VIA CHRISTINA – Het boek / The book
Research
The research for the book Passage naar Rome resulted in some interesting findings.
Here the research report with an overview of the main conclusions in two chapters:
A documented and reasoned summery of troublesome errors and persistent inventions in the Christina-historiography.
New insights from the correspondence between Christina and Athanasius Kircher s.j., emerged in 1997.
Author: Frans Godfroy / © 2022.
Most recently edited:
December, 2022.
The research report is available as pdf-file: download here.
NL ENG
I. Faults and fabrications
Countless stories have been told about Christina of Sweden and most of them have stood the test of time. That does not make historical research any easier. Many of these traditions are at odds with historical reality, and it is often not immediately clear to the researcher what belongs to the wheat and what to the chaff (1). The past three centuries have shown that it is not enough to refute claims and then refer them to the realm of fables. Once they have penetrated the canon of Christina’s historiography, the ghost stories cannot simply be dispelled with such an incantation, and they keep cropping up.
The overview below is a compilation of dubious traditions and pertinent fables about Christina without claiming to be exhaustive. It is based on research conducted for the book Passage naar Rome and may be useful as a reference.
1. Descartes didn’t write ballet poems
2. Saumaise was never Rector of the University of Leiden
3. The trinity Frederik van Hessen-Eschwege
4. Christina’s equestrian portrait: ‘just’ 3,40 m high, and not in Rome but in Madrid
5. Nothing peculiar about Christina’s church-going at the Sunday of her departure from Stockholm
6. Christina’s illness soon slowed down the travelling party, but not in Brokind
7. Jumping to freedom across a non-existent frontier brook
10. Persistent rumour: Chritina’s Jewish lesbian courtesan
11. A dubious source doesn’t become more reliable when it happens to turn out well
12. Reception in Wandsbeck: not by Albert Behrens but by brother and sister Marselis
13. Fake news about Christina’s Jezuitism in the first Roman Catholic town she visited: Münster
14. Encounter with Anna Maria van Schurman: ingeniously invented
15. Before Christina’s reception by the archduke in Innsbruck, he knew about her conversion
16. Christina certainly didn’t call her public confession of faith a ‘farce’
17. Confusion about Christina’s entrance into the Papal States
18. Threesome Santinelli-Santinelli-Monaldeschi: fierce fantasies of an oversexed professor
19. Recurrent theme: Christina as shameless woman-chaser
20. ‘Crowd’ turns into ‘madwoman’ Christina, by translation error
21. Monaldeschi’s fate: lumpish executioners, lying rulers, and lazy writers
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1 Godfroy, Frans, Passage naar Rome. De opzienbarende bekeringsreis van koningin Christina van Zweden, 1654-1655, Utrecht 2022, p. 358 sqq.
1. Descartes didn’t write ballet poems
It’s a moving story. In 1649 Descartes travelled reluctantly from his cosy home in the Dutch village of Egmond to Stockholm by royal command of Queen Christina who wanted to be initiated into his philosophy. There he was kept on a string by the queen with the order to write at first the accompanying verses for a ballet. The spectacle was dedicated to the recently concluded Westphalian Peace (1648) and was called La Naissance de la Paix.
The story dates from 1691, when Adrien Baillet referred to it in his biography of Descartes without mentioning the title. (2) It was not until 1920 that the text was rediscovered and added to a new edition of Descartes’ collected works. As a result, it was given a place in historiography. (3)
That came to an end when the story was disproved in an article in Archives de Philosophie in 1990 by Richard Watson (4). In 2002, he elaborated on this question in his biography of Descartes (5). Watson points out that the attribution is based on just one postscript under a letter from Descartes to his friend Bregy in Paris, whom he informed about his adventures from Stockholm: ‘To make the package a little bigger so that it won’t get lost, I’ve added the verses of a ballet to be performed here tomorrow night.’ There is no indication whatsoever for the biographer Baillet’s assumption that Descartes himself was the writer of the verses, which would have been extremely surprising since Descartes did not write poetry. It is not so strange that Descartes added the sheets to the letter, as Watson explains on the basis of reliable sources. Descartes had probably seen the ballet La Diane Victorieuse in Stockholm together with Bregy and knew that his friend was a lover of this genre. So, he sent Bregy, who had suddenly had to leave for Paris because of the death of his father, the text of the newly programmed ballet.
Comparison with authorized cognate ballet texts suggests that Hélie Poirier, present at the Swedish court at the time, was the author. Unfortunately, Watson was unable to find direct evidence of this in the form of signatures or copies of payments.
So, even if we have to be careful with the attribution to Poirier, it has to be recognized that, based on Watson’s findings, the anecdote about the ‘ballet poet Descartes’ was sufficiently unsettled to be dismissed from now on as unreliable. Indeed, some ‘Christina authors’ put the story aside after the appearance of Watson’s article, notably Garstein (6) and Lanoye (7), who certainly would have mentioned it if it were not dubious. Moreover, Susanna Åkerman emphasized Watson’s conclusions and elaborated on their significance in her book. (8) Predictably, the message had been passed by less serious authors, such as Veronica Buckley, who in her Christina biography has made little effort to verify sources and has mainly limited herself to the uncontrolled copying of juicy anecdotes by others. (9)
More surspisingly, in his book Descartes – Zijn Nederlandse Jaren Dutch philosopher Hans Dijkhuis unconditionally retold the sory of ballet poet Descartes in 2022. (10) That is all the more notable because elsewhere in his book the author relies amply on the biography of Richard Watson: so, he must be aware that the claim in controversial.
Yet, Dijkhuis doesn’t supply any justification. He fantasizes about the intentions of the poet Descartes with the text: ‘Descartes himself undoubtedly used his own experiences in Germany for some passages in The Birth of Peace, a poem on rhyme he made for the Swedish Queen Christina for a ballet performed at the Stockholm court in late 1649 to celebrate the Peace of Westphalia. He described a ravaged earth, where forests had been cut down, cities and castles had been destroyed, and fields had been abandoned; what he said in the poem by the Estropiés, the war invalids, undoubtedly came from his heart: “Whoever sees what has become of us, and thinks that war is beautiful, or is worth more than peace, he is mutilated in his braincase”.’ Ignoring Watson’s solid argumentation that warrants the conclusion that the verses most likely did not flow from the pen of Descartes but from that of a true poet: Poirier.
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2 Baillet, Adrien, La Vie de Monsieur Descartes, Vol. II (1691), p. 395.
3 Descartes, René, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam et Tannery, Tome V, Paris 1974, p. 616-627.
4 Watson, Richard A., ‘René Descartes n’est pas l’auteur de “La Naissance de la paix” ‘, in: Archives de Philosophie, juilliet-septembre 1990, Vol. 53, No. 3, La Politique Cartésienne, p. 389-401.
5 Watson, Richard A., Cogito, Ergo Sum. The Life of René Descartes, Boston, 2002, p. 303-304.
6 Garstein, Oskar, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden, 1622-1656, Vol. IV, Leiden 1992.
7 Lanoye, Diederik, Christina van Zweden. Koningin op het schaakbord van Europa, 1626-1689, Louvain 2001.
8 Åkerman, Susanna, Queen Christina of Sweden and her circle. The transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine, Leiden 1991, p. 48.
9 Buckley, Veronica, Christina, koningin van Zweden, Amsterdam 2004, (Dutch translation of: Christina, Queen of Sweden, London 2004) p. 132-133.
