François Rabelais

Front matter

iilllpili m iiiili'iiiiiiiilii i!ill:.i;n;

liHiili i ill!!! 11 inilli iii^iiHiiiiii.

'1

Preface

The publication of Des Marets's and Rathery's edition of Rabelais 's works, in 1857, marked a new epoch in the study of Rabelais. To this edition was prefixed a hi^e, by Rathery, in which, for the first time, all the legendary matter was carefully pruned away, and no fact was admitted that was not based upon trustworthy evidence. During the last fifty years this biography has held the field, and except for one or two important discoveries made by M. Heulhard in connection with Rabelais 's visit to Italy, and embodied in his book, Rabelais, his Travels in Italy, his Exile at Metz {Rabelais, ses Voyages en Italie, son Exil h Metz) (1891), little addition has been made to our knowledge of Rabelais until very recently.

But at the close of 1902 a fresh impetus was given to Rabelaisian studies by the foundation of the Societe des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, with M. Abel Lefranc as its first President. The organ of the Society, the Revue des ^ttides rabelaisiennes, made its first appearance in January, 1903, and already, during its short existence, has added very considerably to our

PREFACE

knowledge of the subject, especially as regards Rabelais's life. Notably, M. Lefranc has made important discoveries in regard to his family, while other links in the chain have been supplied by other writers, especially by M. Clouzot, the Treasurer of the Society. An important step has also been taken by the publication of a reprint of The Ringing Island {Ulsle sonnante), from the unique copy in the possession of a private owner. M. Boulenger has shown in his admirable introduction that this represents the original and most authoritative state of the text of this part of the Fifth Book, and that it ought to form the basis of a critical edition. Meanwhile it is greatly to be desired that the manuscript of the whole Fifth Book in the Bibliotheque Nationale should be reprinted, for Montaiglon's edition (1868-187 2), the only one which reproduces this text, is out of print, and is rare and expensive.

As regards the text generally of Rabelais's works, there is still considerable room for improvement. The worst text is Des Marets's, for it is a purely arbitrary one, convenient perhaps for the general reader, but quite unsuited to the demands of scholarship. The best is that of Marty-La veaux, which comprises volumes I-III of his edition, and which appeared from 1868 to 1873; for it gives the whole of

PREFACE

Rabelais 's writings, is based on original and authoritative editions, and is the work of a careful and competent editor. But it was certainly a mistake to make the edition of 1564 the basis of the Fifth Book, and as regards Books I, II, and IV, it is a question whether absolutely the most authoritative editions have been chosen for reproduction.

The commentary is still in a very incomplete condition. The best, on the whole, is that of Des Marets and Rathery, which is conveniently placed below the text, and is terse and to the point. Similar praise may be given to the commentary in Mr. W. F. Smith's English translation, while that of the German translator, Gottlob Regis, though far too bulky, is enriched by much learning and wealth of illustration. But there are still numerous passages in Rabelais 's work which remain unexplained, or of which the explanation is wholly inadequate. It is to be hoped that the labours of the Soci6t6 des Etudes Rabelaisiennes will eventually produce an edition of Rabelais worthy of the great writer and of the great country which gave him birth.

The above outline gives some indication of the authorities which have helped me in writing this account of Rabelais and his work. In the narrative of his life I have tried to avail

PREFACE

myself of all the existing information; but as hardly a number of the Revue des Etudes rahelaisiennes appears without adding something to our knowledge, it is evident that no biography, for some little time to come, can hope to be complete. For there can be little doubt that for the last twenty years of Rabelais's life, when he had become a well-known man, having relations with many of the leading personages in France, there must be scraps of interesting information lurking in unpublished letters and other documents.

In my discussion of Rabelais 's work I have assumed less knowledge on the part of my readers than I should have done if I had been writing for Frenchmen, and accordingly I have given a more or less detailed analysis of Gargantua and Pantagruel. I have also quoted from the text here and there at considerable length, using for this purpose the admirable translation of Mr. W. F. Smith, which adheres much more closely to the original than does Urquhart's classical work. In some of the shorter passages quoted the translation is my own.

Arthur Tilley.

