Christiana Oxenstierna

Christiana Juliana Oxenstierna (23 September 1661 – 27 February 1701) was a Swedish noble. She was the center of a great social scandal when she married a non-noble against her family's consent. Her case caused a debate about the law for marriage between nobles and non-nobles. Biography She was the daughter of statesman and marshal Count Gabriel Gabrielsson Oxenstierna (d. 1673) and Countess Maria Christiana von Löwenstein und Scharfeneck (d. 1672; in turn she was the only surviving daughter of Countess Elisabeth Juliana of Erbach –later wife of the Swedish Field Marshal Johan Banér– in her second marriage) and sister of Count Gustaf Adolf Oxenstierna. As an orphan, she was taken care of by her paternal aunt, Countess Anna af Dohna. The vicar (since 1687) of the French Lutheran church in Stockholm, Nikolaus Bergius, was lodged in the palace of Dohna. Bergius suffered from severe depression and Dohna asked her niece to comfort him. Oxenstierna and Bergius fell in love and Bergius proposed, but Oxenstierna declined, as she knew she would be an outcast from her family and the nobility if she consented. Her family found out and banned every plans of a marriage. Bergius was separated from her in 1688–89. Their relationship was eventually taken up again. After a priest had agreed to conduct the ceremony, Oxenstierna and Bergius were married in 1691. The marriage was kept a secret, and she remained with her unknowing family. In 1692, she became pregnant; she moved to her spouse, and everything was made public.