10 Dijkhuis, Hans, Descartes. Zijn Nederlandse jaren, Amsterdam 2022, p. 37 and p. 407.
2. Saumaise was never Rector of the University of Leiden
About the stay of the French Calvinist and philologist Claude Saumaise at Christina’s court, Garstein writes: ‘In the end he consented to pass more than one year in Stockholm, but he refused to settle there permanently or to resign his post as Rector of Leyden University, to which position he had been elevated a few years earlier.’ (11) And about his return to Leiden: ‘He was unable to prolong his leave of absence from his post as Rector of Leyden University, and so was forced to quit the country.’ (12)
However, Saumaise was never Rector of the University of Leiden. He was professor there from 1632 until his death in 1653. He got the special title ‘Academiae Lugduni Batavorum Decus’ (Jewel of the University of Leiden) and held a priority position in the Senate. (13)
In the historiography of Christina, Saumaise’s position in Leiden may be a minor point, but in that of Saumaise itself and the University of Leiden, it is of essential importance. Saumaise’s status in the Senate was a source of contention and intrigue. Notorious are the continuing quarrels between Claude Saumaise and Daniel Heinsius. Ironically, Daniel’s son Nicolaas, together with his companion Isaac Vossius, came under Saumaise’s feet at Christina’s court. (14)
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11 Garstein, p. 575-576.
12 ibid., p. 642
13 Biografisch Lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme.
14 Vrieze, F.S. de, ‘Academic Relations between Sweden and Holland’, in: Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century. An Exchange of Learning, Leiden 1975, p. 345-365.
3. The trinity Frederik van Hessen-Eschwege
Mistaken identity is one of the kinds of errors that should keep a serious historian awake. Unlike in novels, in which the number of names is deliberately kept within limits so that the readers – and the authors themselves – can remember who is who, the number of main and secondary characters in a historical work can quickly get out of hand. Hence the register of persons, which should not be missing in such a book. The book Passage naar Rome, from which you are now consulting the list of errors and fables about Christina, contains nearly 400 personal names, not counting those mentioned only in the source list or the notes. Whether or not the writer has actually mixed-up people or not, it doesn’t even matter; he will lie awake. After all, someone can always ring the bell if a Janszoon appears to have been confused with a Pieterszoon or an Urbanus IV with an Urbanus V. Even more attention is recommended when a duke in the duchy that he inherited from his grandfather was called Carlo II of Gonsaga and in the duchy that he took over from his father Carlo III of Gonsaga (15). Also be wary when two brawlers in Schleswig-Holstein, namely the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and his liege lord, the King of Denmark, are both named Frederick III. (16) And so sometimes things go wrong.
A special case of mistaken identity occurs in Diederik Lanoye’s book about Christina’s stay in the Spanish Netherlands: an amalgamation of three people into one. This trinity, referred to by Lanoye as Frederik van Hessen-Eschwege, figures as a distant relative of Christina, who converted from Calvinism to Catholicism, and ultimately as a cardinal charged to accompany her for the last few miles to Rome. (17) First and foremost: the Von Hessen family has provided a very treacherous banana skin here, over which Lanoye unfortunately slipped. Still, after some research into the history of the Von Hessen dynasty, the puzzle can be solved. Friedrich von Hessen-zu Eschwege, as he is called in German, was indeed related to Queen Christina, albeit by marriage: his wife Eleonora Catharina was a cousin of Christina and sister of Karl Gustav, who would succeed Christina. Curiously, while Christina was still queen and secretly preparing her own conversion, she wrote a letter of warning to Friedrich that he should not convert to Catholicism. Christina did this at the request of her cousin, the crown prince, who was afraid of popish influences in the Swedish royal family through his sister Eleonora Catharina. That fear was caused by the fact that a brother of Friedrich, Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels, had converted to the Catholic faith with his whole family. The fear that Friedrich would follow that example turned out to be unfounded; he was not interested at all. (18) So Friedrich was the relative by marriage and his brother Ernst was the convert.
Unfortunately, causing Lanoye more confusion, the third Von Hessen was also called Friedrich, although his second surname sounded clearly different. We are talking about Friedrich von Hessen-Darmstadt, who belonged to another branch of the Von Hessen dynasty. He converted to the Catholic faith at the age of twenty and embarked on a Roman career that ultimately earned him the Cardinal’s hat. This Cardinal von Hessen-Darmstadt was honourably tasked with leading Queen Christina into Rome. (19) Less than six months later, His Eminence already regretted this when she publicly wiped the floor with him in a pamphlet against the Spanish-Habsburg lobby. (20)
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15 Godfroy, p. 393, n. 60.
16 ibid., p. 97.
17 Lanoye, p. 126-127, 147 en 184.
18 Godfroy, p. 63-64.
19 ibid., p. 249, 250, 258, 259, 358.
20 ibid., p. 293.
4. Christina’s equestrian portrait: ‘just’ 3,40 m high, and not in Rome but in Madrid
You may not only copy other people’s mistakes, but also your own. The Museo del Prado in Madrid demonstrated this by retaining a typo in the painting catalogue from 1920 in all subsequent printed catalogues up to 1996. The height of the equestrian portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden by Sébastien Bourdon had to be typed at 3.38 m, but it was accidentally types at 3.83 m. After 1996, the catalogue entered the digital age, and the error was finally discovered and corrected: 3.40 m is read now, still two centimetres higher than the measurement that was noted until 1920.
That everyone blindly trusts the measurements printed in a museum’s catalogue is apparent from all the publications through which the canvas passed over the course of the twentieth century. In each case, the colossal dimensions were mentioned: no less than 3.83 m tall. That was significant, because the painting was extra impressive because of its size, and, moreover, in 1653, the transport from Stockholm to Madrid had been a hell of a job. The height of another painting that had hung next to it in the Alcazar’s dining room for years, the equestrian portrait of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria on the battlefield of Lützen in 1633 by Peter Paul Rubens, was apparently overlooked by art historians. That was also 3.40 m high, and that is why the two canvases had hung together so beautifully. (21)
At least as remarkable is another misconception about Christina’s equestrian portrait. In her biography Queen Christina (1968), Georgina Masson wrote that the canvas was a favourite of the Queen, which is why she had it hanging in her bedroom at Palazzo Riario in Rome. According to Masson, this was stated on the inventory list of the household effects after Christina’s death in 1689. (22) How she arrived at that misreading – the painting is not on that list – we do not know exactly due to the lack of an accurate source reference. In her book, Masson shows no knowledge of the 1653 shipment of the painting from Stockholm to King Philip IV in Madrid, or of the fact that, apart from a single exhibition loan in the twentieth century, it never left Spain.
The copycat biographer Veronica Buckley is even more wrong with this slip-up: she made it the motto for the cover of her book (2004) with the canvas, noting, ‘This was her favourite portrait, which hung in her bedroom until the end of her life.’ (23)
But alas! It was never in Rome. In 1653, it went as a gift from Christina in Stockholm to King Philip IV in Madrid and can still be admired there in the Museo del Prado, provided with the now corrected dimensions in the catalogue. (24)
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21 Bottineau, Yves, ‘L’Alcazar de Madrid et l’inventaire de 1686. Aspects de la cour d’Espagne au XVIIe siècle’, afl. 4, in: Bulletin Hispanique, jrg. 60 1958 nr. 3. Bordeaux 1958, p. 292. Bayton, Gloria Fernández (ed.), Inventarios reales. Testamentaria del rey Carlos II. 1701-1703, Vol. I. Madrid 1975, p. 40-41.
22 Masson, Georgina, Queen Christina, London 1968, p. 313.
23 Buckley, p. 7.
24 More on this subject in the essay The Secrets of Christina’s Equestrian Portrait by Frans Godfroy elsewhere on this website.
5. Nothing peculiar about Christina’s church-going at the Sunday of her departure from Stockholm
When Queen Christina began her journey south on June 11, 1654, a few days after her abdication, no one in Sweden knew that she intended to convert to the Catholic faith. The few initiates were elsewhere in Europe, and her intention had to remain secret for the time being. According to some historians, she publicly attended a Lutheran communion service just before her departure to show everyone that there was nothing wrong with that.
But what do these researchers base themselves on?
