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The Eclecticism of Rabelais
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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Among the writers who express for all countries and time the thoughts, aspirations, and temper of their age is Rabelais. In his day many fundamental questions were mooted. The sixteenth century debated ever and again these among others: the nature and immortality of the soul, the eternity of the world, miracles, God, Nature, Providence, Destiny. On all these questions Rabelais expressed himself, at times enigmatically, it is true, but in a form that has outlived the treatises of the professional philosophers and theologians of the period, of a Pomponazzi, a Vicomercato, a Cardan, a Bodin, and even a Calvin.
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* The writer takes pleasure in making acknowledgment of his indebtedness in the preparation of this paper to Mr. Archer Taylor, of the University of Chicago, and Mr. Richard T. Holbrook, of the University of California, who have read it in their editorial capacity and made many suggestions as to its form, and to Mr. Louis Cons, of Princeton University, for suggestions as to content, all of which have resulted in its material improvement. However, the writer assumes entire responsibility for the opinions presented in this investigation on the religious and philosophical views of Rabelais.
The italics used throughout this paper are the writer's.
1 Arthur Tilley, François Rabelais, 1907, p. 11: “He is the embodiment of the early French 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.”
2 Emile Faguet, Le Seizième siècle, n.d., p. 77: “Les critiques, les professeurs de littérature, les conférenciers et les simples causeurs ont toujours été embarrassés en présence de Rabelais et de son œuvre. C'est une énigme.” Charles Lenient, La Satire en France au seizième siècle, 3d. ed. 1886, p. 62, presents the traditional views: “Les uns n'ont vu dans son œuvre qu'une débauche d'imagination, un pêle-mêle confus de boufonneries et de trivialités, où brillent, ça et là, à travers les fumées de l'ivresse et les délires de la fantaisie, quelques rares éclairs de génie, d'éloquence et de raison. Les autres, par esprit d'opposition ont prétendu trouver dans ce désordre même un plan habilement conçu, une combinaison ingénieuse pour cacher la profondeur de la pensée et se dérober ainsi aux poursuites de ses ennemis.”
3 Faguet, ibid.: “Mais il n'est que de dire naïvement, fût-ce à sa honte, ce que l'on pense, et je ne trouve nulle énigme, et sinon nulle profondeur, du moins nul abîme, dans Rabelais.”
4 Jean Plattard, Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, VIII at p. 321, sees in Rabelais a “Fabrician,” i.e., a sympathizer with the moderate Reformist views of Lefèvre d'Etaples; Abel Lefranc, in Revue de France, May 1922, pp. 327 ff. argues he is a materialist. Henri Busson, in Les Sources et le développement du rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, (1533-1601), 1922, a scholarly and illuminating work which will frequently be quoted in the course of this study, examines his religious views, and though his conclusions are usually well-founded, his investigation is not sufficiently embracing. Not only have many important passages escaped his scrutiny, but he has not touched upon the most important problem of all, Rabelais' notion of the Deity. A. F. Chappell's The Enigma of Rabelais, 1924, in the writer's opinion leaves the question intact.
5 In the Prologue of Gargantua Rabelais says: “Car en icelle [the lecture of the book] bien aultre goust trouverez et doctrine plus absconce, laquelle vous revelera de treshaultz sacremens et mysteres horrificques, tant en ce qui concerne nostre religion que aussi l'estat politicq et vie œconomique.” According to Faguet this is a mystification; Rabelais here is only laughing at his readers, and there is nothing abstruse in his book; it is only an amusing story, written in his odd moments to divert himself and his patients. His philosophy is merely the expression of ordinary common sense. It is neither original, nor profound, nor even very useful. Arthur Tilley, in François Rabelais, 1907, chap. 11, combats Faguet's view; see, however, the chapter “Follow Nature” in his Studies in the French Renaissance, 1922.
6 See Ernest Renan, Averroès et l'averroïsme, 3d. ed. 1866, pp. 359 ff.
7 See Renan, pp. 359-360. Though this opposition between faith and philosophy existed long before and after the Paduan School, the Paduans placed a special emphasis on it. In this opposition Renan sees only a subterfuge on the part of the free-thinkers to excuse their daring in the sight of the theologians. Others explain this double attitude on the ground that the Paduans really felt uncertain in the face of the two kinds of certainty, the philosophical and the theological. See J. Roger Charbonnel, La Pensée italienne, 1919, pp. 273-274. At p. 494 Charbonnel thus states the question: “La suprême vérité se confond avec Dieu. Mais il y a deux moyens de l'atteindre, ou si l'on veut il y a deux aspects sous lesquels il est également légitime de la contempler. La philosophie voit Dieu dans la nature; la théologie le voit en dehors et au-dessus de ce monde. La philosophie part de l'immanence du divin, la théologie de sa transcendance. Ce sont là deux méthodes qui s'appliquent à une réalité: Dieu considéré tantôt dans les manifestations de son activité qui vivifie et de sa providence qui conserve, tantôt dans l'unité absolue de son essence qui échappe à toute définition et à toute figuration. Il importe donc que la philosophie et la théologie se gardent d'empiéter trop souvent sur leur domaine respectif.”
8 For the syncretism of the doctrines of the ancient schools see François Picavet, Esquisse d'une histoire générale et comparée des philosophies médiévales, 2nd. ed., 1907, pp. 86-88.
9 The writer wishes in the following note to restate with more precision the views he expressed in his monograph, The Influence of the Arthurian Romances on the Five Books of Rabelais, 1926, pp. 167-9.
