4. It is not known who these two hostile quacks were.
5. Rebarbative (‘crabby’, a rare word in English but not in French) is crossed with rhubarb.
6. Taken from the Adages of Erasmus I, X, XXI, ‘A tree to be chosen for one’s hanging’. But Rabelais jumped to a wrong conclusion from his reading of Erasmus: Leontium the whore did not hang herself.
1. Cf. Luke 11:11.
2. The Greek Διάβολος (Diabolos) means Devil or Calumniator.
3. This refers to the jest which puts asne (ass) for âme (soul). Can that really be attributed to the printers and not to Rabelais? And could even Sorbonagres have taken it seriously? The jest circulated independently of Rabelais, who may be suggesting that it was only through such silly humourless quibbles that his alleged ‘heresy’ could be found.
4. As in the Third Book Rabelais simply cites his Greek (Metros allôn autos helkesi bruôn) in Greek script, but this time he does provide a translation. For both the previous quotation from Luke 4:32 and this Greek quotation Rabelais is drawing upon an adage of Erasmus: IV, IV, XXXII, ‘A physician for others’. In Luke Jesus claims that his enemies are using the saying against him.
5. The Greek (abios bios, bios abiôtos) is paraphrased in the text but kept in Greek script. The proverb is given in the comment of Erasmus on an adage: II, VIII, XXX, ‘A man of money’.A cancel was introduced in some copies to celebrate the victories of the King of France in German lands in 1552; the text then read:… Is it not written and practised in the ancient customary law of this our so noble, so ancient, so beautiful, so rich kingdom of France that The Dead seizeth the Quick? Read what has recently been expounded on this topic by the good, learned and wise André Tiraqueau, so debonair and just, a Counsellor to the great, victorious and triumphant King Henri the Second of that name…
6. Rabelais enjoys playing with concepts he will later take seriously. Equilateral triangles are mentioned only in this Book. They will be mentioned again: in the fight against the physeter (Chapter 34) and then, most seriously, in the Manor of Truth (Chapter 55). He treats Platonic ‘Ideas’ in the same way.
7. Rabelais, like theologians everywhere who talk of the predestination of the Elect, sets a limit to the discussion by echoing Romans 9:20, ‘Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God.’The sounds ‘st, st, st’ commanding silence are taken from Terence and Cicero, as is stated in the Briefve Déclaration (Brief Declaration) appended to many copies of the Fourth Book. It is by no means certain that it is the work of Rabelais.
8. ’48:… colours and ensign of the noble navigators,…
9. ’48:… of little Indian pearls…
10. The writings of Antiquity were scoured for knowledge which might be of help to sixteenth-century navigators. The lost account of Cornelius Nepos is known from Pliny, Natural History, 2, 67, and Pomponius Mela, Cosmographia, 3, 5, 45; it considers these ‘Indians’ in the context of a supposedly continuous Northern Sea circling the North Pole.
11. The Great King’s name, in French Mégiste, is the Greek Megistos (Great) not the Latino-Greek Megiste, a name for a slave. Charles Charmois or Carmois was a painter in the royal service.
12. The ’52 text is much expanded here from ‘chapter general of the Lanterns’ to ‘Touraine’. Many further changes are made to the text of 1548, a selection of which are listed in the notes below. In this addition of ’52, the Gebarim (Cocks) whose king is called Ohabe (Friend) have Hebrew names but may allude to the French and their king, or to friends in Rabelais’ own province of Touraine.
13. 48:… This boastful Dindenault…
14. ’48:… Not for all the codpieces of Asia and Africa…
15. ’48:… most honourable wives…
16. ’48:… if, by the consent of all the elements, I had swived that wife of yours… to remain stuck inside her so that it could never come out but remain there sempiternally unless you yourself…
17. ’48:… O ye codpiece-monger of Mahomet…
18. ’48:… Jean put his hand to his short-sword and would have…
19. The joke on ‘ita’ and ‘vere’, added in 1552, turns on the fact that the Latin ita (thus) can be translated by ce in standard French and chou in the Picard dialect. But to Parisian ears chou means cabbage. There is presumably some such undergraduate pun on the Latin vere (indeed), but it remains unexplained.