Curt Weibull mentioned the sacrament meeting in his 1966 English-language book (25), not in his 1931 Swedish book, on which that English-language edition is largely based (26). Unfortunately, the Swedish book does, but the English book does not contain notes, so we cannot determine from which source he drew.
Did he perhaps borrow the story from Linage de Vauciennes, the only contemporary source where it can be found? ‘Having learned that the ministers had spread the rumour among the people that she left the kingdom with the intention of becoming a Catholic and that she had to be kept in the country to prevent that, she stayed up on purpose Sunday in Stockholm to participate in the sacrament meeting in the main church, as a sign that that rumour was false and that she was a very good Lutheran,’ it says. (27)
The problem is, Curt Weibull had concluded that the later volumes of Linage de Vauciennes, written by François Picques, secretary of the French embassy in Stockholm, are completely unreliable. Curt’s findings were based on research initiated by his father, Martin Weibull. (28) The quote about the sacrament meeting is taken from the unreliable writings of Picques. Anyone who takes a critical look at his texts has to agree. They contain numerous unproven anecdotes and gossip, which often portray Christina and the Spanish ambassador Pimentel in a less favourable light, and interpretations based on half-truths or less.
The latter certainly also applies to the quote about Christina’s church-going, where Picques seems to know exactly what hidden agenda she had in staying ‘on purpose’ in Stockholm for Lutheran worship on the Sunday of her departure, while there is no proof whatsoever. Christina probably went to church every Sunday. Perhaps she usually went to the palace chapel, but the court also had reserved seats in the Storkyrkan, Stockholm’s ‘main church’. Did she mean to pretend to be a good Lutheran? Surely. But she had always had that intention, especially since she had been keeping the secret for three years that she had decided to become a Catholic. Going to the Lutheran church on Sundays? There was little else to do.
When asked whether Weibull gave up his critical attitude towards Picques for a while and in this case relied on his dubious testimony, it must be argued in Weibull’s defence that he omitted Picques’s conspiracy theory. He merely stated that the Queen ‘on Sunday, June 11, took part in sacrament meeting at the Storkyrkan in the capital’.
In that regard, the treatment of this passage by two other authors got more seriously derailed.
Garstein, who fully endorses the criticism of Picques’s method (29), must have been delighted when, instead of his version, he found another peg on which he thought he could hang Christina’s church attendance on June 11, 1654 (30): two letters by Christina’s librarian and Latin teacher Nicolaas Heinsius. In these writings, he reported to his correspondence friends Carolus Datus and Cassian Puteus of Christina’s abdication and departure from Stockholm. (31) The curious thing is that neither letter mentions a sacrament meeting that Christina is said to have attended. How, then, does Garstein arrive at this erroneous reference? It seems that a sloppy translation from Latin in one of the letters is the cause. Heinsius wrote to Puteus: ‘Postero die sacramentum Regi est praestitum a quatuor Regni Ordinibus; …’ The words sacramentum Regi here refer to the oath of allegiance that the four estates of the country (a quatuor Regni Ordinibus) took to the new king, Karl X Gustav, the day after the enthronement. Garstein seems to have seen the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in it without ascertaining how that term fit into the rest of the sentence. He immediately adopted the interpretation that Picques had given to it. Referring to the two letters, he writes: ‘According to one contemporary source she put in an appearance at the Lutheran Communion Table, receiving the Sacrament in public, it is believed the last time.’ It remains unclear who he means by ‘one contemporary source’: Picques or Heinsius?
‘In order to reassure the Swedish king, she did everything she could not to give offense and to dispel the rumours of her imminent conversion,’ Lanoye wrote in his book about Christina’s episode in the Spanish Netherlands, citing the same two letters as his source: ‘Her librarian Nicolaas Heinsius mentions in his letters that the queen had appeared at the Lutheran supper during the last days of her stay in Stockholm. This would be one of the first times the Queen had gone against her new beliefs.’ (32)
However, Heinsius does not mention such an event anywhere. Moreover, it was neither one of the first times (Lanoye) nor the last time (Garstein) that Christina attended a Lutheran church service leading up to her conversion. Presumably for the last time, Christina attended a sacrament meeting a few weeks later at the Lutheran Petrus Church in Hamburg, where she sat down with relatives and acquaintances. (33)
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25 Weibull, Curt, Christina of Sweden, Stockholm 1966, p. 92.
26 Weibull, Curt, Drottning Christina. Studier och forskningar, Stockholm 1931.
27 Linage de Vauciennes, Pierre, Mémoires de ce qui c’est passéen Suède, et aux provinces voisins, depuis l’année 1645 jusques en l’année 1655. Tirez des depesches de M. Chanut, Vol III, Paris 1675, p. 445.
28 Weibull, Martin, ‘Drottning Kristina och Klas Tott’, in: Lunds Universitets Års-skrift, Vol. 29. Lund 1894, p. 3-6. Garstein, p. 537-538.
29 Garstein, p. 537-538.
30 ibid., p. 723.
31 Heinsius, Nicolaas, letter to Carolus Datus, Uppsala 19 juni 1654 and letter to Cassianus Puteus, Uppsala 19 juni 1654, in: Clarorum Belgarum Epistolae ad Magliabechium, Vol I (1745), p. 199 en 205.
32 Lanoye, p. 41.
33 Hamburgensie Nr 1128/Tratziger Chronik, bis 1699, Das Editionsprojekt hamburger-chronik.de, p. 420-421.
6. Christina’s illness soon slowed down the travelling party, but not in Brokind
Christina had to interrupt her trip after only a few days because of a lung infection. The seventeenth-century chronicler Gualdo Priorato, who wrote a book about Christina’s conversion journey from Stockholm to Rome in 1656, states that she rested for eight days at the home of the nobleman Natt och Dag, eight Swedish miles south of Jönköping. There are no further indications. (34) Which descendant of this well-known Swedish family offered her hospitality, and where exactly was that house located? The Natt och Dag family lived in Brokind, Östergötland, which is thirteen miles (about 140 km) northeast of Jönköping rather than eight Swedish miles (about 85 km) south of it: quite a deviating direction. On the other hand historians couldn’t find houses of the family in the region of Småland indicated by Gualdo Priorato around 1654. This problem was solved in various ways by different authors.
Garstein and Lanoye omit Christina’s breakdown in their story. Garstein even writes: ‘…she travelled at great speed south-westwards across Sweden to Halmstad close to the Danish frontier’ (35) and according to Lanoye ‘she hastily crossed the south of Sweden to the province of Halland’ (36). The company covered considerable distances per travel day indeed, but on an average it went rather slowly because of the delay caused by the queen’s illness. However, the delay probably didn’t amount to eight days, as Gualdo Priorato points out, but four or five. (37)
Both father and son Weibull mention the delay, but they suppose that Christina recovered at the residence of the Natt och Dag family in Brokind. (38) Unfortunately, that location in no way fits into Christina’s itinerary or the route Gualdo Priorato describes. One might imagine she took a detour for granted because she became ill during the journey and needed a bed. But that’s neither very plausible because she had just had a rest day at the royal castle of Linköping, two and a half miles to the north, where she might have been better off staying or returning. (39)
So, we had to look further for members of the Natt och Dag family in the indicated region, Småland, about eight miles south of Jönköping. We did, eventually, discover one, and it was not the least. Carl Persson Natt och Dag, a member of the Swedish Riksdag, lived in the manor house Toftaholm, which belonged to his mother, in 1654. (40) Direct evidence that Christina stayed there is lacking, but Toftaholm was at least at the indicated location.
A small complication: Carl Persson Natt och Dag wasn’t able to receive Christina in person, as he was in Uppsala at the time for the Riksdag. (41) Perhaps his wife had observed the honours.
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34 Gualdo Priorato, Galeazzo, Historia della Sacra Real Maestà di Christina Alessandra, Regina di Svetia &c., Rome 1656, Book 1, p. 36-37.