Cambridge University, October i6, 1906,

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I — Childhood and Education ii

II — Montpellier: Lyons: Rome 44

Chapter I

It is a characteristic of the very greatest writers that they stun up, with more or less completeness, the thought, the aspirations, and the temper of their age, and this not only for their own country, but for the whole civilised world. Of this select band is Rabelais. He is the embodiment not only of the early French Renaissance, but of the whole Renaissance in its earlier and fresher manifestations, in its devotion to humanism, in its restless and many-sided curiosity, in its robust enthusiasm, in its belief in the future of the human race.

It seems fitting that he should have been born in Touraine, for Touraine, though one of the smallest of French provinces, has produced some of the most illustrious names in France: Richelieu, her greatest statesman, Balzac, her greatest novelist, Descartes, her greatest philosopher, and Andr6 Duchesne, one of her greatest men of learning. Moreover, Touraine, "the garden of France", as Rabelais calls it,

II and as it is still called at the present day, is blessed with a soil of remarkable fertility, especially in that rich alluvial land watered by the Loire and its tributaries, which gave birth to Rabelais — a vigorous mother of a vigorous offspring. It was in Touraine, too, that the kings of France from Charles VII. to Louis XII. chiefly resided, whether at Tours, or Loches, or Chinon, or Plessis, or Amboise, or Blois; and, as a natural result of this royal sunshine, it was in Touraine that the art of the French Renaissance put forth its earliest blossoms. That excellent illuminator, Jean Fouquet, painter to Louis XL, was a native of Tours, and there worked his successors, Jean Bourdichon and Jean Poyet. It was at Tours that Michel Colombe founded an important school of sculpture, which flourished till his death, when he was over eighty, about the year 15 12. Tours, too, was one of the first towns in France to feel the influence of the Renaissance spirit in architecture. The beautiful cloister of the abbey church of St. Martin, of which only the eastern side remains, was begun in 1508, and about the same time Jacques de Beaune de Semblangay completed his magnificent hdtel, which still stands at the corner of the market-place. Here, too, is the beautiful Fontaine de Beaune, executed in white marble from the designs of Michel Colombe. Further up the Loire Charles VIII. rebuilt Amboise, and Louis XII. built the eastern front of Blois. Finally, Touraine was as celebrated in Rabelais 's day as it is now for the purity with which all classes spoke their native language. Thus if Warwickshire, the home of Shakespeare, is "the heart of England", Touraine, when it gave birth to Rabelais, was, in an even more vital sense, ''the heart of France".

Fifty years ago the story of Rabelais 's life was still in the legendary stage. Rathery was the first to cut away the overgrowth of legend, and to write a critical biography, which was prefixed to the edition of Rabelais's works edited by him and Burgaud des Marets, and published in 185 7-1858. But there still remained many dark places, and it is only in recent years that patient research has begun to shed a partial light on the obscurity which veils Rabelais 's career down to the day on which he matriculated as a student of medicine in the University of Montpellier. One source of information, hitherto more or less neglected, is beginning to occupy more and more the attention of investigators; for it is now generally recognised that Rabelais 's writings contain a considerable amount of autobiographical statement, and that especially in the book of Gargantua he has introduced many recollections of his childhood and early manhood. It is needless to say that this is a source of information which must be used with prudence and caution.

Our difficulties begin with the date of Rabelais's birth. The traditional date, which is based only on vague statements that he was seventy at the time of his death, in 1553 or 1554, is 1483, the year in which Louis XL died and Luther and Raphael were born. If this date is correct, then Rabelais must have been forty-nine when he began his literary career, forty-seven when he matriculated at Montpellier, forty-one when his friend Tiraqueau described him as a man learned beyond his years, and thirty-nine when in a letter to Bud6 he speaks of himself as a young man. On these grounds it seems, on the whole, reasonable to abandon the traditional date, and, in default of any positive evidence on the subject, to adopt the view now generally prevalent, that Francois Rabelais was born about the year 1495.

