Personally, I think there is some truth in what the alchemist says, but he doesn’t know enough to carry the thing through…But let him show you what he can do, and if you don’t succeed, wait until I get back to Rome, and then I’ll be able to answer all your questions, and show you a few things which sound like fairy stories if you haven’t seen them with your own eyes…Please keep all his things for me, and take care of them – we’ll need them all one day.16
The ‘one day’ was a day of absolute fantasy. Having completely forgotten Gualdo Priorato, trudging thanklessly about the courts of Europe, she was now thinking again of raising, and leading, a Christian army against the Turks. No other prince had wanted to support her, but a solution seemed at hand: Christina would pay for it herself – with thousands of pounds of lead, all transmuted into gold.
‘Chemistry is the anatomy of nature,’ she wrote, ‘and the true key which opens every door. It brings riches, health, glory, and true wisdom to whoever understands it.’ Her own departed alchemist had understood a part of it, it seemed, and there were plenty of others to hand clamouring that they understood it all. Christina chose the loudest of them, Giuseppe Francesco Borri, a renegade Milanese physician who had recently been making an easier living among the gullible rich. Borri claimed to be in personal communication with the Archangel Michael, and while still in his home city, had formed a new sect, its first tenet being total obedience to ‘the Most High’, namely, himself. Summoned to Rome to appear before the Inquisition, he had beat a hasty retreat to Holland, and there had spent several years proselytizing successfully to the surprisingly credulous Dutch. The Inquisition had condemned him, anyway, and burned him in effigy in the Campo dei Fiori, along with copies of his heretical tracts. But the smoke signals from Rome did not deter Christina. Borri was just the kind of devil-may-care character that she had always most enjoyed, and now, angel-prompted, he came to perch awhile beneath her incautious wing.
Azzolino heard the news, and wrote to her in alarm. Borri was a charlatan and, much worse, a heretic. The Church’s most celebrated convert could not be seen to be dealing with him. For a moment, she was swayed, and forbade Borri her palace, but before she had even relayed this to the Cardinal, the order had been rescinded. Unwilling to give up her latest protégé, she sent Azzolino a letter of disingenuous defence:
I have asked all the priests here, and they have all assured me, unanimously, that I should revoke the order and that there was no reason to give it in the first place, and one of them has absolutely assured me that I could admit Borri without any scruple at all. So that means I have to put up with him just as I put up with so many others here, but anyway I’ve forbidden him to enter my chapel or to attend mass here. All the priests here told me to revoke the order. If I have done the wrong thing, I ask pardon of His Holiness, and I’m sure he will grant it, seeing my ignorance.17
And she added, as if the defence required more weight, that the Marchese Del Monte owed his life to Borri. He had been terribly ill, she said, and all the other doctors had been ‘absolutely at the end of their Latin’, and though the Marchese had not wanted Borri to attend him, nevertheless he had been ‘forced’ to accept his ministrations, with wonderful results.