35 Garstein, p. 723.
36 Lanoye, p. 35.
37 Godfroy, p. 379, n. 54.
38 Weibull, Martin, p. 23, n. 2. Weibull, Curt, 1966, p. 93.
39 Godfroy, p. 378-379, n. 53.
40 Rosman, Holger, Bjärka-Säby och des ägare, Stockholm 1923-1927, Vol II, p. 77-140.
41 Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagprotokoll, 1652-1654, p. 161-278.
7. Jumping to freedom across a non-existent frontier-brook
Often contradicting gossip is like rowing against the tide, but occasionally it has effect. For example, hardly any author still claims that Queen Christina, arriving at the stream south of the small town of Laholm that formed the frontier between Sweden and Denmark, would have jumped over it while crying ‘Free at last and out of Sweden, where I hope to never return again’. As an exception, the French professor Bernard Quilliet maintained it in 1982 in his biography of the queen, filled with gossip and erotic fantasies. (42)
Already in 1892, Martin Weibull gave short shrift to this umpteenth invention of the French embassy secretary, François Picques. (43) That was not difficult. Just by pointing to the map of 1654, he was able to show that there was no stream at all on the frontier. (44)
Yet the anecdote is still mentioned not only by Quilliet, but most other Christina authors, although they do indicate that it is a fable.
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42 Quilliet, Bernard, Christina van Zweden. Een uitzonderlijke vorst, Schoten 1987 (translation of: Christine de Suède, Parijs 1982), p. 195.
43 Linage de Vauciennes, Vol. III, p. 461.
44 Weibull, Martin, p. 23, n. 2.
8. Danish fairy-tales (1)
Christina’s passage through Denmark already created Danish fairy tales long before Hans Christian Andersen put that country with it on the map, . One of these came from the secretary of the French embassy in Stockholm, François Picques. As we saw before, in his writings, the latter liked to target Queen Christina and Ambassador Pimentel, who had been added to her by the Spanish King Philip IV and whom she seemed very fond of. She had founded for Pimentel the Order of the Amaranthe, whose members had to promise not to marry — or at least not to marry again — and in which, except for Christina, only her chosen lords were admitted. Picques was not one of them. (45) Picques’ fairy tale was inspired by that intriguing society, and it could be summarized as follows.
Once upon a time there was a queen, Christina, who was unhappy with her throne and with her faith, and therefore left her country under false pretences and in disguise. When she had just crossed the border, she felt so liberated that she became intoxicated with joy and behaved very strangely, even stranger than she had already behaved when she ruled her own country. Dressed as a man, she ended up with her traveling companions in an inn, where the meal was eaten. For dessert, she ordered a glass of wine. In the middle of the dining room, she got down on her knees and made a toast to the beauty of the fire. She then ordered the rest of the party to do the same. The colour of the ribbon of the Amaranthe Society was the colour of fire, and it signified that a toast was made to Pimentel’s health. So far François Picques. (46)
It is questionable whether Picques really intended to make his readers believe in this unlikely story. It seems more like sour mockery.
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45 Godfroy, p. 95.
46 Linage de Vauciennes, Vol. III, p. 461.
9. Danish fairy-tales (2)
Madame du Noyer, born Anne-Marguerite Petit, was known throughout Europe. She was born when Queen Christina was 36, so the two were more or less contemporaries. There may also have been some kind of soul mate, because like Christina, Madame du Noyer converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, although she would later convert back to Protestantism. She has been called the first female journalist in Europe and is known for her impressive production. No wonder that her stories can be found in many historical books about the period in which she lived (1663-1719). However, there is a problem: her texts are not always reliable. She liked to embellish history, and unchecked gossip and rumours easily found their way into her writings, if only they were tasty enough. The second Danish fairy tale that we consider, therefore, flowed from her pen. Here’s a brief overview, and if it resembles other fairy tales, that is no mistake: fairy tales often have striking similarities.
Once upon a time there was a queen, Christina, who was unhappy with her throne and with her faith, and therefore left her country under false pretences and in disguise. When she had just crossed the border, she felt so liberated that she became intoxicated with joy and behaved very strangely, even stranger than she had already behaved when she ruled her own country. Dressed as a man, she ended up with her traveling companions in an inn, where the meal was eaten. The neighbouring country where she was now, Denmark, also had a queen, Sophia Amalia, although she had become queen by marrying the king. So, it was difficult to compare with the majestic position of Christina, who had ruled her country herself and had abdicated on her own initiative while retaining her royal status.
There was no war going on at the moment, but the relationship between the two countries and their royal houses wasn’t very warm. Sophia Amalia had heard that Christina was traveling incognito with some horsemen through her country, disguised as a man. She had also learned which inn the party would eat at that day, and she decided to repay the Swedish intruder with the same coin. Sophia Amalia could disguise herself as well. She put on a waitress dress and took over the service at the inn that day. During the meal, Christina chatted with her companions, dragging the Danish king, whom she didn’t like, through the mud. Afterwards, she learned that the waitress, who had heard everything, was the Danish queen. But it didn’t bother Christina, and she said: ‘Then happened to her, which happens to most curious people. They make discoveries that don’t make them happy.’ (47)
After reading such a story, one can imagine that Madame de Noyer was known throughout Europe for her entertaining journalism. A serious historian, however, will not attach any value to this account. Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century diplomat and historian Charles de Burenstam, who wrote a book about Queen Christina’s stay in the Spanish Netherlands, took it for granted. (48)
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47 Noyer, Anne Marguerite du, Lettres Historiques et Galantes, Vol III, London 1757, p. 186-187.
48 Burenstam, Charles de, La reine Christine de Suède à Bruxelles et à Anvers, Brussels 1891, p. 5.
10. Persistent rumour: Jewish lesbian courtesan for Christina
Some historians apply scientific standards for research remarkably free. For example, the well-known French historian and member of the Académie Française, Bernard Quilliet, in his biography Christine de Suède, un roi exceptionel (1982, 2007) constantly draws from notoriously unreliable sources. (49)
A salient example is the story that in Hamburg, where Christina stayed during her conversion trip for some time with her Jewish banker Diego Texeira, she was provided with a lesbian courtesan named Rachel, a cousin of Diego. Quilliet was probably well aware of the shaky foundation on which this tradition rests, for he avoids mentioning the original source, although the passage in question in his book (50) bears striking resemblance to the anonymous 17th century scandal pamphlet, full of fabrications and slanders, in which we read: ‘…elle devint amoureuse d’une Juifve, qu’elle menoit publiquement dans son carosse, et qu’elle faisoit coucher quelques fois avec elle’. (51)
Among Christina’s numerous Hamburg enemies, this story has been retold and re-detailed over the centuries. Quilliet also draws from this. He refers to an obscure 19th-century publication from that area, for which neither the title nor the author – one Konrad Danelius – can be found in contemporary library catalogues. It tells us that the Jewish lady was the cousin of Diego Texeira, ‘a very beautiful, young brown woman named Rachel Sylw or Silva, a renowned lesbian who had already given so much pleasure to several distinguished ladies in the city and the castles of the area’. According to Danelius, she had to appear afterwards before a family council to account for her services to Christina, which doesn’t make much sense given the professional reputation she already had. She is said to have replied that her work on behalf of ‘one of the most glorious queens of Europe is more honour than shame’. (52)
Quilliet serves it all up without any restriction. Nor is he bothered by the anti-Semitic context of the allegations, which characterized the attitude of Lutheran Hamburg towards the Jewish community and the Texeira family in particular. (53)
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49 Haffemayer, Stéphane, review Bernard Quilliet – Christine de Suède, 2003. See also the examples in this overview.