Even as regards the place of his birth there is room for doubt. On his admission to the University of Montpellier, he described himself as Chinonensis, or a native of Chinon,

"the famous, noble, and ancient town of Chinon, the first town in the world". It is situated on the river Vienne, about eight and a half miles from its confluence with the Loire. Above the town, on a rock three himdred feet high, rises the castle, now a ruin, but formerly the favourite residence of Henry II. of England when he visited his French dominions. There he was brought to die, and there lying in the delirium of fever he cursed himself and his sons (except the faithful Geoffrey, who watched over him to the end), and muttered, "Shame on a beaten king!" On the third day of the fever came the calm which announced the end, and twenty-four hours later he was borne upon the shoulders of his barons down the hill and across the Vienne to the great abbey church of Fontevrault, where his recumbent statue, with those of Eleanor, his wife, Richard Cceur de Lion, and Isabel of Angouleme, the wife of John, may be seen at the present day. A hundred and forty years later another memorable scene took place at the castle of Chinon: it was there that the Maid of Orleans had her celebrated interview with the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. In the time of Rabelais it had ceased to be a royal residence.

At Chinon Rabelais 's father possessed a 15 house which bore the sign of "The Lamprey", now numbered 15 in the street of that name, and it is here that the majority of his biographers place his birth. But his description of himself as Chinonensis does not necessarily imply that he was born in Chinon itself, and there is a long-established local tradition that his actual birthplace was La Deviniere, about three miles to the southwest of Chinon, where his father had also a property. " Rabelais 's house", as it is called, the construction of which is said to date from the fifteenth century, stands at the end of the present hamlet, which forms part of the commune of Seuilly. This local tradition is strongly supported by the testimony of Rabelais 's book, for while Chinon is only mentioned here and there, and never at any length, La Deviniere, Seuilly, and the surrounding district play an important part, especially in the account of the birth of Gargantua, and in that of the war between Grandgousier and Picrochole. The neighbours from Cin6, Seuilly, La Roche-Clermaud, Vaugaudry, Coudray, and Montpensier, who come to feast with Grandgousier, dance after dinner to the sound of the flageolets and the bagpipes in a meadow which still bears the name of La Saulsaye, "the willow-plantation". It borders the left bank of the little river N6gron, about a mile from La Deviniere. In the same neighbourhood are conducted all the operations of the Lilliputian war between Picrochole and Grandgousier. The abbey of Seuilly is the scene of Brother John's heroic resistance. Lern6, two and a half miles to the west of Seuilly, is Picrochole 's capital. La Roche- Clermaud, on the main road from Chinon to Loudun (it has a station on the modern railway), is taken by Picrochole and retaken by Gargantua, while the bridge over the Negron figures in the narrative as the Ford of Ved6.

It is true that La Deviniere did not become the property of Rabelais 's father till the year 1505,* on the death of Rabelais 's grandmother; but it is quite possible that he lived there in her lifetime, for after the death of Rabelais's grandfather she married again, and she had another property at Chavigny-en-Vallee, on the north bank of the Loire. Even if Rabelais was not born at La Deviniere, the whole neighbourhood must have been familiar to him from his childhood. The charming picture of Grandgousier, ''warming himself after supper by a good, clear, and great fire, and, while his chestnuts are roasting, writing on the hearth with a stick burnt at one end, wherewith they poke the fire, and telling to his wife and family pleasant stories of times gone by", is 2 17 surely a reminiscence of this childhood. Does not Grandgousier here stand for Rabelais 's father?

It is only recently that the name and profession of Rabelais 's father have been discovered. His name was Antoine, and not Thomas, as is generally stated, and he was neither an innkeeper nor an apothecary, but an advocate and a licentiate in law. This last information is due to M. Abel Lefranc, who has discovered a document of the year 1527, in which the Parliament of Paris orders that Antoine Rabelais, as the senior advocate of the district, shall continue to act as deputy, in the absence of the general and particular lieutenants, until the election of a regular deputy. It thus appears that Rabelais 's father was a person of consideration in the neighbourhood, a member of a distinguished profession, and possessed of a considerable amount of property. The tradition that he was an innkeeper doubtless arose from a circumstance which absolutely disproves it: namely, that his house at Chinon was afterwards turned into an inn — a fact recorded by the historian De Thou in some Latin verses. The name of Thomas and the other profession, that of apothecary, attributed to him may be accounted for by the existence of a Thomas Rabelais who was an apothecary, and whose son Antoine and grandson Thomas successively owned La Devini^re. But this Thomas was a younger man than Francois Rabelais, possibly his nephew.

