With regard to his birth, parentage, youth, and education everything depends upon tradition, and it is not until he was according to one extreme hypothesis thirty-six, according to the other extreme twenty-four, that we have solid testimony respecting him. In the year 1519, on the 5th of April, the François Rabelais of history emerges. The monks of Fontenay le Comte bought some property (half an inn in the town), and among their signatures to the deed of purchase is that of François Rabelais. Before this all is cloudland. It is said that he had four brothers and no sisters, that his father had a country property called La Devinière, and was either an apothecary or a tavern-keeper. Half a century after his death De Thou mentions that the house in which he was born had become a tavern. It still stands at the corner of a street called the Rue de la Lamproie, and the tradition may be correct. An indistinct allusion of his own has been taken to mean that he was tonsured in childhood at seven or nine years old; and tradition says that he was sent to the convent of Seuilly, though of course he could then have taken no definite vows, and there is no evidence whatever that the passage in question, which simply condemns the practice referred to, has any personal reference. From Seuilly at an unknown date tradition takes him either to the university of Angers or to the convent school of La Baumette or La Basmette, founded by good King René in the neighbourhood of the Angevin capital. Here he is supposed to have been at school with the brothers Du Bellay, with Geoffroy d’Estissac and others. The next stage in this (as far as evidence goes, purely imaginary) career is the monastery of Fontenay le Comte, where, as has been seen, he is certainly found in 1519 holding a position sufficiently senior to sign deeds for the community, where he, as will be seen, certainly, though at an unknown date, took priest’s orders, and where he also pursued, again certainly, the study of letters, and especially of Greek, with ardour. From this date, therefore, he becomes historically visible. The next certain intelligence which we have of Rabelais is somewhat more directly biographical than this bare entry of his name. The letters of the well-known Greek scholar Budaeus, two of which are addressed to Rabelais himself and several more to his friend and fellow-monk Pierre Amy, together with some notices by André Tiraqueau, a learned jurist, to whom Rabelais rather than his own learning has secured immortality, show beyond doubt what manner of life the future author of Gargantua led in his convent. These letters are partly written in Greek and partly in Latin. In Tiraqueau’s book De Legibus Connubialibus, which excited a controversy with another jurist of the west, Bouchard, also a friend of Rabelais, the latter is described as “a man most learned in both languages and all kinds of scholarship above his age, and beyond the wont and, if I may say so, the excessive scrupulousness of his order.” The excessive scrupulousness of the order showed itself before long in reference to Amy and Rabelais, the latter of whom had, as this sentence of Tiraqueau’s also informs us, translated the first book of Herodotus. The letters of Budaeus show that an attempt was made by the heads of the convent or the order to check the studious ardour of these Franciscans; but it failed, and there is no positive evidence of anything like actual persecution, the phrases in the letters of Budaeus being merely the usual exaggerated Ciceronianism of the Renaissance. Some books and papers were seized as suspicious, then given back as innocent; but Rabelais was in all probability disgusted with the cloister,—indeed his great work shows this beyond doubt. In 1524, the year of the publication of Tiraqueau’s book above cited, his friend Geoffroy d’Estissac procured from Clement VII. an induit, licensing a change of order and of abode for Rabelais. From a Franciscan he became a Benedictine, and from Fontenay he moved to Maillezais, of which Geoffroy d’Estissac was bishop. He seems indeed to have been constantly in the company of the bishop and to have made many new literary acquaintances, notably Jean Bouchet, the poet. To him he wrote an epistle in French verse, still extant, which proves that Rabelais, much more truly than Swift, never could have been a poet. The title of this epistle is, however, noteworthy, inasmuch as the author is described in the original (a collection of Bouchet’s works published in 1545) as a man of great literary knowledge in Greek and Latin, and as a great orator in Greek, Latin, and French. But even this learned and hospitable retreat did not apparently satisfy Rabelais. In or before 1530 he left Maillezais, abandoned his Benedictine garb for that of a secular priest, and, as he himself puts it in his subsequent Supplicatio pro Apostasia to Pope Paul III., “per seculum diu vagatus fuit.” He is met at Montpellier in the year just mentioned. He entered the faculty of medicine there on the 16th of September and became bachelor on the 1st of November, a remarkably short interval, which shows what was thought of his acquirements. Early in 1531 he lectured publicly on Galen and Hippocrates, while his more serious pursuits seem to have been chequered by acting in a morale comédie, then a very frequent university amusement. Visits to the îles d’Hières, and the composition of a fish sauce in imitation of the ancient garum, which he sent to his friend Dolet, are associated, not very certainly, with his stay at Montpellier, which, lasting rather more than a year at first, was renewed at intervals for several years.

In 1532, however, and probably rather early than late in that year, he had moved from Montpellier to Lyons. Here he plunged into manifold work, literary and professional. He was appointed before the beginning of November physician to the hôtel dieu, with a salary of forty livres per annum. He edited for Sebastian Gryphius, in the single year 1532, the medical Epistles of Giovanni Manardi, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, with the Ars Parva of Galen, and an edition of two supposed Latin documents, which, however, happened unluckily to be forgeries. These three works were dedicated in order to his three chief friends of Touraine and Poitou, André Tiraqueau, the bishop of Maillezais, and Bouchard. We also have a Latin letter written on 1st December 1532 to a certain Bernard de Salignac, otherwise unknown.