50 Quilliet, p. 111.
51 Recueil de quelques Pieces Curieuses, Servant à l’Esclaircissement de l’Histoire de la Vie de la Reine Christine. Ensemble plusieurs Voyages qu’elle à faites. Keulen 1668, p. 44.
52 Danelius, Konrad, Christina von Schweden als Königin, Cottbus 1866-1868, p. 79. Untraceable at WorldCat, but cited by Quilliet, p. 111-112.
53 Stern, Selma, Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus. Tübingen 2001, p.94-103.
11. A dubious source doesn’t become more reliable when it happens to turn out well
In volume 4 of his standard work, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, the Norwegian historian Oskar Garstein made an important contribution to the critical analysis of all that has been transmitted concerning Queen Christina. His systematic examination of the numerous historical sources is of great value. (54) He makes reservations about many of those sources and dismisses some as completely unreliable. The latter category includes two anonymous libels from 1655, attributed to A.H. Saint-Maurice, La Genie de la Reyne Christine and Brief Relation de la Vie de Christine, Reyne de Suède, jusque à la demission de sa Couronne et son arrivement à Bruxelles. Others had already preceded Garstein in his criticism, and nowadays Saint-Maurice is no longer regarded as a serious historical source. (55)
However, even Garstein sometimes seems unable to resist the temptation to put aside such disapproving judgment for a good-sounding story. It can be read in La Genie de la Reyne Christine. When Christina arrived in Hamburg, she chose to move in with her Jewish banker, Diego Texeira (‘un Medecin Juif’, Saint-Maurice writes). Some senators were outraged by this, and ministers from the pulpit shamed her for staying with ‘an enemy of Jesus Christ’. The queen is said to have responded to the criticism that Jesus, himself Jewish, had been dealing with Jews all his life. (56)
Perhaps Garstein thought it was a nice statement from Christina in which she distanced herself from anti-Semitism, and so he adopted it all the same. (57) But it comes from an unreliable libel directed against Christina, and the question is whether it was all meant so kindly. After all, the story emphasized the criticism of the ministers once again, and Christina’s reaction may have been smart, but it was also quite impertinent of her to align herself with Jesus. The final remark of Saint-Maurice is there for a reason: ‘Jugez vous mesmes de la response.’ [‘Judge the answer for yourself.’]
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54 Garstein, p. 525-546.
55 ibid., p. 537.
56 Saint-Maurice, A.H., Brieve Relation de la Vie de Christine, Reyne de Suède, jusque à la demission de sa Couronne et son arrivement à Bruxelles, Paris 1655. p. 10-11.
57 Garstein, p. 725.
12. Reception in Wandsbeck not by Albert Behrens but by brother and sister Marselis
How easily mistakes penetrate into historiography becomes clear from Hermann Kellenbenz’s contribution to Christina’s adventures in Hamburg in the collection Queen Christina of Sweden – Documents and Studies (1966). He writes that Queen Christina, on the last day of her stay in Hamburg in July 1654, allowed herself to be celebrated with a large party ‘by the Danish representative in Hamburg and lord of the castle of Wandsbeck, the wealthy Albert Balthasar Berens’ in this residence. (58) Kellenbenz probably derived this from the as reliable considered contemporary Hamburger Chroniken, which he names as one of his sources: ‘… da sie zu Wandsbeck auf Albert Balzar Behren’s Hoffe vom Landt Grafen von heßen, und andern hohen Standes persohnen tractiret worden,…’, we read there. (59) So, Kellenbenz seems to have a good source. However, his information is incorrect. Albert Behrens had been dead for about two years at the time of the reception. (60) Perhaps the castle was still referred to by his name. In that case, the information in the chronicle was technically correct, though it naturally misled subsequent researchers.
If Kellenbenz had checked the information, he would have found interesting data. He would have seen that the widow of Behrens was a sister of the Dutch merchant Leonard Marselis. Christina had met Duke Frederick III of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp shortly before her arrival in the city, at Leonard’s estate Ottensen, in connection with the marriage of one of Frederick’s daughters to the Swedish king. (61) Leonard Marselis was a very important moneylender to both the King of Denmark and the Duke. The trading house of the late Albert Behrens was now continued by a company run by the widow, Elisabeth, and her brother, Leonard Marselis. Christina was therefore received in Wandsbeck for the second time by members of the powerful Dutch merchant family Marselis, which was allied with Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. (62)
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58 Kellenbenz, Hermann, ‘Königin Christina und ihre Beziehungen zu Hamburg’, in: Platen, Magnus von (ed.), Queen Christina of Sweden. Documents and Studies. Stockholm 1966, p. 189.
59 Hamburgensie Nr. 1128/ Handschriftliche sogenannte Traziger Chronik, fortgeführt/ bis 1699. Das Editionsproject hamburger-chronik.de, p. 421.
60 Amburger, Erik, Die Familie Marselis. Studien zur russischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Gießen 1957, p. 55.
61 Godfroy, p. 98-99.
62 Amburger, p. 55.
13. Fake news about Christina’s Jezuitism in the first Roman Catholic town she visited: Münster
With her abdication, conversion, and the actions that followed, Queen Christina aroused much resistance and provoked gossip and smear campaigns. The contamination of the tradition is largely caused by the related falsifications. These became part of the historiography by way of various shortcuts. A handy peg was the travel story by the chronicler Gualdo Priorato, which appeared as early as 1656. To the adventures of the queen recorded by him, her enemies later added smooth and evil concoctions.
An example is the story of Christina’s visit to the Paulinum Jesuit College in Münster, the first Catholic city she visited during her journey south. In Gualdo Priorato’s Historia we read about this: after an overnight stay in the city, she visited the college and the church of the Jesuits incognito, where she was recognized by one of the Fathers who had a portrait of her. But he didn’t want to take away from her the pleasure of traveling incognito, and so he kept quiet about it. (63)
The visit takes a completely different turn in an ‘anonymous letter to an unknown confrere’, supposedly written by one of the Jesuits in Münster and published by Arckenholtz. According to that writing, Christina made herself known to the fathers, was taken around the convent, and entered into a debate with them. She also sat in the refectory, where she was not very polite. After she had been poured a glass of wine, she took a sip and threw the remnant away with a wide gesture, saying, ‘I’m not a big wine drinker’. Then she gave the fathers a donation of one hundred ducats and left. (64)
From this story arises an image of Christina, which Lutheran ministers in Northern Europe liked to present to their believers: she shared with the hated Jesuits, and moreover, she did not know how to behave majestically. But it is a highly improbable representation. It is not at all obvious that Christina and her travelling companions made such a spectacle of their visit to the Jesuits in Münster, if only because they still had a lot of Protestant territory to pass and had no interest in stirring up feelings there. The anonymous sender and the anonymous recipient make the whole thing even weaker. Nevertheless, it turns up here and there as true, such as with the 19th-century English author Bain, who copies many dubious stories uncritically. (65)
Garstein underscores the implausibility by pointing out that it is inconceivable that a public reception of the Queen should not have been recorded in the annals of the Jesuits, who, in accordance with the rules of the Order, record every event of any significance. But then he runs on as he speculates about how this fable came about. He points out that the name Münster is reflected in the name Neumünster. Christina had gone there to meet the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and his daughters in order to find a bride for her cousin King Karl X Gustav. Portraits were also involved on that occasion; they were sent to the groom-to-be. (66) How far can you look? Meanwhile, the origin of the story is up for grabs in the austere but believable version by Gualdo Priorato, whom Garstein considers to be a very reliable source elsewhere.
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63 Gualdo Priorato, Book 2, p. 44-45.
64 Arckenholtz, Johann, Mémoires concerant Christine, reine de Suède, pour servire d’éclaircissement à l’histoire de son règne et principalement de sa vie privée et aux événements de son temps civile et literaire, Amsterdam & Leipzig 1751-1760. Vol. II (1751), Appendice p. 104-106 (No. 54).