We do not know the name of Rabelais *s mother, but he had two brothers, Jamet and Antoine — of whom the latter inherited La Deviniere — and one sister, Frangoise.

The country round La Deviniere is undulating and woody, and must once have formed part of the forest of Fontevrault. The abbey of that name, which lies between seven and eight miles from La Deviniere, was founded in 1099 by the crusader Robert d'Arbrissel; and its church, with its fine apsidal choir, in spite of the baser uses to which it has been put — the nave has been converted into dormitories for the prisoners — still stands to testify to its former greatness. Two and a half miles north of Fontevrault, just above the junction of the Vienne with the Loire, is Candes, where St. Martin of Tours died, and a Httle west of Candes is Montsoreau, with its castle, the remains of which, including a fine staircase, are now turned into modest dwelling-houses.

Such were the surroundings, rich in historical associations, amid which Frangois Rabelais spent his childhood. The tradition that he received his first schooling at .the abbey of

Seuilly, a Benedictine foundation, is rendered probable by the conspicuous part which that abbey plays in the war between Picrochole and Grandgousier. But the boy was soon to be taken from these scenes. "He had barely attained his tenth year," says Antoine Le Roy, in the long rigmarole account of Rabelais which he wrote at Meudon during the Fronde, "when his father determined to make him a Franciscan." "I marvel," says the author of the Isle sonnante, and it is surely Rabelais himself who is speaking, "that mothers bear their children nine months in their bodies, seeing that they cannot bear them nor brook them in their houses nine years, nay, most often not seven, but put a shirt over their dress, and cut a few hairs on the top of their heads." According to fairly good evidence, it was in the Franciscan convent of La Baumette, near Angers, that the young Frangois became a novice and received his education. There is a tradition that among his schoolfellows were Guillaimie and Jean du Bellay and Geoffroy d'Estissac, all three his friends and patrons in later years, and the tradition receives some support from the fact that the Du Bellay arms are in one of the chapel windows ; but it is doubtful whether the Du Bellay brothers or Estissac would have been sent to a purely conventual school such as La Baumette was. The Du Bellays, however, were at the neighbouring University of Angers, and it is possible that Rabelais may have come across them there. La Baumette is mentioned only once in Rabelais 's book, where it is cited as an instance of the stables being at the top of the house. The explanation of this is that the park and gardens laid out by King Ren6, the last Duke of Anjou, were built on terraces. We do not know where or in what year Rabelais completed his novitiate and took the vows of a Franciscan. But in a document dated April 5, 15 19, his signature is appended to a purchase of land made by the Franciscan convent of Fontenay-le-Comte, and he is qualified as frbre mineur. At some time or other, therefore, before 15 19 he went from La Baumette to Fontenay-le-Comte, the capital of Lower Poitou. Among the other signatures to this document is that of Pierre Amy, who was Rabelais 's chief friend in the convent. He was evidently an older man than Rabelais, and had already attained considerable distinction as a scholar, especially in Greek. Whether Rabelais had begun the study of Greek while he was still at La Baumette we do not know. It is possible that he may have profited by the presence of some teacher of Greek in the neighbouring University of Angers, but no such teacher is known to us. At any rate, under the guidance of Pierre Amy he became a competent Greek scholar.

Greek, it must be remembered, was at this date more or less of a new study in France. Though from 1458 there had been a few stray and incompetent teachers of the subject in Paris, it was not till the arrival of the learned Greek, Janus Lascaris, in 1495 that the study can be said really to have taken root in that city. For Lascaris, though his duties at Court allowed him little leisure for regular teaching, was always ready with help and encouragement, and under his benignant influence a little circle of Greek scholars was gradually formed. Its chief members were Jacques Lefevre d'fitaples, Guillaume Bud6 and his two intimate -friends Louis de Ruze and Francois de Luines, both holding high judicial office, Germain de Brie, better known as Germanus Brixius, Nicolas Berauld, the two physicians Guillaume Cop and Jean Ruel, and the printer Josse Bade (Badius). The doyen of the group was Jacques Lefevre, but though he had studied Greek in Italy for six years and was an indefatigable lecturer and writer of commentaries on Aristotle, he was far inferior in scholarship to Bud6, who ranked with Erasmus as the leading scholar in Europe. Bud6's reputation had first been made by his treatise De Asse, published in 15 14, which, while nominally an account of the Roman as, contained not only a thorough investigation of the money, weights, and measures of the ancients, but embraced in numerous digressions a wide field of classical learning. A collection of Bude's letters, including several written in Greek, published by Badius in 1520, set the seal on his reputation.

