The Good, the Bad and the Unready (20 page)

George the
Fat Adonis at Fifty
see
George the
BEAU OF PRINCES

George the
Fat Adonis at Forty
see
George the
BEAU OF PRINCES

Edward the
Father of English Commerce
see
Edward the
BANKRUPT

Frederick the
Father of His Country
see
BARBAROSSA

Christian the
Father of His People

Christian III, king of Denmark, 1503–59

When Christian assumed control of the kingdom in 1536, the predominantly Catholic Danish state council was understandably rather cagey about having an ardent Lutheran as their king. Their fears were well founded. Within two weeks of his accession he had every bishop arrested and thrown into prison, their offices abolished and their lands permanently confiscated. The 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 Danish
Reformation 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