RABELAIS
Social upheavals make strange bed-fellows.
The name of Erasmus can be printed in a respectable book intended for the
entire family. But to mention Rabelais in public is considered little
short of a breach of good manners. Indeed, so dangerous is this fellow
that laws have been passed in our country to keep his wicked works out of
the hands of our innocent children and that in many states copies of his
books can only be obtained from the more intrepid among our book-leggers.
This of course is merely one of the absurdities which have been forced
upon us by the reign of terror of a flivver aristocracy.
In the first place, the works of Rabelais to the average citizen of the
twentieth century are about as dull reading as “Tom Jones” or “The House
of the Seven Gables.” Few people ever get beyond the first interminable
chapter.
And in the second place, there is nothing intentionally suggestive in
what he says. Rabelais used the common vocabulary of his time. That does
not happen to be the common vernacular of our own day. But in the era of
the bucolic blues, when ninety percent of the human race lived close to
the soil, a spade was actually a spade and lady-dogs were not “lady-dogs.”
No, the current objections to the works of this distinguished surgeon go
much deeper than a mere disapproval of his rich but somewhat outspoken
collection of idioms. They are caused by the horror which many excellent
people experience when they come face to face with the point of view of a
man who point blank refuses to be defeated by life.
The human race, as far as I can make out, is divided into two sorts of
people; those who say “yes” unto life and those who say “no.” The former
accept it and courageously they endeavor to make the best of whatever
bargain fate has handed out to them.
The latter accept it too (how could they help themselves?) but they hold
the gift in great contempt and fret about it like children who have been
given a new little brother when they really wanted a puppy or a railroad
train.
But whereas the cheerful brethren of “yes” are willing to accept their
morose neighbors at their own valuation and tolerate them, and do not
hinder them when they fill the landscape with their lamentations and the
hideous monuments to their own despair, the fraternity of “no” rarely
extends this same courtesy to the parties of the first part.
Indeed if they had their own way, the “nays” would immediately purge this
planet of the “yeas.”
As this cannot very well be done, they satisfy the demands of their
jealous souls by the incessant persecution of those who claim that the
world belongs to the living and not to the dead.
Dr. Rabelais belonged to the former class. Few of his patients or
his thoughts ever went out to the cemetery. This, no doubt, was very
regrettable, but we cannot all be grave-diggers. There have to be a
few Poloniuses and a world composed exclusively of Hamlets would be a
terrible place of abode.
As for the story of Rabelais’ life, there was nothing very mysterious
about it. The few details which are omitted in the books written by his
friends are found in the works of his enemies and as a result we can
follow his career with a fair degree of accuracy.
Rabelais belonged to the generation which followed immediately upon
Erasmus but he was born into a world still largely dominated by monks,
nuns, deacons, and a thousand and one varieties of mendicant friars.
He was born in Chinon. His father was either an apothecary or a dealer
in spirits (which were different professions in the fifteenth century)
and the old man was sufficiently well-to-do to send his son to a good
school. There young François was thrown into the company of the scions
of a famous local family called du Bellay-Langey. These boys, like their
father, had a streak of genius. They wrote well. Upon occasion they could
fight well. They were men of the world in the good sense of that oft
misunderstood expression. They were faithful servitors of their master
the king, held endless public offices, became bishops and cardinals and
ambassadors, translated the classics, edited manuals of infantry drill
and ballistics and brilliantly performed all the many useful services
that were expected of the aristocracy in a day when a title condemned a
man to a life of few pleasures and many duties and responsibilities.
The friendship which the du Bellays afterwards bestowed upon Rabelais
shows that he must have been something more than an amusing table
companion. During the many ups and downs of his life he could always
count upon the assistance and the support of his former classmates.
Whenever he was in trouble with his clerical superiors he found the door
of their castle wide open and if perchance the soil of France became
a little too hot for this blunt young moralist, there was always a du
Bellay, conveniently going upon a foreign mission and greatly in need
of a secretary who should be somewhat of a physician besides being a
polished Latin scholar.
This was no small detail. More than once when it seemed that the career
of our learned doctor was about to come to an abrupt and painful end,
the influence of his old friends saved him from the fury of the Sorbonne
or from the anger of those much disappointed Calvinists who had counted
upon him as one of their own and who were greatly incensed when he
pilloried the jaundiced zeal of their Genevan master as mercilessly as
he had derided the three-bottled sanctity of his erstwhile colleagues in
Fontenay and Maillezais.
Of these two enemies, the former was of course by far the more dangerous.
Calvin could fulminate to his heart’s content, but outside of the narrow
boundaries of a small Swiss canton, his lightning was as harmless as a
fire-cracker.