It is certain that at this time Lyons was the centre and to a great extent the headquarters of an unusually enlightened society, and indirectly it is clear that Rabelais became intimate with this society. A manuscript distich, which was found in the Toulouse library, on the death of an infant named Theodule, whose country was Lyons and his father Rabelais, would seem to show that he here entered into other connexions than those of friendship. Absolutely nothing, however, is known about the child and its mother; it is enough to say that the existence of the former would have been by the manners and morals of the time very easily condoned. But what makes the Lyons sojourn of the greatest real importance is that at this time probably appeared the beginnings of the work which was to make Rabelais immortal. It is necessary to say “probably,” because the strange uncertainty which rests on so much of his life and writings exists here also. There is no doubt that both Gargantua and Pantagruel were popular names of giants in the Middle Ages, though, curiously enough, no mention of the former in French literature much before Rabelais’s time has been traced. In 1526, however, Charles de Bordigné, in a satiric work of no great merit, entitled La Légende de Pierre Faifeu, has the name Gargantua with an allusion, and in 1532 (if not earlier) there appeared at Lyons Les Grandes et Inestimables Chroniques du Grand et Enorme Géant Gargantua. This is a short book on the plan of the later burlesques and romances of the Round Table. Arthur and Merlin appear with Grantgosier, as he is here spelt, Galemelle (Gargalelle), Gargantua himself, and the terrible mare. But there is no trace of the action or other characters of Gargantua that was to be, nor is the manner of the piece in the least worthy of Rabelais. No one supposes that he wrote it, though it has been supposed that he edited it and that in reality it is older than 1532, and may be the direct subject of Bordigné’s allusion six years earlier. What does, however, seem probable is that the first book of Pantagruel (the second of the whole work) was composed with a definite view to this chap book and not to the existing first book of Gargantua, which was written afterwards when Rabelais discovered the popularity of his work and felt that it ought to have some worthier starting-point than the Grandes Chroniques. The earliest known and dated edition of Pantagruel is of 1533, of Gargantua 1535, though this would not be of itself conclusive, especially as we actually possess editions of both which, though undated, seem to be earlier. But the definite description of Gargantua in the title as “Père de Pantagruel,” the omission of the words “second livre” in the title of the first book of Pantagruel while the second and third are duly entitled “tiers” and “quart,” the remarkable fact that one of the most important personages, Friar John, is absent from book ii., the first of Pantagruel, though he appears in book i. (Gargantua), and many other proofs show the order of publication clearly enough. There is also in existence a letter of Calvin, dated 1533, in which he speaks of Pantagruel, but not of Gargantua, as having been condemned as an obscene book. Besides this, 1533 saw the publication of an almanac, the first of a long series which exists only in titles and fragments, and of the amusing Prognostication Pantagrueline (still, be it observed, Panta-grueline, not Gargantuine). Both this and Pantagruel itself were published under the anagrammatic pseudonym of “Alcofribas Nasier,” shortened to the first word only in the case of the Prognostication.

This busy and interesting period of Rabelais’s life was brought to a close apparently by his introduction or réintroduction to Jean du Bellay. They had been, it has been said, schoolfellows, but Bellay does not appear among the list of Rabelais’s friends in the first years of his emancipation. From 1534, however, he and the other members of his family appear as Rabelais’s chief and constant patrons during the remainder of his life. It was just before Christmas that Jean du Bellay, passing through Lyons on an embassy to Rome, engaged Rabelais as physician. The visit did not last very long, but it left literary results in an edition of a description of Rome by Marliani, which Rabelais published in September 1534. It is also thought that the first edition of Gargantua may have appeared this year.

In the spring - of 1535 the authorities of the Lyons hospital, considering that Rabelais had twice absented himself without leave, elected Pierre de Castel in his room; but the documents which exist do not seem to infer that any blame was thought due to him, and the appointment of his successor was once definitely postponed in case he should return. An epigram of Dolet shows that at least once and probably about this time he performed a public dissection. At the end of 1535 Rabelais once more accompanied Jean du Bellay, now a cardinal, to Rome and stayed there till April in the next year. This stay furnishes some biographical documents of importance in the shape of letters to Geoffroy d’Estissac, of the already-mentioned Supplicatio pro Apostasia, and of the bull of absolution which was the reply to it. This bull not only freed Rabelais from ecclesiastical censure but gave him the right to return to the order of St Benedict when he chose, and to practise medicine. He took advantage of this bull and became a canon of St Maur. The monastery having but recently become collegiate, there seems to have been some technical difficulty which necessitated a new supplication. In the next year (1537) we find Rabelais present at a dinner where the friends of Étienne Dolet met to congratulate him on his pardon for the homicide of

