The Good, the Bad and the Unready by Robert Easton Page A

Roman Catholic Church in Denmark was no more.
    The official Church in Denmark was now the Lutheran State Church, in which priests were elected and allowed to marry, and congregations were encouraged to read the Bible in their own language. Such events ushered in the last phase of the DanishReformation and gave rise to Christian’s nickname – although this epithet was not used within Catholic circles, which considered his actions decidedly lacking in fatherly concern.
    Francis the Father of Letters
    Francis I, king of France, 1494–1547
    Francis was given this nickname as well as that of ‘the Maecenas of France’ because, like the first-century BC Roman statesman who supported such luminaries as Virgil and Horace, he was a munificent patron of the arts and learning. One of the court painters was Leonardo da Vinci, who brought his Mona Lisa and The Virgin and Child with St Anne along with him. Works by Raphael and Michelangelo graced the halls of his palace at Versailles and various chateaux, and his private library of nearly 3,000 volumes became the basis of the Bibliothèque Nationale.
    A generous patron maybe, but Francis had many, many faults. One of these was his shameless unfaithfulness to his charming wife, Claude the HANDSOME QUEEN . Although he was extremely ugly and, according to Victor Hugo, possessed ‘the largest nose in France, except for his jester, Triboulet’, Francis had a multitude of mistresses. A Venetian visiting the court wrote of his daily routine as follows: ‘He rises at eleven o’clock, hears Mass, dines, spends two or three hours with his mother, then goes whoring or hunting…’
    William the Father of the Fatherland see William the SILENT
    Abu Bakr the Father of the Maiden see Abu Bakr the UPRIGHT
      Edward the Father of the Mother of Parliaments see Edward the HAMMER OF THE SCOTS
    Louis the Father of the People Louis XII, king of France, 1462–1515
    In comparison with his ludicrously prodigal predecessor Charles the AFFABLE , Louis was thrifty bordering on penny-pinching. In response to a friend’s warning that he was gaining a reputation in court for being parsimonious, Louis is reported to have replied, ‘Far better my courtiers should laugh at my parsimony than that my people should mourn for my extravagance.’
    His prudent expenditure of the public purse – there was no direct increase of taxation during his reign – coupled with his reform of the courts and tax laws, won him approval among the masses and a nickname suggesting paternal affection.
    Fatso see PTOLEMAIC KINGS
    John the Fearless
    John, duke of Burgundy, 1371–1419
    John received his epithet from his exploits at the battle of Nicopolis against the Ottoman Turks. A cursory examination of his actions there, however, might lead one to think that he should have been dubbed not ‘the Fearless’ but ‘the Stupid’.
    In 1396 European powers were laying siege to the main Turkish stronghold on the Danube. Sigismund the LIGHT OF THE WORLD , the organizer of the crusade, urged prudence, but the knights ignored this sage advice and, with John at the vanguard, charged up the steep hill to the fortified town. Although they scattered the first line of Turkish cavalry and infantry, they were no match for the second wave of defence and, exhausted fromthe climb, most of the knights were cut down. John somehow survived to fight another day.
    John the Fearless
    The son of Philip the BOLD , John was a little man with a big head and eyes like a frog. According to chronicler Olivier de la Marche, he was ‘very courageous’ but trusted no one and ‘always wore armour under his robe’. Indeed, this man who regularly used assassination as a political tool lived in absolute fear of his own murder, making his nickname ‘Sans Peur’ a mockery of reality.
    And murdered he was. In 1419 he and some Burgundian delegates met on a bridge at Montereau near Paris to sign a peace treaty with counterparts from Armagnac. John walked into a