Arthur Tilley (Studies in the French Renaissance, 1922) reviews the question of “Rabelais and the Fifth Book” and reaches the following chief conclusions: 1) the whole of the Ile Sonnante (chapters 1-15) was written by Rabelais and handed over to the printer as he left it; 2) the rest of the Fifth Book is in the main Rabelais' work, but in several of the chapters there are interpolations, notably in chapters 18, 20, 26-28; 4) but though the Fifth Book is in the main by Rabelais, it clearly does not represent his final intentions; 5) some of the chapters (16, 31, and possibly 18) he left unfinished; 6) other chapters he left in the form of a rough draft which he had not worked up into an artistic shape. Such are chapters 11, 29, 30 and 35. Tilley might have included chapter 9, the most baffling chapter in Rabelais.
The present writer in a large measure agrees with Tilley, but he wishes to suggest the following additions. He sees three distinct parts in the Fifth Book: 1) chapters 1-15, which are Rabelais' and untouched by his collaborator; 2) chapters 30-43, which are distinctly Rabelaisian in style and thought; 3) chapters 16-29, which certainly do not exhibit Rabelais' recognized style and represent a gap, as it were, in his thought. Since all scholars agree in attributing chapters 1-15 to Rabelais, nothing need here be said about them. The writer believes chapters 30-43 also are substantially Rabelais' for the following reasons: a) they dovetail perfectly with Books III and IV in that they bring to a well-rounded conclusion the Grail-quest idea foreshadowed in Book III and developed in its initial aspects in Book IV; b) they show a consistent and logical development in Rabelais' religious and philosophical views as they appear in Book III; c) in many minor respects they cohere too well with the preceding Books to be the work of a continuator: chapters 30-31, the “Pays de Satin,” are foreshadowed by the expression “pays de satin” of IV, 8; chapters 32-33 (including the one Moland prints as chapter 33 bis) are announced by the expressions “c'est langaige lanternois” of II, 9, the “pays Lanternois” of IV, 5, and “à son retour de Lanternois” of IV, 8; the selection, in chapter 33 bis, of the “lantern” of Pierre Lamy, the friend of Rabelais' youth, “laquelle j'avois autrefois cognue à bonnes enseignes,” to conduct the questers to the oracle of the Holy Bottle is here of the greatest significance. Tilley's discussion may be read for additional examples. There remain chapters 16-29, which, in the writer's opinion, are the really problematic ones. As already said, they are obviously different from Rabelais' usual manner and show an interruption in the development of his thought. The second point, it is freely confessed, is of slight validity. Even the most careless reader, however, cannot fail to notice the flatness and dullness of these fourteen chapters. True enough, there are flat and dull passages in other portions of Rabelais' work, but not extending over fourteen consecutive chapters. These chapters may be accounted for according to two hypotheses: 1) they are a very rough draft by Rabelais, perhaps with interpolations by a later hand,—Tilley's second conclusion; 2) they are by a later hand, but follow closely a well-marked plan by Rabelais. The writer believes such a plan existed. In IV, 1, the author says: “[Ils] firent le voyage de Indie supérieure en moins de quatre mois,” a time limit which is strictly observed. Pantagruel and his companions set sail on June 7, and on July 29, 1546,—fifty-two days later—the Council of Trent was held,—in Lantern-land, according to Rabelais. Of this council he says, in IV, 5: “si lors y arrivions (comme facile nous estoit) voyrions belle, honorable, et joyeuse compagnie des Lanternes.” Finally in IV, 1, we learn that Xenomanes “avoit à Gargantua, laissé et signé, en sa grande et universelle hydrographie, la route qu'ils tiendroient. . . .” (See the writer's discussion in The Influence etc., pp. 170-171.) These passages seem to indicate clearly enough that Rabelais composed the last two Books—the journey to the Holy Bottle—with a carefully drawn plan before his eyes. All his collaborator needed to do was to amplify his rough indications. The writer is of the opinion that there was a collaborator, and he agrees with Mr. Louis Cons (Revue bleue, April 25, 1914) that this collaborator may well have been Jean Quentin. According to this hypothesis, Rabelais composed the first and the last of the three parts of Book V first and the middle part was to be put in definitive shape subsequently. Of course, this is a practice not unknown among writers.
10 The most successful of these attempts was the one that sought to reconcile Christianity and the moral doctrines of the Stoics, especially of Seneca. This was the task that Justus Lipsius, especially, and Guillaume Du Vair set themselves to in the second half of the sixteenth century. See Léontine Zanta, La Renaissance du stoïcisme au seizième siècle, 1914. The Stoic doctrine of self-government was involved in this connection and eventually led to a lay as distinguished from a Church morality.
11 Opinion is divided as to when the rationalistic ideas of the Paduan School first began to penetrate into France. Emile Besch wants to set the date as late as 1550. He says (Revue du Seizième Siècle, VI, at p. 28): “L'humanisme en vulgarisant la littérature et la philosophie antique avait donné [about 1550] aux intelligences d'élite une certaine tournure qui les inclinait au rationalisme.” Busson, Introduction, p. xiv, wants to put the date back to 1533: “Dans les dix années qui suivent 1533, les disciples des philosophes de Padoue et les Italiens eux-mêmes apportent en France les idées rationalistes. Pourtant ces idées ne sont pas encore très répandues, puisque ni Rabelais dans ses deux premiers livres, ni Des Periers dans le Cymbalum ne semblent les connaître.” Pierre Villey, Marot et Rabelais, 1923, pp. 189-190, seems to be in accord with Busson: “Après les placards, les bûchers, et l'Institution chrétienne, vers 1538-1540, un parti rationaliste lèvera la tête. Le Cymbalum mundi traduira ses aspirations. Il comptera notamment des humanistes qui, découragés de la défaite des évangélistes modérés, se détachent plus ou moins complètement de l'Evangile. Je crois avec Calvin que Rabelais sera de ceux-là.”