Compaing. The luckless printer has left a poem on the occasion, and two other writers, Salmon Macrin and Nicholas Bourbon, have also left poems of this date expressing the regard in which Rabelais was generally held. Now, too, he took his doctor’s degree at Montpellier, lectured on the Greek text of Hippocrates, and next year made a public anatomical demonstration. During these two years he seems to have resided either at Montpellier or at Lyons. But in 1539 he entered the service of Guillaume du Bellay-Langey, elder brother of Jean, and would appear to have been with him (he was governor of Piedmont) till his death on 9th January 1543. Rabelais wrote a panegyrical memoir of Guillaume, which is lost, and the year before saw the publication of an edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel, book i., together (both had been repeatedly reprinted separately), in which some dangerous expressions were cut away. Nothing at all is known of his life, whereabouts, or occupations till the publication of the third book, which appeared in 1546, “avec privilège du roi,” which had been given in September 1545.

Up to this time Rabelais, despite the condemnation of the Sorbonne referred to above, had experienced nothing like persecution or difficulty. Even the spiteful or treacherous act of Dolet, who in 1542 reprinted the earlier form of the books which Rabelais had just slightly modified, seems to have done him no harm. But the storm of persecution which towards the end of the reign of Francis I. was fatal to Dolet himself and to Despériers, while it exiled and virtually killed Marot, did not leave Rabelais scatheless. There is no positive evidence of any measures taken or threatened against him; but it is certain that he passed nearly the whole of 1546 and part of 1547 at Metz in Lorraine as physician to the town at the salary of 120 livres, that Sturm speaks of him as having been “cast out of France by the times” (with the exclamation φευ των χρόνων) in a contemporary letter, and that he himself in a letter, also contemporary, though it is not clear whether it is of 1546 or the next year, gives a doleful account of his pecuniary affairs and asks for assistance. At Francis’s death on 31st March 1547 Du Bellay went to Rome, and at some time not certain Rabelais joined him. He was certainly there in February 1549, when he dates from Du Bellay’s palace a little account of the festivals given at Rome to celebrate the birth of the second son of Henry II. and Catherine de’ Medici. This account, the Sciomachie as it is called, is extant. In the same year a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel du Puits-Herbault, made in a book called Theotimus the first of the many attacks on Rabelais. It is, however, as vague as it is violent, and it does not seem to have had any effect. Rabelais had indeed again made for himself protectors whom no clerical or Sorbonist jealousy could touch. The Sciomachie was written to the cardinal of Guise, whose family were all-powerful at court, and Rabelais dedicated his next book to Odet de Chatillon, afterwards cardinal, a man of great influence. Thus Rabelais was able to return to France, and was presented to the livings of Meudon and St Christophe de Jambet. It may, however, surprise those who have been accustomed to hear him spoken of as “curé de Meudon” and who have read lives of him founded on legend to find that there is very little ground for believing that he ever officiated or resided there. He certainly held the living but two years, resigning it in January 1552 along with his other benefice, and it is noteworthy that at the episcopal visitation of 1551 he was not present. To this supposed residence at Meudon and to the previous stay at Rome, however, are attached two of the most mischievous items of the legend, though fortunately two of the most easily refutable. It is said that Rabelais met and quarrelled with Joachim du Bellay the poet at Rome, and with Ronsard at Meudon and elsewhere, that this caused a breach between him and the Pléiade, that he satirized its classicizing tendencies in the episode of the Limousin scholar, and that Ronsard after his death avenged himself by a libellous epitaph. The facts are these. Nothing is heard of the quarrel with Du Bellay or of any meeting with him, nothing of the meetings and bickerings with Ronsard, till 1699, when Bernier tells the story without any authority. The supposed allusions to the Pléiade date from a time when Ronsard was a small boy, and are mainly borrowed from an earlier writer still, Geoffroy Tory. Lastly, the epitaph read impartially is not libellous at all but simply takes up the vein of the opening scenes of Gargantua in reference to Gargantua’s author. There is indeed no reason to suppose that either Ronsard or Du Bellay was a fervent admirer of Rabelais, for they belonged to a very different literary school; but there is absolutely no evidence of any enmity between them or even of any acquaintanceship which could have given rise to enmity.

Some chapters of Rabelais’s fourth book had been published in 1548, but the whole did not appear till 1552. The Sorbonne censured it and the parliament suspended the sale, taking advantage of the king’s absence from Paris. But it was soon relieved of the suspension. This is the last fact we know about Rabelais. It is supposed that he died in 1553, but actual history is quite silent, and the legends about his deathbed utterances—“La farce est jouée,” “Je vais chercher un grand peut-être,” &c.—are altogether apocryphal. The same may be said of the numerous silly stories told of his life, such as that of his procuring a free passage to Paris by inscribing packets “Poison for the king,” and so forth.

Ten years after the publication of the fourth book and nine after the supposed date of the author’s death there appeared at Lyons sixteen chapters entitled VÎle Sonnante par Maistre François Rabelais, and two years later the entire fifth book was printed as such. In 1567 it took place with the others, and has...