Frere Jean

Johnny Calvin, we hardly knew you. We thought we did, but you never played by our rules, so we wrote you off as a theocratic sadist, or perhaps as a sainted prophet descended from the heavens--a sort of Aryan firstborn, a demiurge, a minor deity. Both without paying much attention to the actual content of your thought--beyond the P-word, of course--times 2. Most of us hated it. The ones who liked it were generally somewhat disturbed persons of slightly below average inteligence who, with occasionally good intentions, made cornmeal mush of your exquisite dogmatics. But at least your beard was timeless. The skullcap, however--that skullcap made you look like a meanie-head. Very bad PR, for which I expect Beza is to blame, as Farel would never have approved. Never trust the sensible ones when it comes to image control.