20. An ‘estrille + faux + veau’ literally a currycomb, a scythe and a veal-calf. Rabelais is alluding to a common rebus found also in the poet Clément Marot. Estrille fauveau is used both for currying a horse and for stroking or flattering someone (with perhaps an allusion to the proverbial saying, ‘Curry a horse and it may bite you back’).
21. ’48:… I kiss the hand of your Majesty, your Reverence; be you welcome… Frère Jean later associates this flimflam with Spain and Italy.
22. ’48… Mighty God! why don’t we rather transport our human frailties to some fair and godly kitchen, there to contemplate the dance and harmony of the spits, the temperament of the soups…
23. The quotation is from psalm 118 (119):1 (‘Bead immaculati in via’), quoted to make a monastic joke of some kind, perhaps suggesting that the cooks should be immaculately clean.
24. Many minor changes are not noted, but one omission is interesting. ’48 reads:… the name, I think, or lybistide bears, that you gave to what the people here call tigers…The allusion is to Virgil, Aeneid, 5, 37, ‘pelle Lybistidis ursae’ (‘the skin of the Libyan bear’). Rabelais seems to have taken Lybistidis ursae to mean Lybistide bears rather than (as it does) of a Lybistis (i.e., Libyan) bear. That error may explain why he cut the words out in ’52.
25. ’48:… ‘Is it some natural inclination adherent to frocks which of itself leads and propels those good Religious into the kitchen, even though they have never elected or decided to go there?…
26. Normally matter is thought of as seeking form, rather than form matter. Averroës was in the tradition of Aristotle, but I do not know where he wrote what is attributed to him.
27. ’48: The king found it bad that he should find poets in the field-kitchen: the poet showed him that it was far more improper to come across kings there.
This exemplum from Plutarch is listed by Erasmus. He adds that the king took it in good part as a joke among equals.
28‘48:… good fee from his priest or lawyer, together…
29. Rabelais ends with an allusion to two adages of Erasmus which follow each other: I, X, XCVII, ‘He has the horse of Sejus’, and I, X, XCVIII, ‘He has gold from Toulouse’. Both are linked and explained by Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 3, 9, 1–7: a Roman consul took Toulouse, but its plundered gold brought disaster to all who touched it, as did the famous horse of Sejus, all of whose owners met dreadful fates.
30. ’48:… caused the purses and wallets…
31. ’48:… beating up people with blows from his fists, at the price of his money…
32. ’48:… put his hand in his bag and drew out ten crowns. Then, with a loud voice, with a great multitude of Chicanous people hearing, he asked… (‘Ten’ instead of ‘twenty’ throughout).
33. ’48:… grumbling; it was envy; and I…
34. ’48:… Frère Jean walloped him so very hard…
35. ’48:… The other Chicanous said to Frère Jean, ‘Monsieur le Diable, we are all yours. They said as much to Panurge and as much to Gymnaste and the others. But none of them would listen…
36. ’48:… lamenting together. Pantagruel, suspecting that these old women were relatives of the Chicanous… (Words omitted, once again removing Pantagruel from the action of the farce.)
37. ’48:… equitable cause, seeing that they had brought to the gibbet the two best men there were on the isle. You’re talking like Saint John of the Pocalypse…
38. This ‘allegory’ was already so obscure at the time of Rabelais that, in the Brief Declaration it is somewhat grudgingly explained: ‘By a quite heavy metaphor, the villagers of Poitou call the “irons” of
the Mass what we call the ornaments, and the “handle” of the parish what we call the bell-tower.’
