? Why did he want to leave at all? He would certainly not give him leave to go.
Then, replied Christina, Macedo must go without the Ambassador’s leave. In the middle of August, she packed him off with a letter for the Jesuit General in Rome, hurrying him out of a back door of the castle and onto a little barge. Macedo records that he passed the night ‘upon a rock’ in the middle of the harbour, waiting for the ship that was to carry him away. Pereira sent agents after him, and he was twice arrested in Germany; supposedly he had stolen a number of sensitive documents. But Christina had given her own instructions to Macedo’s pursuers: ‘If you find him,’ she had said, ‘pretend you haven’t.’ And to ensure a quick passage through his many ports of call, she had provided him with a passport letter signed in her own hand. With such a guarantor, he could not long be detained by any authorities, and by the end of October he was safely in Rome. Christina had enjoyed the intrigue, but she does not seem to have thought very carefully about the consequences of adding her personal signature to Macedo’s passport – perhaps, at this stage, she did not much care. But a Jesuit priest, a fugitive from his own embassy, travelling to Rome in the service of the Queen of fiercely Protestant Sweden, could hardly pass unnoticed. Though Macedo’s lips were sealed, Christina’s own signature hinted at the great secret, and within a few weeks, rumours of her imminent conversion had taken root.
The letter itself, which Macedo had carried for her to Rome, made no direct mention of it, for the risk of interception was too great. It spoke only of more general things, but its tone, and indeed the very fact of its existence, would have been enough to raise the most acute alarm had it been known in Sweden. It was addressed to Father Goswin Nickel, acting General of the ‘illustrious Company’ of Jesuits, Gustav Adolf’s ‘Black Pope’. ‘I would count myself most happy,’ Christina wrote, ‘if I could be assured, by some persons of your Order and your nation, that you consider me, unknown to you though I am, worthy of your friendship and your correspondence. I have charged Father Macedo to make known to you what it is that I hope from you.’1
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 19