The Sorbonne, on the other hand, which together with the University of
Oxford stood firmly for orthodoxy and the Old Learning, knew of no mercy
when her authority was questioned and could always count upon the hearty
coöperation of the king of France and his hangman.
And alas! Rabelais, as soon as he left school, was a marked man. Not
because he liked to drink good wine and told funny stories about his
fellow-monks. He had done much worse, he had succumbed to the lure of the
wicked Greek tongue.
When rumor thereof had first reached the abbot of his cloister, it
was decided to search his cell. It was found to be full of literary
contraband, a copy of Homer, one of the New Testament, one of Herodotus.
This was a terrible discovery and it had taken a great deal of
wire-pulling on the part of his influential friends to get him out of
this scrape.
It was a curious period in the development of the Church.
Originally, as I told you before, the monasteries had been advance posts
of civilization and both friars and nuns had rendered inestimable service
in promoting the interest of the Church. More than one Pope, however, had
foreseen the danger that might come from a too powerful development of
the monastic institutions. But as so often happens, just because every
one knew that something ought to be done about these cloisters, nothing
was ever done.
Among the Protestants there seems to be a notion that the Catholic Church
is a placid institution which is run silently and almost automatically
by a small body of haughty autocrats and which never suffers from those
inner upheavals which are an integral part of every other organization
composed of ordinary mortals.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Perhaps, as is so often the case, this opinion has been caused by the
misinterpretation of a single word.
A world addicted to democratic ideals is easily horrified at the idea of
an “infallible” human being.
“It must be easy,” so the popular argument runs, “to administer this big
institution when it is enough for one man to say that a thing is so to
have all the others fall upon their knees and shout amen and obey him.”
It is extremely difficult for one brought up in Protestant countries to
get a correct and fair view of this rather intricate subject. But if I am
not mistaken, the “infallible” utterances of the supreme pontiff are as
rare as constitutional amendments in the United States.
Furthermore, such important decisions are never reached until the subject
has been thoroughly discussed and the debates which precede the final
verdict often rock the very body of the Church. Such pronunciamentos
are therefore “infallible” in the sense that our own constitutional
amendments are infallible, because they are “final” and because all
further argument is supposed to come to an end as soon as they have been
definitely incorporated into the highest law of the land.
If any one were to proclaim that it is an easy job to govern these United
States because in case of an emergency all the people are found to stand
firmly behind the Constitution, he would be just as much in error as
if he were to state that all Catholics who in supreme matters of faith
recognize the absolute authority of their pope are docile sheep and have
surrendered every right to an opinion of their own.
If this were true, the occupants of the Lateran and the Vatican palaces
would have had an easy life. But even the most superficial study of
the last fifteen hundred years will show the exact opposite. And those
champions of the reformed faith who sometimes write as if the Roman
authorities had been ignorant of the many evils which Luther and Calvin
and Zwingli denounced with such great vehemence are either ignorant of
the facts or are not quite fair in their zeal for the good cause.
Such men as Adrian VI and Clement VII knew perfectly well that something
very serious was wrong with their Church. But it is one thing to express
the opinion that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. It is
quite a different matter to correct the evil, as even poor Hamlet was to
learn.
Nor was that unfortunate prince the last victim of the pleasant delusion
that hundreds of years of misgovernment can be undone overnight by the
unselfish efforts of an honest man.
Many intelligent Russians knew that the old official structure which
dominated their empire was corrupt, inefficient and a menace to the
safety of the nation.
They made Herculean efforts to bring about reforms and they failed.
How many of our citizens who have ever given the matter an hour’s thought
fail to see that a democratic instead of a representative form of
government (as intended by the founders of the Republic) must eventually
lead to systematized anarchy?
And yet, what can they do about it?
Such problems, by the time they have begun to attract public attention,
have become so hopelessly complicated that they are rarely solved except
by a social cataclysm. And social cataclysms are terrible things from
which most men shy away. Rather than run to such extremes, they try to
patch up the old, decrepit machinery and meanwhile they pray that some
miracle will occur which will make it work.
An insolent religious and social dictatorship, set up and maintained by
a number of religious orders, was one of the most flagrant evils of the
out-going Middle Ages.
For the so-many-eth time in history, the army was about to run away with
the commander-in-chief. In plain words, the situation had grown entirely
beyond the control of the popes. All they could do was to sit still,
improve their own party organization, and meanwhile try to mitigate the
fate of those who had incurred the displeasure of their common enemies,
the friars.
Erasmus was one of the many scholars who had frequently enjoyed the
protection of the Pope. Let Louvain storm and the Dominicans rave, Rome
would stand firm and woe unto him who disregarded her command, “Leave the
old man alone!”
