RABELAIS, FnAtccois, the greatest of French humorists, was born, according to the general statement of biographers, in 1483, but more probably toward 1495, at Chinon, a small town in Touraine. His father, Thomas Rabelais, was proprietor of a farm in the neighborhood, celebrated for the quality of its wine, the sale of which be, perhaps, combined with the business of an apothecary. His prosperous circumstances enabled him to give to his son every advantage of education, and at an early age the boy was sent as a pupil to the neigbnring abbey of Scully. His progress in his studies being found by no means satisfactory, he was thence removed to the university of Angers. Here—though as a scholar he still remained quite undistinguished—he was fortunate enough to make the acquhintarice of Jean (afterward the cardinal) Du Bellav, to whose steady and helpful friendship he was subsequently much indebted. At the desire of his father he consented to embrace the monastic state, and, after passing through the preliminary novitiate, became a brother of the order of St. Francis, in the convent of Fontenay le Comte, according to the annalist, Pierre de St. Romuahl, in 1511, but the discovery of a document by M. B. Fitton (Poitou et Vendee, Fontenay, 1861), renders the date 1519 more probable. Rabelais now devoted himself with the utmost ardor and persevereuce to the Prosecution of his hitherto neglected studies. Aiming at the widest culture attainable, he ranged the whole circle of the sciences as then under stood. • To medicine, in particular, he seems to have been strongly attracted; and in the sphere of language, in addition to Latin and Greek, he is said to have attained a corn of Italian, Spanish, German, English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Meantime, ti nth his brother-monks, he was much the reverse of a favorite. They hated him for his devotion to the new learning, and suspected his Greek to be only a cover for heresy. About 1523 a search was made in his cell for'suspieious books; the whole were confis cated, and to save himself from further and sharper persecution he fled. But though only a poor monk, the wit and learning of Rabelais had gained him several influential friends, through whose exertions he obtained from pope Clement VII. an indulgence to tiansfer himself from the order of St. Francis to that of St. Benedict, and became an inmate of the monastery of Alaillezais. For the calumny afterward circulated, that his removal was-necessitated by the odium attached to a life of profligate indulgence, there seems uo reason to suppose that there crer was the smallest ground. We must infer that in his new abode he found himself not much more comfortable than before, as after a few years he quitted it abruptly, without the sanction of his ecclesiastical superiors, thereby the severest censures of the church. But it was not persecution that induced this second flight from the monastic state. It was the incurable aversion of the grotesque humorist to the restraints of the " regular" clergy. And nobody seems to have really blamed him for his professional apostasy—Ins own bishop, among others, receiving him at his table in the most friendly mauner! During 1524-30 lie appears to have frequented the universities of Paris and Bourg, which may account for the intimate knowledge of university manners and opinions shown in- has great work. In the year 1530 he settled himself at Montpellier, and, taking a medical degree at the uni versity, was appointed to the post of lecturer. In 1532 be went as hospital physician to Lyons, where he published several works on medical science, besides other miscellaneous matter bearing on archwology, jurisprudence, etc. In the beginning of 1534, his old
friend, Jean Du Bellay, then bishop of Paris; and shortly after to be cardinal, passed through Lyons on•an embassy to Rome, whither, in the capacity of traveling physician, Rabelais was delighted to accompany him, in fulfillment of a desire long cherished. While at Rome he petitioned Paul III. for a remission of the penalties still attached to his misdemeanor before mentioned; and through the interest of Du Bellay and others, a bull was obtained, absolving him and permitting his return to the order of St. Benedict. But he continued the' exercise of his profession of medicine at Montpellier and other towns till 1538, when he withdrew as canon into Du Bellay's own abbey of St. Maur des Fosses, near Paris. and resumed his monastic habit. The death of Francis I., in 1547, was followed by the fall of cardinal Du Bellay, the new monarch, Henry II., favoring the cardinal de Lorraine. Rabelais shared for a time in the disgrace of his old protector, whom he appears to have followed to Borne, but his tact and irresistible humor won him friends among the and in 1551 be obtained the curacy of :Hendon, in the occupancy of which the remainder of his life was passed. So far as record remains of it, his life here was happy and blameless. lie was exemplary in the fulfillment of duty, profuse of charity, sedulous in the relief of suffering, for which his medical knowledge afforded him unusual facilities, and always specially delighted to cultivate, as occasion served, the society of those any way noted as eminent in learning or science, He died at Paris, in 1553, in the Rue des Jardins, in the parish of St. Paul, in the cemetery of which he was buried.
The scientific treatises of Rabelais are—almost in the nature of the case—long since utterly forgotten; but his romance, in which are narrated the wonderful adventures of Gar gantua and Pantagruel.continues to take rank as one of the world's masterpieces of humor and grotesque invention. In the form of a'sportive and extravagant fiction, it is, in fact, a satirical criticism.of the corrupt society of the period, the prevalent follies and vices of which are parodied with surprising effect and ingenuity. The difficulty of its alle gorical form, however, and the quantity of recondite allusion it embodies, tend some what to impair the effect of the work for most modern readers. Also, it must be said, that in his attempt to ' Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, it is the whim of the writer to infect' himself with not a little of its foulness; and such is the riotous license of the buffoonery, from behind which, as a stalking-horse, lie shoots the arrows of wit, thatfew books are less fitted for general perusal in the present more decorous times. On the publication of his work, the charge of irreligion and atheism was freely preferred against Rabelais, and certain other scandals were circulated, for which there seems to have been in his life no foundation, except as the free tone assumed by the writer might suggest a precarious inference to defective morality in the man. The religious corruptions of the' time, and the vices of the priestly class, had formed one favorite theme of his satire, and he simply paid the usual penalty in thus incurring the easy retort calumnious. See Delecluze, Francois Rabelais (Par. 1841), and P. Lacroix, Rabelais sa Vie et 8e8 Ouvrages (Par. 1859), in the latter of which works the incidents of his career are for the first time clearly and correctly narrated.