But in the year 1520, though a man like Bud6, thanks to his indomitable perseverance and his lavish expenditure on books and manuscripts, had forced his way to the forefront of European scholars, the study of Greek in Paris was attended with many difficulties. There were as yet few manuscripts, and books had to be imported from beyond the Alps. Th6 first Greek book printed in France had appeared only as recently as 1507, from the press of Gilles Gourmont, and in 1512 we find Girolamo Aleandro complaining, in the preface to his Greek-Latin dictionary, of the wretched condition of Greek printing at Paris, and especially of the scanty supply of Greek type. In spite of the diligent labours of Gourmont, the editions of Greek books for the next fifteen years barely averaged one a year.

If these were the difficulties which beset a student of Greek at Paris, what must have been those which Rabelais and his friend had to encounter in a Franciscan convent, the brethren of which, according to Colletet, "took vows of ignorance as well as religious vows"? But they were encouraged by the support and friendship of a humanist circle, consisting chiefly of lawyers and ecclesiastics, which had formed itself in Poitou. At Fontenay itself were Arthus Cailler, lieutenant of the bailiwick, his son-in-law and successor Andre Tiraqueau, "the good, the learned, the wise, the most humane, the most kindly and just Tiraqueau", Jean Brisson, king's advocate, and another advocate, Hilaire Goguet.

About six miles off was L'Hermenault, where Geoff roy d'Estissac, the Bishop of Maillezais, had a chateau. He was a young man of about Rabelais 's age, a member of an illustrious family of the neighbouring province of Aunis. In full sympathy with the Renaissance movement, a lover of books and every form of cultiire, and one of the most active builders of his day, he was a man after Frangois I.'s own heart; and his appointment (151 8), at an early age, to the see of Maillezais was one of the first-fruits of the Concordat (15 16).

He seems to have been specially useful to Amy and Rabelais in procuring them books, particularly Greek books. We learn this from an extant receipt, which sets forth that one of the agents of Henri Estienne the elder had received from Pierre Amy the sum of seven gold crowns for books sold to the Bishop of Maillezais. Among these books were an Aristotle, a Homer, and a Cicero. At a considerably greater distance from Fontenay, but not out of reach, were Aymery Bouchard, president of the seneschal's court at Saintes, to whom Rabelais, as we shall see later, dedicated an edition of some Latin documents, and Briand de Valine, president of the court at Poitiers, who is mentioned in eulogistic terms by Rabelais in his Fourth Book.

We must not, therefore, picture to ourselves Rabelais and his friend Amy as confined to the society of stupid and unsympathetic monks, nor even as always residing inJ^ convent. We hear of Amy paying a visiflB^ Bouchard at Saintes, and Rabelais himself speaks of Saintes as if he had been there. There may also have been visits to the Bishop of Maillezais, either at L'Hermenault or at his chateau of Ligug6, near Poitiers.

But the two Greek students found another sympathiser in no less a person than Bud6

as himself. It appears from a Latin letter which he wrote to Amy early in 1521 that the latter, who was already known to Bude's friend, Francois de Ltiines, had already begun a correspondence with the great scholar. Then Rabelais, encoiiraged by his friend, also wrote to Bud6, but waited five months in vain for an answer. A second letter was more fortunate. The answer, which is dated April 12 (1522), though chiefly composed of rhetorical commonplace and pedantic pleasantry, is thoroughly cordial in tone.