The Marchese’s life was a gain, perhaps, but the ‘riches, health, glory, and true wisdom’ that Christina had hoped to reap had defied all Borri’s conjurings. For two or three thousand crowns, he had returned her ‘only Cinders and Smoak’. She let him go, consoling herself with the happier outcome of a much older project in Rome: the Duchessa di Ceri had escaped from the convent where the Pope had placed her, and was safe in the arms of her new husband, Christina’s former Grand Chamberlain and scoundrel-in-chief, Francesco Santinelli, thus achieving precisely the union that the Pope had wanted to prevent. Christina vowed she had had nothing to do with it, ‘though I know you think I have,’ she wrote to Azzolino. ‘Marriage will make them repent of their old sins – but I must admit I chuckled when I heard of it.’18
Christina had other distractions, in any case. At the Cardinal’s suggestion, she had begun to write the story of her life. It was not her first attempt to do so. Ten years before, prompted by the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s literary self-portrait, she had begun a memoir of her own, in Italian. Defeated by the language, or by her own unsteady temperament, she had abandoned the project and destroyed her rough-hewn pages. The intervening decade had seen little improvement in her written Italian – she was still relying on Father Santini, and sometimes Azzolino, too, to translate letters for her – and this time she decided to write in French. It was evidently intended to be a substantial work, and its title was certainly grand, though The Life of Queen Christina, Written by Herself, Dedicated to God does have a straightforward, Scandinavian ring to it. Azzolino was relieved to have provided some occupation for her at this restless time. She relayed her progress to him cheerily:
I have been working on the Life which you asked me to do, but the draft is such a mess that you won’t be able to read it. And I can’t bring myself to make a fair copy – in my handwriting, it wouldn’t be any better than the draft, anyway. And I don’t want to give it to anyone else until you’ve seen it, since I can’t speak of myself without speaking of you – though you’re not mentioned by name – still, you would be recognizable.19
The early chapters, though not long, are mostly about Swedish history, and gradually they move on to the lives of Gustav Adolf and his melodramatic widow. Christina acknowledges her father ‘a great man’, and her mother ‘a woman with all the virtues and weaknesses of her sex’, but not until the eighth chapter does she really begin to write about her own life. Despite a number of humble asides to the Lord, her tone is very self-assured, and she is not above telling a few lies to exaggerate her accomplishments. The dedication of the work ‘to God’ was not the result of hubris, but was instead a reference, pious or ambitious, to St Augustine, whose own celebrated Confessions were similarly dedicated. Christina liked to compare herself with the great men of the ancient world, but perhaps, too, she began the work in a spirit of humility, intending it to mirror Augustine’s passage into the light of true religion. As it stands, her Life is by no means a spiritual document; though the first chapter reads almost as a prayer, its tone is ambivalent. Even before God, Christina counts her worth: ‘Lord, you are everything, and I am nothing, but I am a nothing that you have made capable of adoring you and possessing you. I am, by your grace, the most favoured of all your creatures.’20 And she goes on to elaborate: her cleverness, her physical strength, her exalted rank, are all evidence of God’s favour.
The Life is a revealing document, showing a gifted and even noble mind overlaid by deviousness and self-deception. It is at times quite defensive, for in writing it, Christina was obliged to confront herself. Weighed in the balance, she could not have failed to notice that, on most counts, she was found wanting. Her achievements, at the the age of 41, were negligible, and compared with those of her great father, nothing at all. Her power was illusory, and her pride the insistent pride of the weak. Despite her grand conversion, she shows no real sign of spiritual development, and her regret over her abdication is palpable. ‘The present King Karl,’ she writes, ‘has no other claim to the Swedish throne than what I gave to the King his father and to him, so there is no one else in the world who has any rights at all to the Kingdom of Sweden, apart from Karl and myself.’21
Apart from her ready intelligence, it is Christina’s immaturity, striking and rather sad in a woman of her age, that starts out from the pages. If she was ever enthusiastic about the project, her enthusiasm did not last, for her Life ends abruptly, still in her childhood years. She left it unfinished, and took it up again fifteen years later, only to leave it unfinished once more.22
Christina’s Life was intended to serve a second purpose apart from keeping her occupied. Azzolino was harbouring ambitious plans for her, in which, to some extent, she herself acquiesced. Her chance for the crown of Naples had vanished long ag
o, and her own revived interest in the Regency of the Spanish Netherlands had been dashed only months before by an unexpected French invasion. But since the abdication of her cousin, Jan Kazimierz, his throne had been vacant. It was an elective monarchy, and the race was now on to find a new King for Poland-Lithuania, the largest state in Europe.