65 Bain, F.W., Christina, Queen of Sweden, London 1890, p. 248.
66 Garstein, p. 729.
14. Encounter with Anna Maria van Schurman: ingeniously invented
A fabrication wrapped in a good-sounding story finds acceptance more easily. A successful example of this can be found in Gynaeceum doctum, which was published in 1682 by the Lutheran University of Wittenberg. The history in question is so well-conceived that it is taken still seriously by some, despite the fact that what it claims, cannot possibly be true.
Queen Christina is said to have visited the Calvinist Anna Maria van Schurman, who lived in Utrecht, on her way south. Van Schurman was already known as a savant in her own time. She had championed women’s right to higher education. It was tolerated that she attended lectures at Utrecht University from behind a curtain due to her exceptional intelligence and inquisitiveness. She was therefore in an exceptional position, as studying was actually reserved for men. To this day, she is honoured by Utrecht University as the very first female student.
According to Gynaeceum doctum, Christina, accompanied by some Jesuits, paid a visit to this wise woman from the Low Countries. Christina and the fathers used the opportunity to challenge Anna Maria on all kinds of theological issues, but she was not deterred. The Jesuits were amazed by this and asked her if she was sometimes helped by a house spirit. Anna Maria replied: ‘Certainly, it is the spirit through which I live and breathe.’ (67)
The book was a compendium of learned women. The author, Pascius, has documented all the entries well with citations, but it is striking that the story about the meeting between Christina and Anna Maria lacks such a reference. That doesn’t seem like a coincidence, because it couldn’t possibly have happened as described. Queen Christina had only visited Utrecht once in her life, namely in 1654 on her way from Hamburg to Antwerp. At the time she was not accompanied by any Jesuits. Only her chamberlain Wolf, her chief equerry Steinberg, and three servants travelled with her. None of them knew about her conversion plan. There were no initiates in the group that followed her either. Furthermore, Christina’s alleged visit to the very antipope Anna Maria accompanied by Jesuits would have caused a huge scandal in the Calvinist republic. Even during Christina’s stay in the Spanish Netherlands, there is no indication of such an encounter. It is inconceivable that this would not have been mentioned in the annals of Gualdo Priorato or in the official messages of ambassadors Montecuccoli, Pimentel and internuncio Mangelli.
The story nevertheless became very popular in Protestant circles and was passed on in the eighteenth century by the Lutheran writers Paullini and Mollerus, in the nineteenth century by the Reformed minister Schotel and in the early twentieth century by the English biographer Una Birch. The story recurs in a slimmed-down form for various Christina authors: apparently it was recognized that the presence of Jesuits was not a real possibility, so it was a meeting without these Catholic clergy, but contemporary sources are not mentioned. According to De Burenstam the two women exchanged letters, but there is no trace of such correspondence. Everything indicates that a meeting between Christina and Anna Maria never took place. Except in Gynaeceum doctum, this is therefore not mentioned in any contemporary source, not even in correspondence or other writings by the two women themselves or by notorious letter writers from their environment. (68)
Despite this, some people stubbornly believe this ingeniously invented fable. For example, the Utrecht researcher Pieta van Beek retains the original version in which the Jesuits and the Queen stood on Anna Maria’s doorstep, and the meeting is mentioned as an interesting historical fact in a commemorative book from Utrecht University that Van Beek, commissioned by the Executive Board, wrote about Anna Maria van Schurman. (69)
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67 Pascius, Johannes, Gynaeceum doctum, Wittenberg 1686, p. 54-55.
68 Godfroy, p. 359-362.
69 Beek, Pieta van, The first female university student: Anna Maria van Schurman (1636), Utrecht 2010, p. 157-159.
15. Before Christina’s reception by the archduke in Innsbruck, he knew about her conversion
‘On November 2, the travelling party arrived in Seefeldt, a small town near Innsbruck, where Archduke Karl Ferdinand and his brother Cardinal Archduke Sigismund Franz, as nephews of Ferdinand III representatives of the House of Habsburg, met her. They, too, had no idea what would happen in Innsbruck in the coming days.’ (70) Thus Diederik Lanoye summarizes some of the follow-up in the epilogue of his book about Christina’s stay in the Spanish Netherlands. This passage contains various inaccuracies.
In the first place, the archduke and his brother didn’t encounter Christina in Seefeld – the usual spelling is without a t – but in Zirl, a village between Seefeld and Innsbruck. In the second place, this did not happen on November 2, but on October 29, 1655. Third, the archduke’s name was Ferdinand Karl, not vice versa. (Admittedly, this is a pitfall, because Gualdo Priorato also reverses the two first names.) Fourth: the brother of the archduke was not a cardinal, but an – unconsecrated – bishop. Fifth – and this is more important – the archduke and his brother knew exactly what was coming over the next few days: Christina’s public confession of faith. Indeed, they had only been informed two days earlier by the Pope’s special envoy, Lucas Holstenius, who had come to tell them. That was too short a time to adapt the program. The archduke had decided not to bother the Lutheran queen with Roman miracle-plays or oratorios, but had prepared some profane theatre performances. Had he known about the conversion, he would have made a different choice. (71)
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70 Lanoye, p. 142.
71 Godfroy, p. 394-395, n. 94.
16. Christina certainly didn’t call her public confession of faith a ‘farce’
The fact that the hosts in Innsbruck were unprepared for the main purpose of Christina’s visit – her public conversion to Catholicism – and that they had therefore only programmed profane theatrical performances, was later given a different twist by some of her enemies. In an undocumented collection of ‘historical’ anecdotes, the Frenchman Urbain Chevreau wrote in 1700 that at the afternoon performance, immediately after her confession of faith, the Queen said to her hosts: ‘Nice that you gave me the spectacle, after the farce I played for you.’ (72)
No source is mentioned, and apart from that, it is a completely unbelievable story. Even if Christina’s confession of faith had something theatrical – she wasn’t a stranger to theatricality – that served not to play down her conversion, but, on the contrary, to make it appear more convincing.
Ever since an important 18th-century source, Arckenholtz, mentioned the anecdote (73), even with some reserve, it has continued to crop up, as in Bain and Buckley. (74)
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72 Chevreau, Urbain, Chevraeana, ou, Diverses pensées d’histoire, de critique, d’érudition et de morale, Amsterdam 1700, p. 25.
73 Arckenholtz, Vol I, p. 491.
74 Bain, p. 257. Buckley, p. 206.
17. Confusion about Christina’s entrance into the Papal States
The reception of Queen Christina on behalf of Pope Alexander VII in November 1655 at the frontier of the Papal States went miserably into disaster. The delegation of four bishops and the papal master of ceremonies with their retinue, who should have festively caught up with her at the frontier town of Melara, was too late. This was partly because the queen reached His Holiness’s terrestrial realm a day earlier than originally anticipated, partly because the host committee’s attempt to arrive at the frontier in time failed due to the harsh weather conditions. When Christina’s procession arrived in the pouring rain, no one was waiting for her. So, she entered the Papal States without being welcomed. Only after eight Italian miles (about fourteen kilometres) the papal delegation met her. (75)
If history reflects on the moment when Queen Christina entered her new homeland, you would think that the failed reception would be mentioned. That is not always the case. In particular, Garstein, who devotes several paragraphs and various references to the entry into the Papal States, completely ignores this remarkable derailment of the ceremonial protocol, and not only that. He completely disrupts the sequence and coherence of events. According to Garstein, by the evening of November 21, Christina’s procession had arrived at the Po, ‘which formed the northern frontier of the Papal States’. On both banks of the river, lit by a thousand torches, stood sizable regiments of foot soldiers and horsemen. The reception committee with the four bishops welcomed her. Accompanied by music and cannon shots, Christina was carried in the palanquin the Pope had given to the river, where a yacht was laid to take her across. But she chose to cross on foot over the boat bridge that lay there for the carriages and horses. A little further on, a new delegation met her, carrying a letter from the Pope for her. The high clergy came out of their carriages to greet her despite the heavy rain, and the Queen did the same. After the ceremonies, everyone returned to their carriages, and the road continued to Ficarolo and from there to Ferrara. According to Garstein. (76)
Garstein’s misconception is based on the assumption that the river Po formed the northern frontier of the Papal States. That is not the case. At Ferrara, the frontier was much further north. (77) It meant that Christina’s procession entered the Papal States over a land frontier at Melara and then continued for another 43 kilometres via the north bank of the Po before crossing it. Ficarolo is located on the north bank, not the south bank, as Garstein believes.