12 The chief doctrines of the School of Padua were: a) the separation of reason and faith; b) a sceptical attitude toward the problem of the immortality of the soul; c) a belief in the eternity of the world; d) a disbelief in miracles, Providence, and the efficacy of prayer; e) belief in natural law in lieu of celestial intelligences ruling the world; f) the unity of the intellect, that is, there is only one active intellect (voῦs, mens, mind or soul) in the universe, which is impersonal, absolute, separable from the individual, and participated in by all individuals, and this intellect is ultimately God himself, wherefore by death each individual's part is reintegrated into the Deity, and loses its identity; g) religion was invented to hold the ignorant in subjugation.
13 Busson, pp. 173-174, makes the point that a philosophical religion became necessary in order to combat the incredulity of the Paduans, and this philosophical religion was Platonism, under the more modern guise of Neoplatonism, which emphasized the supernatural and had some affinity with Christianity. On the connection between the philosophy of Plato and the supernatural, see William Lecky, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, 1913 ed., I, passim, especially pp. 18, 298.
14 Peripateticism had been definitely enthroned in the thirteenth century after its espousal by Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, when Platonism, whence the early Church Fathers had largely drawn inspiration, was on the wane. See Frederick D. Maurice, Medieval Philosophy, 2nd ed., 1859, chap. v, §§8-64.
15 True Pyrrhonism may be summed up in the three following axioms: a) we can know nothing as to the nature of things, and whatever property may be attributed to a thing its opposite may be predicated of it with equal justice; b) hence the right attitude towards things is to withhold judgment and to act, since act we must, according to probability, nature, and custom; c) the necessary result of suspended judgment is ataraxia, or imperturbability. Only the man who has suspended all judgment can guard against all error and is in a position to regard things with absolute calmness unruffled by passion or desire. By thus withdrawing within himself one attains happiness, which is the goal of all philosophy. In France Pyrrhonism found its highest expression in Montaigne, who shows in his celebrated Apologie de Raymond Sebonde, (II, 12) that while reason can justify anything, it can prove nothing. We can believe, but we cannot know; consequently religious beliefs depend exclusively on faith.
16 This is the end that the Averroism of the Paduan School served, which, insignificant as a system of philosophy, yet was a potent weapon in the fight to reclaim the independence of the reason. The struggle of the Renaissance was already foreshadowed by the conflict between Religion and Reason, Theology and Philosophy, initiated by the Averroists of the thirteenth century. This conflict resulted in complete religious scepticism, and the thirteenth century was the century of incredulity par excellence. See Renan, pp. 279-281.
17 Cf. the manuscript passage omitted in the 1564 edition of Book V: “. . . . rechercher et investiger, comme est le naturel des humains. . . .”
18 There are many varieties of rationalism, but in its widest sense—the one in the text above—rationalism is any system of thought which uses reason in the search after truth. For an exposition of rationalism in all its nuances, see L. Ollé-Laprune, La Raison et le rationalisme, 1906, pp. 164-179. Lecky, The Rise etc., Introduction, p. xix, defines it as “a certain cast of thought, orb ias of reasoning, which . . . . leads men on all occasions to subordinate dogmatic theology to the dictates of reason and of conscience, and, as a necessary consequence, greatly to restrict its influence upon life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all kinds of phenomena to natural rather than miraculous causes; in theology, to esteem succeeding systems the expressions of the wants and aspirations of that religious sentiment which is implanted in all men; and in ethics to regard as duties only those which conscience reveals to be such.” Ollé-Laprune, p. 178, says that all forms of rationalism may be defined as the doctrine whereby one sees in man only reason, and in reason only man. The second part of this definition amounts to saying that rationalism avoids the transcendental. Busson, p. xi, note 1, wishes to qualify this definition. He says: “Il y a un rationalisme orthodoxe, puisque l'Eglise reconnaît le rôle de la raison dans la genèse de l'acte de foi: l'hérésie contraire est le fidéisme . . . . Mais l'Eglise reconnaît que certains de ses dogmes sont indémontrables. C'est être rationaliste que de vouloir les prouver par la raison, mais avec l'intention de les défendre, comme l'a prétendu toute une école (Nicholas de Cusa, Raymond de Sebonde et Postel). Cette forme du rationalisme est aussi hérétique.” Busson defines true rationalism as: “la prétention de juger, et non plus de prouver, tous les faits religieux à la mesure de la seule raison et de ne croire que ceux qui résisteront à ce contrôle.” This is the meaning now current.
19 Zanta, p. 76.
20 See Tilley, Studies in the French Renaissance, pp. 233-237.
21 See Busson, pp. 65, 72, 92, 119-120, and Part I, chaps. 2, 3, on the influence of Pomponazzi, the leader of the Paduan School.
22 It must not be thought that Rabelais was as much of an enigma to his contemporaries as he is to us. Many passages which today remain obscure seem to have been perfectly well understood at the time he wrote them. In this connection the reader is referred to Lefranc's article in the Revue de Frànce, May, 1922.
23 This is strikingly the case in chapters 7, in which Gargantua “feut . . . . baptisé, comme est la coustume des bons christiens”; 17, the episode of the bells of Notre Dame; 21, Gargantua attends mass every morning; 27, the abbey of Seuillé is brought to the forefront; 40, Grandgousier invokes the protection of the saints for the pilgrims; finally, the idea of community life in Thélème is Catholic and non-Protestant.
Tilley, François Rabelais, p. 337, ascribes to patriotic reasons Rabelais' failure to declare himself outspokenly in favor of the Reformation. He says that Rabelais was primarily a humanist to whom the unity of the nation seemed of greater importance than any particular form of creed or ritual, and in consequence he chose, like the majority of his fellow-humanists, to adhere to the church of his fathers. Louis Batiffol, Le Siècle de la Renaissance, 2d. ed., 1911, p. 163, seems to impute the same motives to Francis I. The writer's view, however, is that Rabelais' interest in the Reformation was not based on any deep convictions. It was chiefly a protest against the abuses of the Church in so far as he had personally suffered from them. Already in Pantagruel Rabelais had begun to manifest a reaction against Catholicism. This reaction was eventually to carry him all the way to pantheism. In his groping after a new belief he underwent for a while a Protestant phase, but while he was undergoing that phase already ideas were clearly developing in him which were soon to carry him beyond the religious position he assumed in Gargantua.