The Lithuanians, in the north of the kingdom, favoured a Russian successor, either Czar Alexis himself, or his son Feodor. This did not please the Pope, who was not anxious to see an Orthodox king ascend a longtime Roman Catholic throne; the Treaty of Westphalia had snapped the staff of Catholic power already; he did not want to see it splintered. The Czar himself was not much interested, even on his son’s behalf, so the German Prince of Lorraine was suggested, then an Austrian prince, and even Giacobo Rospigliosi, the Papal Nephew. King Louis wanted the throne for a Frenchman, the Duc de Neubourg, perhaps, or, even better, le Grand Condé – with la Grande Mademoiselle, or so she hoped at least, as his consort. Louis had in fact paid Jan Kazimierz to get him out of the way – a ‘very decent’ sum, as Jan Kazimierz himself observed. The Poles disliked all the candidates: they did not want any Frenchmen, nor any Russians, and no Germans, either. But they wanted a man, a man as redblooded as he was blueblooded – they had had more than enough of their former-monk, former-cardinal, former King.
Christina was not a man, but this did not deter her. She was at least not French, nor Russian, nor German, at least not officially. But she was Catholic, and, like Jan Kazimierz, she was a Vasa, the last legimitate representative, in fact, of the Vasa line. Her claim to the throne in consequence was quite strong; the Swedes had recognized as much on the death of the Polish Queen, fearing a marriage between the cousins that might unite the two crowns and re-Catholicize Sweden by force. Christina was not passionate about the prospect. She liked the idea of it, happily imagining herself a real Queen again, with a court, and subjects, and a royal income. But in practice, it would mean leaving Rome for good, leaving the light and the warmth, and above all, leaving the Cardinal. This was more than she was prepared to do, and at one point she went so far as to say that she would ‘become a Pole’ only if Azzolino became one, too.
It was not likely. The Cardinal was doing very well in Rome, and had hopes of doing even better. He had much to gain if Christina should be elected, and nothing but her problematic self to lose. Poland was an important crown, and Catholic zeal may have played its part in Azzolino’s calculations, but it was also a good idea to keep Christina occupied and out of the way, and he may even have hoped to play a Mazarin-like role, presumably by correspondence, in the Church’s great eastern kingdom. Whatever his reasons, the Cardinal set to with a will to promote Christina as Poland’s future Queen, relying for local negotiations on Monsignor Marescotti, the unhappy papal nuncio in Warsaw. At the Pope’s behest, Marescotti had already two rival candidates to promote – the French Duc de Neubourg and the German Prince of Lorraine – and he was not at all pleased to find himself with a third. Azzolino battled anyway to put Christina’s case: there was no prince more capable of leading an army, he insisted – well, no one apart from the Prince de Condé, and anyway no one more capable of enduring the hardships of army life – the Queen hardly needed any sleep, or even anything to eat. She was so full of martial courage – all she needed was an opportunity to prove it to the world. It seems he had been reading a draft of Christina’s Life, where she had been describing her ‘indefatigable’ self of 25 years before. ‘I could sleep perfectly well on the ground,’ she had written. ‘I ate hardly anything and slept even less. I would go two or three days without drinking at all’ – though the Cardinal stopped short of this last exaggeration. He went as far as promising that she would accept a husband, however, and almost promised she would produce a number of little Vasa princes as well. As for the question of her sex, he insisted perversely that ‘everyone regards the Queen as a man already, indeed as better than any man’.23
Marescotti protested. The Queen could not be a serious candidate. She was almost 42, and she was – well, not inclined to marriage. It was widely known that she was living off the charity of the Pope. And her way of life, her dress and her speech, and all the rabble around her palazzo, and inside it, too, not to mention the Monaldeschi affair – it would all stack the odds impossibly against her. In a long series of letters lasting many months, Azzolino did what he could to deflect the accusations, or to deny them, or to ignore them.
