Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/562

  news that her revenue was cut off on account of the war between Sweden and Denmark and Poland. Pope Alexander VII. assigned her a pension of 12,000 scudi, and appointed Cardinal Azzolini to take charge of her finances. Her pride could not brook this state of affairs, and she demanded troops of the emperor to march against the Swedes. Not succeeding in her ambitious designs, she settled down to a life of literary ease and sensual indulgence. In 1660, on the death of the king of Sweden, she went to Stockholm, and began to intrigue for the recovery of the crown, but was compelled to sign another formal act of abdication. In 1666 she visited Sweden again, but found it prudent to return without going to Stockholm. On the death of John Casimir she aspired to the throne of Poland, but the Poles paying little attention to her demands, she returned to Rome and made her permanent residence there. She spent the rest of her life in the culture of letters and in correspondence with learned men, made vast collections of works of art and of books, and founded the Arcadian academy. (See .) She bequeathed her fortune to Cardinal Azzolini. She was interred in the church of St. Peter, and over her remains a magnificent monument bears a long inscription, although she had expressed a wish to have these simple words: Vixit Christina annos LXIII. Her collections of art were sold and scattered about the world; 900 precious MSS. are in the Vatican, and the most valuable of her paintings were removed in 1722 to Paris, having been bought by the duke of Orleans, regent of France. She left some writings (collected and published by Archenholz in his memoirs of her life, 4 vols. 4to, 1751), which, says Geijer, exhibit a soul ardent and untamed by years, striving in all things after the extreme and the supreme, but submitting at last. “The feminine virtues,” he adds in conclusion, “which she despised, avenge themselves upon her good name; yet was she better than her reputation.”—See Geyer's Svenska Folkets Historia; Lacombe's Histoire de Christine, and D'Alembert's Memoires et reflexions sur Christine, reine de la Suède (both based upon the memoirs of Archenholz); Catteau-Calleville's Histoire de Christine, reine de la Suède; Grauert's Christine, Königinn von Schweden, und ihr Hof (2 vols., Bonn, 1838-'42); and sketches in the works of Bayle and Voltaire.  CHRISTMAS (Christ and mass), a festival of the Christian church, observed on Dec. 25 as the anniversary of the birth of the Saviour. Its institution is attributed by the decretal letters to Pope Telesphorus, who died A. D. 138, and throughout the subsequent history of the church it has been one of the most noted of Christian solemnities. At first it was the most movable of the Christian festive days, often confounded with the Epiphany, and celebrated by the eastern churches in the months of April and May. In the 4th century the

urgency of St. Cyril of Jerusalem obtained from Pope Julius I. an order for an investigation to be made concerning the day of Christ's nativity. The result of inquiry by the theologians of the East and the West was an agreement upon the 25th of December. The chief grounds for the decision were the tables of the censors in the archives of Rome; and although, in the opinion of some of the fathers, there was not authentic proof of the identification of the day, yet the decision was uniformly accepted, and from that time the nativity has been celebrated throughout the church on the same day. It has also been a common tradition that Christ was born about the middle of the night. The custom in Roman Catholic countries of ushering in Christmas day by the celebration of three masses, one at midnight, the second at early dawn, and the third in the morning, dates from the 6th century. The day was considered in the double light of a holy commemoration and a cheerful festival, and was accordingly distinguished by devotion, by vacation from business, and by merriment. During the middle ages it was celebrated by the gay fantastic spectacle of dramatic mysteries and moralities, performed by personages in grotesque masks and singular costumes. The scenery usually represented an infant in a cradle, surrounded by the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, by bulls' heads, cherubs, eastern magi, and manifold ornaments. The custom of singing canticles at Christmas, called carols, which recalled the songs of the shepherds at the birth of Christ, dates from the time when the common people ceased to understand Latin. The bishops and lower clergy often joined with the populace in carolling, and the songs were enlivened by dances and by the music of tambours, guitars, violins, and organs. Fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters mingled together in the dance; if in the night, each bearing in his hand a lighted wax taper. Many collections have been made of these naïve mediæval carols which filled the hours between the nocturnal masses, and which sometimes took the place of psalms in the churches. Of perhaps the oldest of these collections, only a single leaf remains, containing two carols, preserved in the Bodleian library, in a volume of “Christmasse Carolles,” printed by Wynkin de Worde in 1521. Davies Gilbert published a volume of “Ancient Christmas Carols,” with the tunes to which they were formerly sung in England, and William Sandys made a more complete collection (London, 1833). The carols of the Welsh are especially celebrated, and their Llyfr Carolan (“Book of Carols”) contains 66, and their Blodeugardd Cymru (“Anthology of Wales”) contains 48. The German carols were collected by Weinhold (Gratz, 1853), and one of the best of the many editions of French carols (noëls) was published at Poitiers in 1824. During the last days preceding Christmas it is still the custom for Calabrian minstrels to descend from the mountains