24 Rabelais shows two moments of weakness, hesitation, and retrogression, the first being the 1542 edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel, the second being Book IV. As he humorously remarks several times, he is willing to maintain his views “jusques au feu exclusivement”. Having made his peace with the Church, he was very careful to expunge from the 1542 edition all the slurring allusions to the Sorbonne found in the preceding editions (Ant. 1535, 1535, 1537) of Gargantua; in this edition he interpolated in the Prologue of Pantagruel the word predestinateurs in the passage: “. . . . et ceulx qui voudroient maintenir que si, reputez-les abuseurs, predestinateurs, empoisonneurs et seducteurs”. The interpolation seems to be a derisive allusion to the views of Calvin on predestination. There is no doubt that Rabelais was disappointed in the Reformation. He saw one despotism trying to destroy and supplant another, and we may conclude that the violence and intolerance of Calvin cooled any interest he might have felt in the Protestant cause and made him willing to compromise with his old enemies in the Sorbonne.
In the prologues of Book IV Rabelais defends himself against the charge of heresy levelled at him on account of the substitution three times of the word asne for ame in III, 22, 23. In his efforts to disculpate himself from the dangerous accusation he makes a formal declaration of faith. In the Prologue de l'autheur, he says: “Tel est le vouloir du tresbon, tresgrand Dieu, on quel je acquiesce, auquel je obtempere, duquel je revere la sacrosaincte parole de bonnes nouvelles, c'est l'Evangile . . . .” He is so careful not to give offence and to place himself above suspicion that in Book IV we can discern no signs of progress in his thought; on the contrary, he professes beliefs which he did not really entertain, as Book V clearly shows.
25 Rabelais calls his philosophy Pantagruelisme. He gives four differing definitions of Pantagruelisme, which roughly mark the different stages in the evolution of his beliefs. His definitions, which are grotesque at the outset, attain dignity in his later Books. In Pantagruel 34 his definition is: “vivre en paix, joye, santé, faisans toujours grand chere.” In the Pantagrueline Pronostication, (1532) chap. 6, the English, the Scotch, and the Easterlings are called “assez mauvais pantagruelistes” because they drink beer instead of wine. In Gargantua 1 it is: “beuvans a gré et lisans les gestes horrificques de Pantagruel.” These definitions are conceived obviously in the spirit of Epicureanism. The years between Gargantua and the Tiers livre have brought disillusionment and tribulations to him, as we may gather from the Prologue of Book III: “Prins ce choys et election, ay pensé ne faire exercice inutile et importun si je remuois mon tonneau diogenic, qui seul m'est resté du naufrage faict par le passé on Far de Mal'encontre.” The melancholy of these words becomes translated in a more serious attitude henceforth towards life, and this attitude is that of Stoicism. In the same prologue he gives a new definition of Pantagruelisme; it is: “une proprieté individuelle . . . . moyennant laquelle jamais en maulvaise partie ne prendront choses quelconques.” In III, 37, Rabelais links with this definition the Stoic idea of the Wise Man. He has triumphed over the passions that bring suffering to humanity, and he has learnt the lesson of wisdom. It is: “se oublier soy mesme, issir hors de soy mesme, vuider ses sens de toute terrienne affection, purger son esprit de toute humaine sollicitude, et mettre tout en non chaloir.” The Pantagruel of this new philosophy, he tells us in III, 51, “a esté l'idée et exemplaire de toute joyeuse perfection.” And, finally, he essays in the Prologue de l'autheur of Book IV a last definition: “Pantagruelisme, vous entendez, que c'est une certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites”. Here we have what Faguet calls “la fine fleur de Pantagruelisme” (La Fontaine, 1913, p. 308).
26 Examples may be found in I, 3, where he cites eleven authorities in support of his statement of the eleven months' period of gestation of Gargantua; in I, 7, where he mentions seven cases of extraordinary births analogous with Gargantua's.
27 This is seen in the long lists of the forms of divination, of games, foods, etc. found in I, 22; III, 25, 26, 28, 38; IV, 17, 22, 30-32, 37, 40, 59, 60, 64; V, 33; in the long parades of recondite learning to be found on almost every page of his romance.
28 See his letter from Italy to Geoffroy d'Estissac (Moland, p. 616) and the seeds he sends the bishop.
29 See the articles of Lazare Sainéan on natural history in Rabelais in the RSS, and the writer's The Influence, etc. chap. 6, for his sceptical attitude in matters of science; on his scepticism in political matters see Tilley, François Rabelais, 1907, p. 325, where his views on the state and kingship are discussed.
30 Prologue de l'autheur, Book IV. For a similar thought see Pascal, Pensée 242, Brunschwicg edition.
31 For typical cases see III, 27, where he asks that “true and natural” things be believed; the Country of Satin, V, 30-31; Epistemon's descent to Hell, II, 30, where he imitates one of the most telling shafts of irony of Lucian.
32 But see Abel Lefranc's discussion in Bull. Soc. d'hist. mod., 1901, no. 3, “L'histoire du mythe des Lanternes dans Rabelais.”
33 Emile Gebhart, Rabelais, la renaissance et la réforme, 1895, p. 103, observes that Machiavelli and Cellini firmly believed in the influence of the stars on human destiny, while Rabelais satirizes this superstition. In Essay II, 12, Apologie de Raymond de Sebonde, which marks the culmination of Montaigne's Pyrrhonism, he shows himself devoid of all critical sense, and pretends to accept the most puerile stories on the authority of the ancients.
