Memoirs of Leonora Christina, Daughter of Christian IV. of Denmark: Written During Her Imprisonment in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen 1663-1685Ulfeldt, Leonora Christina, grevinde
History
Memoirs of Leonora Christina, Daughter of Christian IV. of Denmark: Written During Her Imprisonment in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen 1663-1685
Ulfeldt, Leonora Christina, grevinde
Denmark -- History -- Christian V, 1670-1699 -- Sources; Denmark -- History -- Frederick III, 1648-1670 -- Sources; Princesses -- Denmark -- Biography; Ulfeldt, Leonora Christina, grevinde, 1621-1698 -- Imprisonment; Women political prisoners -- Denmark -- Biography
The Memoir of her life in prison terminates with this event, and her
after-life does not offer any very remarkable incidents.
Nevertheless, a few details, chiefly drawn from a MS. in the Royal
Library at Copenhagen, recently published by Mr. Birket Smith, may
serve to complete the historical image of this illustrious lady. The
MS. in question is from the hand of a Miss Urne, of an ancient Danish
family, who managed the household of Leonora from 1685 to her death
in 1698. A royal manor, formerly a convent, at Maribo, on the island
of Laaland, was granted to Leonora shortly after her release from the
Blue Tower, together with a sufficient pension for a moderate
establishment.
'The first occupation of the Countess,' says Miss Urne, 'was
devotion; for which purpose her household was assembled in a room
outside her bed-chamber. In her daily morning prayer there was this
passage: "May the Lord help all prisoners, console the guilty, and
save the innocent!" After that she remained the whole forenoon in her
bedchamber, occupied in reading and writing. She composed a book
entitled the "Ornament of Heroines," which Countess A. C. Ulfeldt and
Count Leon took away with them, together with many other rare
writings. Her handiwork is almost indescribable, and without an
equal; such as embroidering in silk, gold embroidery, and turning in
amber and ivory.'
It will be seen from Leonora's own Memoir that needlework was one of
her principal occupations in her prison. Count Waldstein still
possesses some of her work; in the Church of Maribo an altar-cloth
embroidered by her existed still some time ago; and at the Castle of
Rosenborg, in Copenhagen, there is a portrait of Christian V. worked
by Leonora in silk, in return for which present the King increased
her annual pension. Miss Urne says that she sent all her work to
Elizabeth Bek, a granddaughter of Leonora, who lived with her for
some years. But she refused to send her Leonora's Postille, or manual
of daily devotion, which had been given Leonora on New Year's Day, in
the last year of her captivity, by the castellan, Torslev, who is
mentioned in Leonora's Memoir, and who had taught her to turn ivory,
&c. This book has disappeared; but amongst the relics of Leonora
Christina, the Royal Library at Copenhagen preserves some leaves
which had been bound up with it, and contain verses, &c., by Leonora,
and other interesting matter.
Her MS. works were taken to Vienna after her death. It is not known
what has become of some of them. A copy of the first part of the book
on heroines exists in Copenhagen. Miss Urne says that she possessed
fragments of a play composed by her and acted at Maribo Kloster; also
the younger Sperling speaks of such a composition in Danish verse;
but the MS. seems to be lost now.
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