Rabelais's Greek studies thus progressed, and before long he accomplished a translation of one of the books of Herodotus. But further letters from Bude, one to Amy, dated February 23 (1523), and one to Rabelais, dated January 27, and probably to be assigned to the year 1524, inform us that the two friends were subjected to a petty persecution at the hands of^fcir fellow-monks on account of their stuc^Pf and that the superior deprived them for a time of their cherished Greek books. Bude expresses warm sympathy and indignation, and ends his letter to Rabelais with a long tirade against the obscurantist party in general, "who have," he says, "all but succeeded in banishing as guilty of heresy those who are devoted to Greek literature".

For heresy was already in the air. Towards the close of 1520 Guillaume Brigonnet, another native of Touraine, had summoned to Meaux, of which see he was Bishop, his old tutor Lef^vre d 'Staples, with some of his friends and pupils, to carry on the work of "preaching Christ from the sources". In the spring of 1 52 1 the Sorbonne had formally condemned Luther's writings, which for the last two years had been eagerly read at Paris by ''the whole band of the learned".

As the result of the persecution to which the two monks of Fontenay-le-Comte were subjected. Amy escaped from the convent, and took refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Mesmin. Rabelais, however, acted with greater prudence. He addressed a petition to the new Pope, Clement VII., asking permission to leave not only the convent of Fontenay, but the Franciscan order, and to enter the neighbouring Benedictine abbey of Maillezais, the abbot of which was Rabelais's friend the Bishop of Maillezais, the abbey church being used as the cathedral, and the abbey buildings as the episcopal palace. The Bishop doubtless backed the petition, and the required permission having been granted, Rabelais became a Benedictine monk instead of a Franciscan friar.

Though a nominal inmate of the abbey of Maillezais, Rabelais seems to have resided generally with the Bishop-abbot at his priory of Liguge, near Poitiers. Here the Bishop had built himself a princely chateau, surrounded with splendid gardens. Poitiers, which was only five miles distant, was something of a literary centre. Among its ornaments was Jean Bouchet, a relic of the rhetoriqueur school, who had retired to Poitiers at the beginning of the reign of Francois I.; and here, during such leisure as his business of a hardworking lawyer allowed him, he continued to produce reams of jog-trot verse. It is possible that Rabelais may have made his acquaintance at Fontenay, but at any rate they now became friends, and Bouchet's published work includes a rhymed epistle addressed to him by Rabelais, together with his own answer. From these we learn that the Bishop had taken Rabelais into his service, possibly as domestic chaplain, and that a little room was set apart for him in the chateau. The two epistles are dated respectively the 6th and the 8th of September, but unfortunately the year is not given. Except for this momentary glimpse, we have no direct record of Rabelais 's life from the time he left Fontenay-le-Comte to the day on which he matriculated at the University of Montpellier, more than six years later. To fill up the blank we must resort more or less to conjectxire.

Our first help comes from the fact that Rabelais was admitted to the degree of bachelor of medicine only two and a half months after his matriculation. It is generally said that this was owing solely to his proficiency in medical studies. But, in the first place, where could he have acquired this proficiency except at Paris, at the only university in France which had a medical school of any account? Secondly, the medical school of Montpellier had enacted, as recently as 1526, that they would recognise no course of study for their own degrees save that of the University of Paris. It follows almost as a necessity that Rabelais must have studied medicine at Paris. The next question is, for how long? The Montpellier statutes required that a candidate for the degree of bachelor of medicine should have attended "ordinary" lectures for twenty-four months — that is to say, three academic years. But, as we shall see presently, Rabelais can hardly have come to Paris before the beginning of July, 1528, and this would only give him time for sixteen months of "ordinary " lectures at that university. We must, therefore, suppose that the University of Montpellier allowed him to count attendance at ** extraordinary" lectures as part of the twenty-four months' course. Now, ''ordinary" lectures were only given in term-time, but ** extraordinary" lectures might be delivered in the long vacation, so that with the help of three long vacations and a certain amount of attendance at lectures at Montpellier Rabelais could just have made out his full time. In his case there was very good reason for allowing him to count attendance at "extraordinary" lectures, for among the bachelors of medicine who were lecturing at Paris during his period of residence were Jean Giinther of Andemach and Jean Femel, both of whom took their doctor's degree in 1530.*