34 Ambroise Paré, Œuvres complètes, ed. Malgaigne, 1840, 3 vols., I, cclxxxix, and III, chap. 14.
35 For a most instructive contrast the reader is referred to the Cosmographie of Jean-Alfonse de Saintonge, Rabelais' contemporary, the most widely travelled sailor of his day, if we are to believe him. The Cosmographie, which was published in 1559 under the name of Voyages aventureux du capitaine Jean-Alfonse Sainctongeois, is the strangest medley of fable and fact. It was republished in 1904 with annotations by Georges Musset. Lazare Sainéan, RER, X, 1-67, shows that Jean-Alfonse's book is largely plagiarized from the Suma de geografía of Fernandez de Enciso, which had been published in 1519, 1530, and 1546. Speaking of the times of transition in which Jean-Alfonse wrote his book, Pierre Margry, in Les Navigations françaises et la révolution maritime du XIVe au XVIe siècle, 1867, says, p. 231: “Les hommes de cette époque, par une conséquence de leur position sur la frontière qui sépare les deux âges, étaient condamnés à subir en eux-mêmes une lutte d'influences diverses d'où la vérité ne pouvait se dégager qu'en partie. Momentanément l'esprit de l'antiquité réveillé par l'imprimerie, l'esprit féodal imposé par la coutume, les idées religieuses, dans lesquelles la superstition se confondait souvent avec la foi, tous ces éléments du passé se heurtant contre l'expérience récente, le désir du savoir et les aspirations vers un état meilleur, devaient produire alors une étrange confusion même dans les têtes les mieux organisées, qui se ressentaient forcément de ce combat du présent et de l'avenir.”
36 The 1542 edition suppressed the most daring part of this parody: “Pourquoi ne le croiriez-vous? Pour ce, dictes vous, qu'il n'y a nulle apparance. Je vous dis pour ceste seule cause vous le devriez croire en foy parfaicte, car les sorbonistes disent que foy est argument des choses de nulle apparance.”
37 The reader scarcely needs be reminded that in the Middle Ages gross irreverence and a genuinely religious and orthodox spirit could easily, and usually did, go hand in hand. The decorations of medieval cathedrals, and the lay ceremonies performed in the churches with the participation of the clergy prove this clearly enough. It is only when the Reformation put the Church on the defensive and rendered necessary a more respectful attitude towards sacred things that these abuses were corrected. See Charles Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen âge, 4th ed., 1893; Champfleury, Histoire de la caricature au moyen âge et sous la Renaissance, 1867-1871; Thomas Wright, A History of Caricature and the Grotesque in Literature and Art, 1875.
38 Revue de France, May 1922, p. 342. For Lefranc, Rabelais' aim was to bring discredit upon Christianity, to rally together all the different elements throughout the world who were hoping for a total emancipation from all forms of religious beliefs.
39 Villey, p. 277: “Certes nous ne trouvons dans son oeuvre aucune raison de penser, avec ses détracteurs fanatiques [Calvin, Puy d'Herbault] qu'il avait répudié la croyance en Dieu et en l'immortalité de l'âme; mais outre que je ne jurerais point qu'elle fût très ferme en lui, tout porte à croire qu'il était dégagé de toute religion positive, et j'estime avec Calvin qu'à cette date [1546] il s'était détourné de l'Evangile. Entre les abus de Rome, qu'il avait vus de près, et l'intolérance de Genève, qui s'organisait, il n'y avait plus de place pour la conception fabricienne de la Réforme. Désabusé, l'évangéliste du Gargantua s'était sans doute réfugié dans une indifférence dont l'ironie était contenue par la prudence.”
40 See the Chronology in Vol. I of Lefranc's edition, and the citations.
41 Revue de France, May 1922.
42 In III, 36, Rabelais shows clearly enough that he is not a Pyrrhonist by making Gargantua leave in disgust after Trouillogan's exhibition of unadulterated Pyrrhonism. Gargantua is vexed with Trouillogan's performance because it appears to him to be not a use but an abuse of the reason, inasmuch as it enables one to escape all intellectual and moral responsibility.
43 Eduard Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, tr. by Reichel, new and revised ed. 1892, p. 29; see also Charles Benard, L'esthétique d'Aristote, 1887, pp. 256-257, 277 ff.
44 Charbonnel, p. 712: “Le seizième siècle est peut-être un ‘tournant décisif’; il est surtout un confluent où se mêlent des doctrines très diverses.”
45 Rabelais and Montaigne present an interesting contrast. Both were at bottom sceptics, but whereas Rabelais passed through an Epicurean phase and ended with Stoicism, Montaigne on the other hand, after a period of Stoicism, ended with Epicureanism.
46 See Busson, pp. 476, 214-220, for Vicomercato's views, which were those of the Peripatetic schools.
47 III, 18: “Mais, o vaines entreprinses des femmes! . . . . elles commencerent escorcher l'homme . . . .par la partie qui plus leurs hayte, c'est le membre nerveulx, caverneulx, plus de six mille ans a . . . .”
48 II, 8: “Toutes choses seront reduictes a leur fin et periode”; 14: “de trente sept jubilez nous n'aurons le jugement final, et sera Cusanus trompé en ses conjectures,” (Jean Plattard, RER, VIII, at p. 265: “Il [Cusanus] avait fixé la fin du monde actuel au 34e jubilé après J.-C., le jubilé comprenant une période de cinquante ans, comme chez les juifs. La conjecture était fondée sur cette considération que le déluge était arrivé au 34e jubilé après la création du monde”); 28: “. . . . aulcuns disoient que c'estoit la fin du monde et le jugement final, qui doibt estre consommé par feu”; III, 2: “qui sçait si le monde durera encores troys ans?”; 18: see preceding note; IV, Ancien prologue: “toutes choses sublunaires ont leur fin et periode”; 15: “Le monde ne fait plus que resver. Il approache de sa fin”; 26: “la declination du monde”; V, 37: Toutes chose se meuvent a leur fin.
