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1654.]
Youth and education of
the queen.
CHRISTINA’S ADMINISTRATION. Her learning and ac-
complishments.
323
her body, select, with the consent of the council
and estates, a certain successor to the crown
from among the nearniost collateral relatives of the
royal family. The latter overture manifestly refers
to the queen’s cousin, prince Charles Gustavus.
This document, official or not, shows the com-
mencement of a contest against the ruling sj’Stem,
which was one day to come to an outbreak.
It was a perilous greatness to which Sweden had
now ascended, and Christina herself, wavering be-
twixt extremes, is an image of the situation. It is
hard to reconcile the contrarieties of her character.
This she herself may describe. Christina was de-
prived of her father at the age of six years, nor
had she been educated under the eyes of her
mother. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus,
she was early separated from the fair, weak,
capricious, and sorrow-stricken Maria Eleonora,
and sent to her aunt’’, the princess Catharine,
consort of the palsgrave John Casimir. She re-
mained under this guardianship until the death
of the princess in 1638. The confidence which
Gustavus Adolphus reposed in this sister, and the
deep reverence with which Charles Gustavus
speaks of his mother*, show that Catharine was
an estimable princess. Nevertheless, the young
queen’s early education seems not to have been of
the most solid kind, as may be inferred from
Christina’s own expressions, which in general do
not display the princely education of her times in the
most advantageous light.
" Those who believe," she
says ^,
" that childhood at least is the season when
truth may approach princes, deceive themselves ;
there are those who fear and flatter them, even in
the cradle ;
all the purple-born are reared in indo-
lence, ignorance, and effeminacy." The palsgra-
vine house, repelled by the grandees, sought sup-
port in the attachment of the young queen, and in
her hand a guarantee for the fortunes of the young
Charles Gustavus. The prince subsequently appealed
to the fact of her having been betrothed to him in
childhood. Such relations were sufficiently adapted
to produce in his parents indulgence for all the
wishes of their royal foster-child. Christina was
educated at the same time in deep mistrust of her
guardians, as her earlier letters remarkably evince ’,
however great the respect she testifies in her latter
yeai’s for " those honour-decked old men," as she
calls them. In the year 1635, the estates gave
"An opinion and advice how her majesty the young
queen shall be educated 2." They deem it neces-
sary that such preceptors and ladies of the court
should be appointed to her majesty, as know and
understand how a queen is
rightly to be formed as
1
Faster, father’s sister.
8 In letters to his father, which generally exhibit the son’s
heart in the most amiable light.
9 Vie de Christine par EUe-nietne. Arckenholtz, iii. 49.
’
Compare the letter to the palsgrave John Casimir, in her
fifteenth year. Arckenholtz, i. 33.
2
Stiernman, Resolutions of Diets and Meetings, ii. 926.
3 He received a charter from the government, dated Oct.
30, 1633, to found an orphanotrophium, or house of refuge
for fatherless and motherless children, at Stockholm; and
Jan. IS, 1616, to erect another in Strengness, of which he
had been made bishop two years before. Reg. His Idea
boni ordinis in Ecclesia Christi, with which he entered on
his episcopal office, is one of the works reflecting honour on
the Swedish church. Yet occasion was taken, both from
this treatise and his Rami Olivee Septentrionalis, to accuse
to soul and body, who are so affectioned that they
will take this in hand gladly and zealously, and
have such authority atid gravity, that they may
be able to do this with respect and heedfulness.
For what concerns her majesty’s studies, she shall
be educated especially in those arts, which teach
the Christian government of countries and king-
doms. But forasmuch as such learning comes
far more from years and experience than from
youthful studies, and the ground of all is the right
knowledge and worship of God, it is also most
advisable that her majesty should apply her chief
study to God’s word, and in history to the biblical
part; and should learn besides to reckon and write
well, with those foreign tongues which the guar-
dians shall consider necessary for her majesty.
Christina relates that Gustavus Adolphus had
given command that she should receive a mascu-
line education. He had himself selected her tutor,
Johannes Matthi;ie, at first professor in the college of
nobles (collegium il
lustre) instituted in Stockholm,
afterwards the king’s court- preacher, a learned
man of very mild disposition, beneficent, and of
such conciliatory inclinations in respect to those
religious contests which divided the age, that after
he had lost his patrons Christina and Charles Gus-
tavus, when he was at a very great age, the clergy,
in the heat of their zeal, pressed for and effected
his deposition from the episcopal see of Strengness ’.
He was one of those who bore the most stedfast
affection and respect towards Christina. Her pro-
gress was wonderful. At eighteen she read Tlm-
cydides and Polybius in Greek, wrote and spoke
Latin, German, and French. In council and ad-
ministration she showed much acuteness, and her
personal manners exercised great influence over
all who surrounded her, although she appeared
rather to slight than to assert her outward dignity.
" It is with dignities," she herself says,
" as with
perfumes ;
those who carry them scarcely perceive
them *."
In the height of her renown she has been de-
picted by the French minister at the Swedish
courtj Chanut, an estimable and cultivated person,
who for a long time stood high in her favour. We
extract the main features of this description ’, and
may annex to them the remarks of Christina her-
self, made in her latter years. When one sees her
for the first time, says the minister, she does not
excite the same admiration as upon more intimate
knowledge. A single portrait is not sufficient to
give a representation of her appearance ;
her coun-
tenance changes so much in accordance with her
mental emotions, that she is hardly to be recog-
him of syncretistic errors. On the report of Christina’s
change of religion, he wrote a very eloquent letter of disap-
proval, but exjjressing also his wishes for a reconciliation of
the various spiritual confessions. In the j-ear 1664, he an- I
ticipated his deposition by abdicating the episcopate. |
• Les grandeurs sent comme les parfums : ceux qui les
portent ne les sentent quasi pas. Ouvrage de loisir de
Christine. Arckenholtz, t. ii.
5 Memoires de ce qui s’est passe en Sn^de depuis I’annee
1645, jusques en I’annee 1655, tires des Depeches de M. Chanut,
Ambassadeur pour ie Roi en Sufede, par Linage de Vau-
eiennes. Paris, 1675, i. 240. There are autograph notes by
Christina in a copy of this book, which belonged to the de-
ceased queen Hedviga Elizabeth Charlotte. Compare the
Swedish translation of Chanut’s Memoirs, vol. i., Stockholm,
1826, to which these notes of Christina are appended.
Y 2
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