And after these few introductory remarks, it will be no matter of
surprise that Rabelais, a mutinous soul but a brilliant mind withal,
could often count upon the support of the Holy See when the superiors
of his own order wished to punish him and that he readily obtained
permission to leave his cloister when constant interference with his
studies began to make his life unbearable.
And so with a sigh of relief, he shook the dust of Maillezais off his
feet and went to Montpellier and to Lyons to follow a course in medicine.
Surely here was a man of extraordinary talents! Within less than two
years the former Benedictine monk had become chief physician of the city
hospital of Lyons. But as soon as he had achieved these new honors, his
restless soul began to look for pastures new. He did not give up his
powders and pills but in addition to his anatomical studies (a novelty
almost as dangerous as the study of Greek) he took up literature.
Lyons, situated in the center of the valley of the Rhone, was an ideal
city for a man who cared for belles lettres. Italy was nearby. A few days
easy travel carried the traveler to the Provence and although the ancient
paradise of the Troubadours had suffered dreadfully at the hands of the
Inquisition, the grand old literary tradition had not yet been entirely
lost. Furthermore, the printing-presses of Lyons were famous for the
excellence of their product and her book stores were well stocked with
all the latest publications.
When one of the master printers, Sebastian Gryphius by name, looked for
some one to edit his collection of medieval classics, it was natural
that he should bethink himself of the new doctor who was also known as
a scholar. He hired Rabelais and set him to work. In rapid succession
almanachs and chap-books followed upon the learned treatises of Galen
and Hippocrates. And out of these inconspicuous beginnings grew that
strange tome which was to make its author one of the most popular writers
of his time.
The same talent for novelty which had turned Rabelais into a successful
medical practitioner brought him his success as a novelist. He did what
few people had dared to do before him. He began to write in the language
of his own people. He broke with a thousand-year-old tradition which
insisted that the books of a learned man must be in a tongue unknown
to the vulgar multitude. He used French and, furthermore, he used the
unadorned vernacular of the year 1532.
I gladly leave it to the professors of literature to decide where and
how and when Rabelais discovered his two pet heroes, Gargantua and
Pantagruel. Maybe they were old heathenish Gods who, after the nature
of their species, had managed to live through fifteen hundred years of
Christian persecution and neglect.
Then again, he may have invented them in an outburst of gigantic hilarity.
However that be, Rabelais contributed enormously to the gayety of nations
and greater praise no author can gain than that he has added something
to the sum total of human laughter. But at the same time, his works were
not funny books in the terrible modern sense of the word. They had their
serious side and struck a bold blow for the cause of tolerance by their
caricature of the people who were responsible for that clerical reign of
terror which caused such untold misery during the first fifty years of
the sixteenth century.
Rabelais, a skillfully trained theologian, was able to avoid all such
direct statements as might have got him into trouble, and acting upon the
principle that one cheerful humorist out of jail is better than a dozen
gloomy reformers behind the bars, refrained from a too brazen exposition
of his highly unorthodox opinions.
But his enemies knew perfectly well what he was trying to do. The
Sorbonne condemned his books in unmistakable terms and the Parliament
of Paris put him on their index and confiscated and burned all such
copies of his works as could be found within their jurisdiction. But
notwithstanding the activities of the hangman (who in those days was also
the official book destroyer) the “Lives and Heroic Deeds and Sayings
of Gargantua and his Sonne Pantagruel” remained a popular classic. For
almost four centuries it has continued to edify those who can derive
pleasure from a clever mixture of good-natured laughter and bantering
wisdom and it will never cease to irritate those others who firmly
believe that the Goddess of Truth, caught with a smile on her lips,
cannot possibly be a good woman.
As for the author himself, he was and is a “man of one book.” His
friends, the du Bellays, remained faithful to him until the end, but most
of his life Rabelais practiced the virtue of discretion and kept himself
at a polite distance from the residence of that Majesty by whose supposed
“privilege” he published his nefarious works.
He ventured however upon a visit to Rome and met with no difficulties,
but on the contrary was received with every manifestation of a cordial
welcome. In the year 1550 he returned to France and went to live in
Meudon. Three years later he died.
It is of course quite impossible to measure the exact and positive
influence exercised by such a man. After all, he was a human being and
not an electric current or a barrel of gasoline.
It has been said that he was merely destructive.
Perhaps so.
But he was destructive in an age when there was a great and crying need
for a social wrecking crew, headed by just such people as Erasmus and
Rabelais.
That many of the new buildings were going to be just as uncomfortable and
ugly as the old ones which they were supposed to replace was something
which no one was able to foresee.
And, anyway, that was the fault of the next generation.
They are the people we ought to blame.
They were given a chance such as few people ever enjoyed to make a fresh
start.
May the Lord have mercy upon their souls for the way in which they
neglected their opportunities.