In order to fit the found pieces with his sources, he also had to change the sequence. Garstein’s second delegation, carrying the Pope’s letter, was in fact the first delegation, arriving late, as we saw above, and only meeting Christina when she was already eight miles into the Papal States. The scene with the torches and regiments along the Po and the crossing over the boat bridge, with which Garstein begins the welcome, did not follow until a day later, on November 22, after an overnight stay in Ficarolo. (78)
Garstein is not alone in misrepresenting the northern frontier of the Papal States. Buckley, who may have copied from Garstein, writes that Christina’s procession rode east along the Po, ‘the northern frontier of the Papal States’. (79)
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75 Godfroy, p. 212-213.
76 Garstein, p. 752-753.
77 For the topography in the year 1655: Godfroy, p. 211, routemap 9.
78 Godfroy, p. 212-214.
79 Buckley, p. 207.
18. Threesome Santinelli-Santinelli-Monaldeschi: fierce fantasies of an oversexed professor
The book by the French historian Bernard Quilliet about Christina of Sweden forms a separate category in the long series of misunderstandings and falsifications of history devoted to her. It is not only a collection of erroneous determinations of time and place and unfounded gossip, it can also serve as a textbook example of putting up smoke screens by justifying sources half-heartedly, uncritically, and, if useful, not at all.
For example, where does he get the story about the sexual excesses on the occasion of the application of Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi and the Santinelli brothers as the queen’s new Italian staffers? They are said to have staged these excesses ‘before her eyes’ on her passage to Rome in Pesaro. Quilliet claims, among other things: ‘An additional and not inconsiderable detail: our three fellows bravely surrendered to sodomy, in a completely democratic spirit, as they could switch indiscriminately from the active to the passive role during their successive parties; better yet, when they played men, they chose their mates of any gender.’ (80)
There is a great temptation to look for the lampoon from which Quilliet derived this frenzied tale, but where to begin in the huge pile of scandal papers published about Christina, especially in France in the seventeenth century, if the professor doesn’t mention a source? It’s no wonder that Quilliet is usually ignored by serious Christina viewers, but the story is still published in the book by this laureate member of the Académie Française, known from radio and TV, and so it seems credible anyhow.
Suffice it to say that Christina, as the most important convert of the seventeenth century, would not have jeopardized her triumph in such a crude manner, surrounded as she was by a large company of high-ranking hosts and travelling companions, for whom such outrageous behaviour by her and her new employees could not possibly have been kept secret. In addition, Monaldeschi, who is presented here as one of the porn actors, was not even there during her reception in Pesaro. He did not appear before the queen until four months later in Rome. (81)
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80 Quilliet, p. 208.
81 Godfroy, p. 282.
19. Recurrent theme: Christina as shameless woman-chaser
Was Christina a lesbian? It seems like an attractive assumption. It could explain her aversion to marriage, as well as her preference to dress in men’s clothes. It is almost certain that at the court in Stockholm she shared the bed with Ebba Sparre, a lady-in-waiting whom she called ‘La Belle’. But she was also attracted to men and later fell madly in love with Cardinal Azzolino in Rome. Despite this, at an older age, she wrote that she considered herself fortunate that she had the strength to forgo the pleasures of love. (82)
We know little about the queen’s sexual life with certainty, although the stories, often inspired by her masculine traits and her extravagant behaviour, are numerous. Some deal with her alleged escapades as a woman-chaser. We have already seen an example of this above. There it was about the services of a courtesan during her stay in Hamburg. Later on, during her first trip to France, she is said to have misbehaved again when attempting to catch a woman in plain sight. The source of this story is a ‘copy of a letter’ by Edward von der Pfalz to his brother-in-law, Duke Carlo II of Mantua. This copy was published anonymously in 1885. Edward is said to have written the letter from Auxerre, where he and his family had witnessed the passage of Queen Christina at the end of August 1656. In addition to a description of the queen (…’her appearance is completely masculine and not feminine at all’…) we read a short account of what is said to have happened in Lyon: ‘She is very fond of beautiful women. She found one in Lyon that she liked. She kissed her everywhere: on the neck, the eyes, and the forehead, very much in love. She even wanted to French kiss her and go to bed with her, but the woman wouldn’t.’ (83)
Already in 1930, Fredrik Ulrik Wrangel shattered this myth. He searched the Duke of Mantua’s archives, but found no trace of such writing in the collection of letters from Edward to Carlo II. In addition, Edward is said to have written the account when he saw the queen pass by at Auxerre, 300 kilometres and over a week north of the scene, so it wasn’t an eyewitness account anyway, but at most hearsay. In addition, the sender of the letter copy is anonymous, and it is not stated where he got it from. Wrangel’s right conclusion is: ‘The documentary value of the letter is therefore zero.’ (84) This warning falls on Quilliet’s deaf, red ears: he takes over the story entirely. (85)
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82 Christina, Queen, Apologies, Texte présenté, établi et annoté par François de Raymond, Paris 1994, p. 126.
83 L’intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux, November 10, 1885, p. 656-657.
84 Wrangel, Fredrik Ulrik, Première visite de Christine de Suède à la cour de France, 1656, Paris 1930, p. XXV.
85 Quilliet, p. 111.
20. ‘Crowd’ turns into ‘madwoman’ Christina, by translation error
To err is human. In the category ‘translation errors’ it may cause bizarre slippages. We saw above that in a letter from Nicolaas Heinsius, Garstein and Lanoye completely misinterpreted the Latin sacramentum meaning ‘oath of fidelity’ as ‘sacrament of the Lord’s Supper’.
Another salient example is provided by Wrangel (86) who found it in a book by the English historian Count de Soissons about the excessive private wealth of Cardinal Mazarin and his heirs. It is about the option of admitting Christina to Mazarin’s private quarters during her visit to Paris in 1656. The Cardinal himself is at the summer residence of the French court in Compiègne at the time, so he gives directions by letter to Minister Colbert, who does the honours. For security reasons, Mazarin wants the queen, if she insists, to be let in alone without her retinue, because he fears that his small paintings will be stolen during a group tour: ‘… je vous prie de prendre garde que la foule n’entre pas dans mes cabinets, car on pourrait prendre de mes petits tableaux.’ (87) ‘La foule’ means ‘crowd’, but the Englishman reads into it the English ‘fool’ (the French ‘folle’), meaning ‘crazy’, and he makes it: ‘…I beg you not to allow the madwoman to enter my study, for my small pictures might be stolen.’ (88)
Indeed, to err is human. But would someone who is seriously poring over this history, and is not predisposed to the prejudice that Christina was a depraved woman, make such a mistake? Probably not. Even if Mazarin had doubts about Christina’s trustworthiness, which is not unthinkable, he would have kept them to himself at the stage of rekindling friendship and cooperation in which Christina’s relationship with the French court was at the time. A well-informed and uninhibited translator would have been surprised at the sentence that came out and only had to consult the French-English dictionary to determine that he was wrong.
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86 Wrangel, p. XV en 220.
87 Mazarin, Jules, note to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Compiègne September 16, 1656, in the margin of a letter from Colbert to Mazarin, Paris, September 12, 1656. Bibliothèque Nationale, Baluze, Papiers des Armoires, Vol. 176, fol 268, in: Clement, Pierre (ed.), Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, Vol. 1, 1650-1661, Paris 1861, p. 262.