39. ’48:… they would all be trapped. The Gymnosophists of India, questioned by Alexander the Great… replied…
40. ’48:… a cat-bite on his little finger. Guingnenauld, a Norman physician, a great swallower of green lentils and a most outstanding haunter of taverns who died from repaying his debts and from the slanting cut…
41. ’48… Battista Fulgosa, or Rifle-Chidling. Our good fellow Bringuenarilles…
42. The sense of ‘Mechloth’ (though a Hebrew plural in resonance) is not certain: perhaps mikloth (‘perfect’), as in 2 Chronicles 4:21, or it may mean illnesses; Belima is Hebrew for ‘nothing’, as in Job 26:7; ‘Nargues’ and ‘Zargues’ are made-up names meaning something like Pish and Tush. ‘Teleniabin’ and ‘Geneliabin’ are the Arabic names of substances used in clysters. In 1547, in a treaty between the Emperor Charles V and the Landgrave of Hesse, the words ohne ewige Gefänguis (‘without perpetual detention’) were substituted for ohne einige Gefängnis (‘without any detention’), and the Landgrave was thrown in prison.
43. 48:… The following day we crossed on our starboard bow a carrack, laden with monks, Cordeliers, Jacobins, Carmelites, Augustinians, Celestines, Capuchins, Bernardines, Minims, Jesuits, Benedictines and other holy Religious…
44. ’48:… sixteen dozen hams and two thousand caviars…
45. ’48:… He invoked both the twin sons of Leda as well as the eggshell from which they were hatched. He then cried out…
46. Otto to to to to ti is a lamentation taken over from Greek tragedy, one of the features that introduce mock heroic elements into this storm.
47. ‘48:… Are you talking of confession at a moment like this…
48. ’48:… It grieves me to say so since I believe that it does you a great deal of good to swear that way. But you are still sinning…
49. ’48:… Come and help us here, you bugger, you sod of all the incubi, succubi and all the devils there are. Is he ever going to come?…
50. ’48:… the crew, and he is still bothering us with his yelling. By God, if I get over there I shall flog you like a maritime fiend! Cabin-boy!…
51. ’48:… I’11 give you all that I have; just throw me there. Jarus. Jarus! I’m drowning…
52. This chapter ends differently in ’48:… ‘I give myself to all the devils’ said Frère Jean, – ‘God be with us,’ muttered Panurge through his teeth – ‘if the close at Seuilly had not been thus lost, if I had done nothing but chant Against the onslaughts of our enemies, Good Lord deliver us, like those other devils of monks, without succouring the vine against the pillagers from Lerné.’
53. ’48:… to perish at sea. The reason given by the Pythagoreans is because the soul is of the substance of fire, so that when a man dies in the sea – an opposing element – it seems to them, though the contrary is true, that the soul is totally extinguished. Aeneas, indeed…
In ’52 Rabelais rejects even a hint that souls may be quenched by sea-water, and returns to the subject in Chapter 26, where it is central to his adaptation of Plutarch.
54. A very Classical ending, with allusions to Homer (Iliad, 1, 225; Odyssey 5, 312) and Virgil (Aeneid, 1, 94), as well as to Cicero.
55. The first (’48) version of the storm was a fable with Classical gods, from which a Christian meaning is extracted as in a fable or parable. In ’52 the Christian theology becomes precise. Contrast the above with the text of ’48:… dying at such-and-such a time and in such-and-such manner is partly in the will of the gods, partly in our own will. Wherefore… we, on our part, must duly exert ourselves and help them with the means and remedy. If I am not speaking in accordance with the decrees of the Mataeologians they will forgive me: I am speaking by book and authority. You know what…Rabelais remains loyal to the partly/partly moral theology of Saint Bonaventura, which he studied as a Franciscan friar.
56. The puns are based on three homophonic phrases: cordes des ceints (the knotted cord girding the Cordeliers); corps des saints (the bodies of saints – relics); and cordes des sins (the ropes of church bells).
57. An allusion to Chapter 24: ‘Maybe,’ replied Panurge, ‘but the devil’s chefs sometimes go mad and err in their duties: they often put souls on to boil which were meant to be roasted.’
58. The slaughter of these false Magi is related by Herodotus, 4, 131–2. As a young Franciscan Rabelais had translated the first book of Herodotus into Latin.
59. A son net (a pun on sonnet) means a neat, clean, clear or brisk little sound.
60‘Cowled Hobgoblins’ are Rabelais’ Farfadetz, his term for Franciscan friars. No convincing explanation has yet been found for this final paragraph, which seems to be attacking students in a town (Paris?) who, against their monarch’s express wishes, are preparing to enter the hidden, lazy delights of the Franciscan Order.