He might have saved his breath to cool his pappa. As Marescotti knew very well, there was no real chance of Christina’s election. Azzolino had promised him a cardinal’s hat if she should be successful, but as each of the other candidates had promised him the same, this was no incentive for extra exertion in her cause. The Pope had conveyed his own support of ‘this heroine remarkable for her piety, her wisdom, and her manly courage’, but had rather undermined it by insisting that it be kept secret unless and until Christina had won the day. Effectively, he wanted to ensure that whichever of his protegés was elected, the resulting gratitude, and diplomatic support, would flow back to Rome. Marescotti, shaking his head, took the secret to his Bishop, and there confided it under the seal of the confessional. The Bishop, it is said, on hearing Christina’s name, gave a sharp intake of breath, then crossed himself swiftly and raised his eyes to heaven.
Already besieged, Marescotti now had the Queen’s own correspondence to deflect as well. She asked him to remember that she ‘surpassed all the other candidates in birth, and perhaps in some merit’, saying that she would never have left the throne of Sweden had that been a Catholic country. The Poles should not do her the ‘injustice’, she wrote, of choosing ‘some foreigner less worthy than she to occupy the throne of her ancestors’. Finally, making a virtue of necessity, she pointed out that, at almost 42, she was not ‘of an age to marry’, nor had she any ‘inclination’ to do so. This was supposedly an advantage for the Poles, since they would have the chance of electing another king when her own life should have run its course.24 Though this was directly counter to Azzolino’s insistence that she would certainly marry, Marescotti was not concerned. The point, he felt, was academic.
Christina cared enough to follow the proceedings as the months progressed. ‘The French are only playing with the Duc de Neubourg,’ she wrote to the Cardinal. ‘They really want Condé to succeed, but their game is so subtle that the thickheaded Germans can’t see it. If His Holiness supports me, and if my sex is not an insurmountable obstacle, I think I have a good chance of succeeding. By the way, I have recommended the Duc de Neubourg myself – a good joke, isn’t it?’ But in a sense, she was only playing, perhaps on the off-chance of success, more probably to please Azzolino. She did not much care whom the Poles chose for ‘their master, or rather their slave. If God calls me to this throne,’ she wrote, ‘within two years or even less I will take on the Turks, and make my name resound with glory’, but her enthusiasm lasted no longer than a sentence: ‘But if God wills otherwise,’ she added, ‘I shall be just as happy.’25
Years later, when the need for propaganda was far in the past, Christina returned to the composition of her Life. She added some new thoughts about ruling, thoughts which she had not had, or not wanted to admit to, in the days of her efforts to claim the Polish throne. They are curious thoughts for a woman who believed that she carried her right to sovereignty personally, within herself, and who had sought no fewer than four thrones, including the one she had herself relinquished. Perhaps they were a belated justification of sorts for the abdication that she had so often regretted, or they may have been an excuse for her general failure to accomplish anything remarkable. In a way, they are a recognition of her own weaknesses, all of them attributable, or so she had decided, to the single great fault of being female:
Women should never be rulers, and I am so convinced of this, that I would have barred my daughters from the succession, if I had married. I would have loved my kingdom more than my children, and it would have been a betrayal of my kingdom
to leave it to girls. And I should be believed all the more since I am speaking against my own interest – but then, I have always made a point of speaking the truth, whatever it has cost me. It is almost impossible for a woman to be a good monarch or a good regent. Women are too ignorant, too weak in body and soul and mind. Everything that I have seen or read confirms that women who rule, or who try to rule, only make themselves ridiculous one way or the other. I myself am no exception, even though I was groomed from my cradle to be a Queen…The defect of being female is the greatest defect of all.26
The Poles, at least, were ready to agree. Though Maria Ludwika had been strong and clever and popular, they wanted a man to replace their King, and in due course they found one. Azzolino may have been disappointed, but Christina was not. When Jan Kazimierz died, in a Parisian abbey, she remarked, ‘I am glad to hear he has at least died among men. If he had died in his own country, he would have died among beasts.’27 She contented herself, or discontented herself, with contesting his will for years to come. Jan Kazimierz had owned lands in Italy, and Christina felt that she could do with the rents from them.
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 40