88 Soissons, The Count de, The Seven Richest Heiresses of France, London 1911, p. 57.
21. Monaldeschi’s fate: lumpish executioners, lying rulers, and lazy writers
The death sentence, pronounced November 10, 1657, in Fontainebleau Castle on Marquis Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi by his mistress, Queen Christina (89), was the cold announcement of a tragic end of life and an inglorious memory. Not only did he face the ordeal of a slow martyr’s death at the hands of inept executioners (90), but his morally and legally questionable execution was also later whitewashed by lying reports, and his biography was mutilated by the nonsensical gossip of careless historians, with which we are still bombarded. (91)
Had not Monaldeschi betrayed the queen? Was he innocent? That’s not what this is all about. He was no saint, as far as we can find out, and the treason Christina accused him of may have been on his plate. What matters, however, is whether he had a fair trial, whether his execution was proportionate, and whether the course of justice was properly accounted for afterwards. The answer to this is three times no.
There have been endless discussions about the question of whether Christina was legally authorized to act as a judge in this case. Some argue that she was on French territory and that the case should only have been heard by a French court. Others believe that Christina was simply recognized as a sovereign monarch and that she therefore had jurisdiction over her courtiers. (92) Most likely, one will never get out completely. Christina’s sovereignty was, all things considered, a legal monstrosity, which she had been granted in the negotiations for her abdication in order to reach an agreement. Declaring a queen with no country as sovereign is asking for trouble. After all, in practice, the sovereign rights always relate to a territory and to subjects, who are clumsily missing in such a construction. Legally, one cannot therefore ignore the sovereign rights of the queen, but for an accused courtier, in this case Monaldeschi, it results in an extremely weak legal position, even by 17th-century judicial standards.
The legal monstrosity of Christina’s sovereignty also entailed that she believed she could apply criminal law without having access to an adequate criminal justice system. If you think you can impose the death penalty, you should be able to carry it out. You need at least a skilled executioner and the technical facilities for executions. Those were missing from Christina’s travelling court. So, she improvised. This meant, among other things, that three colleagues, who had no experience in this area, had to execute Monaldeschi. It became a bloody torture that seemed to have no end. The report of this by Father Lebel (93), who witnessed the event from start to finish, caused general indignation.
Christina does not seem to have realized that the bloody execution in one of the palaces of Louis XIV would provoke angry reactions from the king and the French population. Christina’s host, Cardinal Mazarin, got into a state of alert, when he received her report of the incident from Fontainebleau, and did everything he could to divert attention from her, and thus from himself. He instructed her to pass the blame onto her staff, which she refused. Through his assistant, Abbot Joseph Ondedei, the cardinal then engaged a ghost-writer, one Marco Antonio Conti, to compose a fabricated version of the execution: Monaldeschi, was not killed by order of Christina, it was the initiative of one of her courtiers, Francesco Santinelli. It apparently didn’t matter that Francesco was in Rome at the time of the execution – called ‘murder’ by most commentaries –. Perhaps that was even a good thing, because with that, an important part of the scandal – the offender – had already left the country. The fact that other versions were also circulating worked against Mazarin, but the uncertainty about how and why was preferable to an unambiguous truthful explanation of what had occurred, as in Father Lebel’s official report.
Although Christina insisted that she herself had ordered the execution, she also kept the rumour mill going by concealing the exact scope of the treason she accused Monaldeschi of. She kept the letters that had served as evidence for herself. These would never be found again. (94) The fact that numerous versions of the story have been circulating since then is hardly surprising: from love affairs and the ensuing jealousy inside and outside Christina’s court to the betrayal of Mazarin and Christina’s secret plan to conquer Naples from the Spaniards. But why above all tarnish the memory of the unfortunate Monaldeschi with ostentatious gossip and sheer nonsense merely because people are too lazy to verify facts?
Thus, Marquis De Monglat writes in his Mémoires about the year 1658: ‘Queen Christina, who was at Fontainebleau, went to Paris to celebrate Carnival, where she went every evening in mask; and after taking part in all the festivities, she returned to Fontainebleau, where in the Galerie des Cerfs, out of jealousy, she cold-bloodedly killed a nobleman who accompanied her.’ (95) The writing marquis, a courtier to Louis XIV, apparently did not consider it necessary to inquire among his colleagues whether his memory was not deceiving him here. Anyone to whom he would have presented it would have replied that the murder had taken place not around Carnival 1658, but on November 10, 1657. They would also have reminded him that there was probably a lot more going on than jealousy.
Another extreme example of sloppiness mixed with gossip, which continues to this day, can be found in Pierer’s Universal-Lexicon of 1860. In the short biography of Monaldeschi, it is stated that he went from Italy to Sweden, where in 1652, at the intercession of his relative Magnus de la Gardie, he became equerry to Queen Christina. He would have succeeded in ousting Magnus from his preferred position. After Christina’s abdication, he became her chief equerry and travel guide to the south. Anyone familiar with Christina’s history will immediately see that her Swedish equerry Anton Steinberg and the later chief equerry Monaldeschi are amalgamated here into one and the same person. Apart from that, according to Pierer’s Universal-Lexicon, Monaldeschi’s fall was caused by a revengeful lady who, after a broken affair with him sent his letters with indiscretions about Christina to the queen. (96)
Time must have shown by now – it is August 2022 – that Pierer’s biography makes no sense, you would think. Nothing is less true. One reads this bosh at Wikipedia as the life story of Monaldeschi for years, whereas a lot of much more interesting and reliable data is available to report about him, such as his close connections with Mazarin and the central role he played in the failed French attack on Naples in 1654. (97)
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89 Godfroy, p. 329.
90 ibid., p. 329-331.
91 ibid., p. 331-334.
92 Weibull, Curt, Drottning Christina och Monaldescho, Stockholm 1936, p. 83-116.
93 Lebel, ‘Proces verbal de la mort du marquis de Monaldeschi, esquyer de la Reyne de Suède, par P. Lebel, supérieur des Frères de la Trinité, à Fotainebleau’, in: Vidal, Antoine, L’Église d’Avon et le meurtre de Monaldeschi, Paris 1874, p. 65-75.
94 Godfroy, p. 334-337.
95 Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France, Mémoires de Monglat, Vol III, p. 46. See also: Wrangel, p. XIII.
96 ‘Monaldeschi’ in: Pierer’s Universal-Lexicon, Band 11, Altenburg 1860, p. 376.
97 Godfroy, p. 282-283 and p. 411, n. 97.
22. Posthumous condolence
Again, to err is human. Even in Bernard Quilliet’s fantastic tales about Christina, a fault can simply have been made by mistake.
Christina died on April 19, 1689. The puritan Pope Innocent XI, who had been a nail in her coffin for the last thirteen years of her life (98), survived her for almost four months. He breathed his last on August 12 of the same year. Quilliet makes an obvious mistake when he dates the death of Innocentius two years earlier, namely on August 12, 1687. (99) He probably does not believe this himself, because a page before that he mentioned that Innocentius pronounced the ban on the French ambassador Lavard after his unwanted entry into Rome on November 16, 1687. It only becomes incomprehensible when he adds to Innocent’s obituary: ‘The queen allowed herself to be represented at the funeral.’ Given the hostile atmosphere between Christina and Innocent, this sounds like an ominous statement, but above all, it was impossible because Christina had been dead for four months.
Did Quilliet make this up himself? Or did he copy it from someone else? We don’t know because he leaves us in the dark about his sources. Even if he has found this miracle of posthumous condolence elsewhere, he remains liable.
We cannot repeat it enough: mistakes are to be corrected, not copied.
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98 Godfroy, p. 352.
99 Quilliet, p. 303.