49 Unless the passage in IV, 27, where he discusses the immortality of the soul be so construed: “Quant aux semidieux, panes, satyres, sylvains, folletz, aegipanes, nymphes, heroes et daemons, plusieurs ont par la somme totale resultante des ages divers supputez par Hesiode compté leurs vies estre de 9,720 ans. . . .”
50 In his Théâtre de la Nature and the Heptaplomeres. In the second he says: “Si nous posons le cas que le monde ait esté créé, il faudra qu'en tant et tant d'innumerables millions de siècles (exceptées six mille années qui ne sont pas encore expirées) il y avait eu une merveilleuse obscurité au vuide incompréhensible qui a précédé le monde: et par ainsi il n'y aurait pas longtemps que Dieu, se réveillant comme d'un sommeil, se soit adonné à la création du monde, auquel pourtant il deust bientost bailler la fin et ruyne pour retourner de son action motrice à son premier repos.” Quoted from Busson, p. 545. On the Heptaplomeres, see Charbonnel, pp. 624-627.
51 See Saint-René Taillandier, Scot Erigène et la philosophie scolastique, 1843, and A. Jundt, Histoire du panthéisme populaire au moyen âge et au seizième siècle, 1875. Picavet upholds in his history of medieval philosophy the thesis that Neoplatonism was of paramount importance in fashioning the new Christian theology. The affinity subsisting between the doctrines of the Platonists, new and old, and the Christian teachings has already been adverted to in this study.
52 I, 7: “. . . . docteurs scotistes . . . . et sentent de loin heresie”; 13: “et telle est l'opinion de maistre Jehan d'Escosse”; III, 17: “Heraclitus, grand scotiste et ténébreux philosophe” (an equation, very likely, of the pantheism of the two, and the adjective “ténébreux”, an allusion which fits both Erigena's heterodox doctrines and the difficulty of grasping them); V, Prologue: “. . . . les sentences sent scotines et obscures. . . .”
53 See especially Seneca, On Benefits, IV, 7, and Natural Questions, II, 45, and Zanta's comments, pp. 227-229.
54 This is a fair statement of Aristotle's theory, which is somewhat obscure. Aristotle believes in a Providence in the sense that there is a purpose in the universe and there is some one served by that purpose which is brought to fruition entirely through the operation of natural laws, and not, as Plato and Socrates believed, and Christianity teaches, through the divine activity directly exercised in individual cases.
55 In this connection the question of Evil and Sin presents itself. Rabelais frequently toys with the idea but never says anything specific about it; I, 31; II, 8, 16, 20, 22, for example. Ferdinand Brunetière, basing himself chiefly on Gargantua, has shown that Rabelais' philosophy is one of naturism (“La Philosophie de Molière,” in Etudes sur l'histoire de la littérature française, 4th series, 1912); but Arthur Tilley, (“Follow Nature,” in Studies in the French Renaissance), upholds a different view. Such a philosophy tends, of course, to attenuate the notion of personal sin, and this is in line with Rabelais' subsequent Stoicism. The Stoics had a deep feeling of the prevalence and intensity of moral evil. Here they found themselves in a dilemma, for by their theory they were of necessity prevented from shifting the responsibility for moral evil from the Deity to man, which is the Christian escape. In sum, they reserved their final word in the matter.
56 Examples: I, 27; II, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22, 28, 29, 32; III, 9, 10, 13, 16; IV, 4, 19, 23, 25; V, 16, which may be quoted: “Aprés que le bon Pantagruel eut fait les prieres et remercié le seigneur de l'avoir sauvé de si grand danger. . . .” The Bridoye episode, III, 39-43, may be regarded either as an indication of belief in Providence, or as a satire on the courts of law, or both at the same time.
57 Eduard Zeller, Aristotle and the Early Peripatetics, 2 vols., tr. by B. F. C. Costello and J. H. Muirhead, 1897, I, 466: “It is from this resistance offered by matter to form that Aristotle derives all irregular natural phenomena (terata), such as abortions and the like. He regards them as the stoppage of nature in the midst of an unfulfilled design, as a mutilation and failure of the result which she originally intended.” The later Stoics (Seneca) for this opposition between matter and form substituted an opposition between matter and deity. Over against deity, which is the principle of good, they regarded matter as the ground of all evil. See W. Windelband, A History of Philosophy, tr. by Tufts, 1914, p. 230. Herein is the philosophical background of Rabelais' apologue of Physis (“c'est Nature”) and Antiphysie (“la quelle est partie adverse de Nature”), IV, 32, in which his philosophy of naturism led him on to attack both Protestants and Catholics, “les demoniacles Calvins imposteurs de Geneve, les enraigez Putherbes . . . . monstres difformes et contrefaicts en depit de Nature.”