61. Wine and bread were symbolically brought to funerals. Frère Jean makes a pun: trépassés, the dead, and traits passés, draughts (of wine) gone by.
62‘Paper-God-Pope-on-Earth’ renders Dieu Pape terre. In the list of great figures in the underworld visited by Epistemon (Pantagruel, Chapter 20) appears Nicholas Pape Tiers as a paper-merchant with tiers of paper. The papal-god of the Papimanes was a paper-generating one: Decretals, Indulgences, Bulls and so on.
63. In the ‘heretical’ verse ales (wings) are added on to the Decrees so turning them into Decretals. To get a similar effect in English the wings become ‘tales’ (with a hint of ‘tails’).
64. Frère Jean in the original speaks ignorant Latin for his Breviary stuff. Rabelais is playing on the fact that several prayers in the Breviary begin Praeta quaesumus (‘Grant we beseech thee’) but in his ‘monkish’ Latin Frère Jean takes praesta (‘grant’) to mean the same as the French preste (‘lend’). What lies behind the pun on ‘de-crystalline’ and ‘decretaline’ is not clear.
65. Double-clog crowns are made-up coins, no doubt suited to clog-wearing peasants.
66. ese thoughts on the words of Homer are taken from Plutarch (On the Oracles at Delphi, 398 A, and 404 F–405 A). Rabelais is also citing Plutarch’s treatise How One Can Tell if One is Advancing in Virtue, 79 A, for the time needed to understand the words of Plato. Rabelais’ authorities are reinforcing each other, for Calcagnini also treats of frozen words and cites Antiphanes in a fable (while mangling his name).
67. rgil, Georgics, 4, 523.
68. For taking a man by his word; cf. Chapter 36 of the Third Book.
69. For the relevant adages of Erasmus, see (en passant) IV, I, LII, ‘Reddidit Harpocratem’ (‘To impose silence’), but above all some of the very many which treat of hunger, want and poverty: I, V, XXII, ‘Paupertas sapien-tiam sortita est’ (‘Poverty produces wisdom’); IV, II, XLVIII, ‘Multa docet fames’(‘Hunger teaches much’); III, VIII, XII, ‘Non interpellandus famelicus’ (‘A hungry man is not to be disturbed’); II, VIII, LXXXIV, ‘Venter auribus caret’ (‘The belly has no ears’), which includes ‘Contra famem etenim nulla contradictio est’ (‘There is no contradicting hunger’); II, VI, LV, ‘Vulpi esurienti somnus obrepit’ (‘Sleep surprises the hungry wolf); III, IV, LXX, ‘Decempes umbra’ (‘Ten-foot shadow,’ that is, time to eat, used again, more fully, in Chapter 69); III, X, IX, ‘Molestus interpellator venter’ (‘The belly is a troublesome disturber’); I, IX, LXVII, ‘Saguntina fames’ (‘Saguntine hunger’); II, VIII, LXXVIII, ‘Gastres’ (‘Gas-ters, bellies’); III, VII, XLIV, ‘Ventre pleno, melior consultado’ (‘Better deliberation on a full stomach’). The list could be much prolonged: Erasmus is an important authority for Rabelais in matters of the proverbial truths he required for his myths. Even his short remarks on adage IV, VII, LV, ‘Mistress Necessity’, are deeply relevant to Rabelais.
70. Rabelais’ authorities continue to reinforce each other. The moral exemplum of Antigonus the First has immense authority: it is twice in Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris, 360 D), and in The Notable Sayings of
Kings and Emperors, 182 C, as well as in the Apophthegms of Erasmus (IV, Antigonus, 7).
71. In this paragraph Rabelais is following in detail the adage of Erasmus, III, IV, LXX, ‘Decempes umbra’ (‘A ten-foot shadow’). It is concerned with the time to eat as shown by the shadow on a sundial.
72. The following reference to Diogenes is also from Erasmus (Apophthegms, III, Diogenes, 70).