On 28 April 2025, the Accademia Polacca delle Scienze di Roma organised an international scientific colloquium entitled Due regine d’eccezione a Roma: Cristina di Svezia e Maria Casimira Sobieska. Researchers from Poland, Italy and Sweden tackled various topics related to the Roman sojourn of the two queens: the ceremonial of the papal court, artistic patronage, theatre and music, political issues and the international context, and the problems of travelling to Rome in the Baroque era [CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PROGRAMME].
On this occasion, Dr. Dorota Gregorowicz presented a paper on the Swedish Queen Christina as a candidate for the Polish-Lithuanian throne, supported by the Holy See, when King John Casimir decided to abdicate in 1668: ʺOstacolo del sesso”. Cristina di Svezia e le sue aspirazioni al trono polacco-lituano [The 'Obstacle of Sex’. Christina of Sweden and Her Aspirations to the Polish-Lithuanian Throne]. This paper was based on the findings of Dr. Gregorowicz’s previous research project entitled Holy See Towards the Crisis of Sovereignty of John Casimir Vasa and Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki’s Election (1660–1669), which was funded by the National Science Centre under the SONATINA 2 programme (project no. 2018/28/C/HS3/00176).
The results of this research have been published in Open Access in the journal Gender & History [CLICK HERE].
In addition, Dr Gregorowicz used her Roman sojourn for queries on the prosopographical research of post-Tridentine apostolic nuncios, which she continued in the collections of the Archivio Apostolico and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