58 The problem of the last three schools of philosophy among the Greeks, the Stoic, the Sceptic, and the Epicurean, was a problem of freedom. They all taught that the aim of man was happiness. The problem was, how to obtain this happiness? The Stoic solution, which was that of the Cynics also, was to consider man as the unit and to reduce his wants to nothing, thereby rendering him independent of everything, thus making him the master of all things (mathematically: = $iF). The Sceptic solution was to obtain freedom, and therefore happiness, through universal ignorance, which would leave man absolutely untrammeled by knowledge or facts and raise him above all responsibility ( = $iF). The Epicurean solution was to consider the world as one's oyster, to be superior to it and to use it as one saw fit without compulsion or hindrance of any kind (Pascal, Pensée 413, Brunschwicg edition, would have equated the Epicurean solution thus: 1/$iF = 0). In his Abbaye de Thélème Rabelais adopts the Epicurean solution. The enjoyment which Epicurus sought was the enjoyment of one's own cultivated personality, first of all, and wherever this standard prevails particular value is attached to the personal relations of society and to friendship. In the second place, since happiness is to be sought, not in subordination to a universal law, but in individual gratification or pleasure, it was an inevitable development of the system that to repose of mind and cheerfulness of disposition it should join the hedonistic doctrine of sensual gratification. It is this final aspect of Epicureanism that is found in the first two Books of Rabelais and apotheosized in Thélème. Now this form of Epicureanism, paradoxical as it may seem, verges upon Stoicism, inasmuch as both are ultimately naturistic. Both could sincerely adopt the maxim of sequere naturam (cf. Montaigne III, 12), and this conformity with Nature is in the final analysis what Rabelais expected of the dwellers in Thélème. A second contact of Rabelais with Stoicism in his Epicurean period is to be found in the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, which is analogical with the Stoic fatum and to which he seems to have subscribed at the period of Gargantua (see the passages of I, 58, in editions Anterior 1535, 1535, 1537, which he omitted in the 1542 edition). The great difference between the two doctrines is that according to Calvinism man has a delectation for evil and therefore is damned unless saved by the special grace of God, which is granted only in extraordinary cases. Now, in any naturalistic system, man's delectation, to use theological language, must be for good, and this is precisely what Rabelais affirms in the celebrated passage in I, 57, imitated from Castiglione's Il Cortegiano: “. . . . parce que gens liberes, bien nez, bien instruictz conversans en compagnies honnestes, ont par nature un instinct et aiguillon qui tousjours les poulse à faictz vertueux et retire de vice, lequel ilz nomment honneur.” Thus at the very moment when Rabelais was most outspoken in his support of the views of Calvin (cf. I, 54), an invincible antagonism was already beginning to manifest itself between the two in their views on nature. Rabelais was attracted to the Reform by its rationalistic attitude in theological matters, but also quite as much by its negative side, the freedom from restraint it promised. However, when Calvin began to develop the reactionary positive side of his system Rabelais was disillusioned and repelled, and he turned away from the new creed. Feeling out of sympathy with both the Church and the Reformation he now began to formulate his own system, which is based on a pantheistic conception of God and Nature. In his third, or Stoical, period, (Books III, IV, V), Rabelais upholds the naturalistic view of life implied in the motto of Thélème, but jettisons the grosser hedonistic aspects of his first period. We see this in the reduced rôle of meat and wine in the last three Books, in Pantagruel's specific denunciation of the Gastrolators in IV, 60, and in the injunction of the “illustrissime lanterne,” the soul of Pierre Lamy: “le vin vous est en mespris, et par vous conculqué et subjugué” for all who “s'adonnent et dedient à contemplation des choses divines doivent en tranquillité leurs esprits maintenir, hors toute perturbation des sens, laquelle plus est manifestée en yvrognerie qu'en autre passion quelle que soit” (V, 34). We can now see the background of the ultimate form Rabelais gave to his Pantagruelisme: une certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites, with its admixture of Epicurean and Stoic elements.
59 For the Stoic doctrine of the conditioned will see Zeller, Stoics, etc., pp. 179-181, 216. See also the discussion in Boethius, De Consolatione philosophiae, V.
60 See Lecky, I, ch. 2, pp. 178-179, for a summing up of the arguments in favor of the authenticity of miracles.
61 See Busson, pp. 45-51, for Pomponazzi's views, which were based on Cicero's and represented those of the Paduan School. Pomponazzi did not believe in the supernatural, but he seems to have believed in the occult.
62 Examples: II, 2, rain obtained by prayer; 7, Saint Gertrude appearing to a nun in the pangs of childbirth; 14, the escape of Panurge from the Turks; 30, the burlesque resuscitation of Epistemon. In Gargantua his attack against the supernatural becomes broader. In chap. 27, referring to the escape of Picrochole's men from the pestilence he says: “. . . . qui est cas assez merveilleux, car les curez, vicares, prescheurs, medecins, chirurgiens et apothecaires qui allaient visiter, penser, guerir, prescher et admonester les malades, estoient tous mors de l'infection, et ces diables pilleurs et meurtriers oncques n'y prindrent mal. Dont vient cela, Messieurs? Pensez, je vous prie”; in the same chapter he laughs at the powerlessness of Christ's shroud to save itself from burning; in chap. 45 he condemns the superstition that the saints can cause or cure disease. See RER, IV, 199 ff.
63 While it is true that Pomponazzi's explanation of miracles implies the idea novel for the time of the reign of law in the universe (see Busson, pp. 44, 221-225) nevertheless he does not develop completely his implication. For the Stoic idea of natural law, according to which nothing can happen without sufficient cause, or under the same circumstances differently from what has happened, see Zeller, Stoics, etc., pp. 173 ff.
64 A strain of Neoplatonism, which regards the world as a work of art, a divine poem, is found in the Paradox side by side with the Stoic physics. See Benard, p. 360, and Windelband, p. 367. At p. 335 Windelband discusses the Stoic and Neoplatonic doctrine of “sympathy.” “Plotinus is also connected with the Stoics in his doctrine of the ‘sympathy of all things.’ But while they intended this to mean the mutual connection of cause and effect, Plotinus means by it an operation at a distance, which rests on the fact that, owing to the universal vitality and animation of the world, everything that affects a part of it is felt by the whole and consequently by all the other parts.”
65 See pp. 18, 20-21, 187, 191.
66 Panurge says: II, 30: “Enfans, ne pleurez goutte, il est encore tout chault, je vous le gueriray aussi sain qu'il fut jamais”; Christ says, Mark, V, 39: “And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye thus ado and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth”; Luke VII, 13: “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not”; Luke VIII, 52: “And all wept and bewailed her; but he said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth.”
67 Busson remarks, p. 191: “. . . . la chose est d'autant plus vraisemblable que la phrase par laquelle Rabelais appuie la réalité de l'invraisemblable naissance de son héros est précisément celle par laquelle l'ange annonce à Marie la conception et la naissance miraculeuse de son enfant et la grossesse inespérée de sa cousine Elisabeth: C'est que rien n'est impossible à Dieu (Luc I, 37). Et l'auteur avait si bien conscience de sa hardiesse qu'il supprime la partie la plus dangereuse de ce passage dans l'édition de 1542.”
68 For Plato's views, to which Aristotle's are to some extent similar, see Eduard Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, tr. Alleyne and Goodwin, 1888. The Neoplatonists taught that the individual intelligences proceeded from the universal intelligence to which they returned at death, and in which they sunk their identity. The active intellect of the Neoplatonists, which they deemed common to all men, is not the universal World-Soul of the Stoics. See Renan, pp. 130-131, 151.
69 The doctrine of the Averroists is merely Aristotle's with the two following implications fully developed: a) the unity of the soul,—the soul is one, and is participated in by all individuals in common; b) it is identical with the last of the mundane intelligences.
70 “L'intention du fondateur de ce microcosme est y entretenir l'ame, laquelle il y a mise comme hoste, et la vie. La vie consiste en sang, sang est le siege de l'ame; pourtant, un seul labeur poine ce monde: c'est forger sang continuellement”; and speaking of the transmutation of food into blood he says: “Les roignons par les venes emulgentes en tirent l'aiguosité, que vous nommez urine, et par les ureteres la decoulent en bas. Au bas trouve receptacle propre, c'est la vessie, laquelle en temps opportun la vuide hors; la ratelle en tire la terrestre et la lie, que vous nommez melancholie; la bouteille du fiel en substraict la cholere superflue; puys est transporté en une autre officine pour mieulx estre affiné: c'est le coeur, lequel, par ces mouvements diastolicques et systolicques, le subtilise et enflambe tellement que par le ventricule dextre le met à perfection, et par les venes l'envoye à tous les membres; chascun membre l'attire à soy, et s'en alimente à sa guise: pieds, mains, yeulx, tous; et lors sont faictz debteurs qui paravent estoient presteurs. Par la ventricule gausche il le fait tant subtil qu'on le dict spirituel, et l'envoye à tous les membres par ses arteres, pour l'autre sang des venes eschauffer et esventer; le poulmon ne cesse avecques ses lobes et souffletz le refraischir: en recongnoissance de ce bien, le coeur luy en depart le meilleur par la vene arteriale; en fin, tant est affiné dedans le retz merveilleux que par après en sont faictz les esprits animaulx, moyennans les quelz elle [the soul] imagine, discourt, juge, resoust, delibere, ratiocine et rememore.”
71 With regard to Panurge's fear of death through drowning: “Car, comme est la sentence de Homere, chose griefve, abhorrente et denaturée est perir en mer. La raison est baillée par les Pytagoriens, pour ce que l'ame est feu et de substance ignée. Mourant doncques l'homme en eau (element contraire) leur semble, toustesfois le contraire est verité, l'ame estre entierement esteinte.”
72 Other references to immortality are found in II, 8 and III, 21, but they throw no further light on the question.
73 IV, 27: “Je croy, dist Pantagruel, que toutes ames intellectives sont exemptes des cizeaulx d'Atropos. Toutes sont immortelles, anges, daemons et humaines.”
74 Such perturbations are related also of some of the Roman emperors and of many heroes of medieval epics; see C. Nyrop, Storia dell'epopea francese, 1888, p. 123.
75 Busson, pp. 266-272, discusses Rabelais' views and reaches a somewhat different conclusion. He says at p. 272: “Tout compte fait, il me semble qu'il y croyait et que le sage Pantagruel parle en son nom quand il affirme sa foi spiritualiste. Seulement il ne faut pas lui en demander plus. Sous quelle forme concevait-il cette vie future, personnelle comme l'Eglise, impersonnelle comme Averroès et la plupart des humanistes d'alors?”
76 His only declaration in this regard is found in III, 21 where he speaks of the approaching death of Raminagrobis: “. . . . et ja touchant et goustant le bien et felicité que le bon Dieu a preparé à ses fideles et esleuz en l'aultre vie et estat de immortalité.”
77 For the various views of nature with which the sixteenth century was acquainted, see Busson, pp. 254-257.
78 Other examples are found in II, 2, 21.
79 Cf. V, 4: “comme raison le veult, nature l'ordonne, et Dieu le commande.” The rationalism of nature is stressed in Book IV, Prologue de l'autheur: “La verité, la fin, l'effet de deux contradictions ensemble feut declairé impossible en nature.”
80 Other examples are found in III, 4, 7, 15, 16, 28, 31, 32, 35, 39, 40, 49, 51; IV, 3, 57, 58, 61; V, 37, 41.
81 Rondibilis, who utters these words, is a scientist. When a theologian spoke Rabelais was careful to use appropriate language. Hippothadé said in III, 30: “. . . . le Seigneur, créateur, protecteur, servateur? N'est ce le recongnoistre unicque dateur de tout bien? N'est ce nous declairer tous dependre de sa benignité? Rien sans luy n'estre, rien ne valoir, rien ne pouvoir, si sa saincte grace n'est sus nous infuse . . . .”
82 Pascal, Pensée 72, Brunschwicg edition, uses the same idea, but he is careful to make it apply not to God but to the infinite space of the universe. For a contrary view to the writer's, see Tilley, Studies in the French Renaissance, pp. 243-247.
83 See the writer's The Influence, etc., chap. 5, §3.