Rabelais as a Humanist

 Christian Humanist
 Interested in:
Grammer, etiquette,
poetry, moral
philosophy
 Educational, moral,
political problems
 John Milton
Samuel Johnson
Edmund Spencer
 Rabelais Educational Background
 Entered the Monastery
 University of Poitiers
 University of Montpellier
 Lyon
 Witnessed first-hand the transition from
Medieval teaching to Renaissance
scholasticism
 Rabelais Bitterness Towards
Medieval Thinking
   “With this, he smilingly unbuttoned his
handsome codpiece; and drawing out his
mentula, he drenched them all with a bitter
deluge of urine that he thereby drowned 
two-hundred-sixty-thousand-four-hundred-
eighteen, not counting the women and little
children”
 Criticizing what he saw as the barbaric ways of
Sophist teachings.
 Rabelais View on Change

“As Ponocrates grew familiar with Gargantua’s

vicious manner of life, he began to plan a
different course of instruction for the lad; but at
first he let the latter go his own way,
remembering that nature does not endure
sudden changes without great violence”
 The Academy


Banned Rabelais' writings and declared them
heretical in 1543.
 Started in early 12th century with 4 original
schools:
 Law
 Medicine
 Art
 Theology
 Also began with 4 nationales:
 English
 French
 Normandy
 Picardy
 Broken Schools
 Palantine, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Genevieve
Abbey, Saint Victor
 15th. Century added College of Cardinal Le-
Moine, and College of Navarre
 These added the study of Civil Law
 Different Faculties

Teachers were divided into different faculties
depending on their knowledge.

Teachers would gather and find who they
closely resembled in knowledge and beliefs

This became:
 Theology
 Canon Law
 Medicine
 Rational Philosophy
 Natural Philosophy
 Moral Philosophy
 Scholar-Teachers
 To become a teacher one needed two things:
 Knowledge
 Appointment
 Once these two were met, the teacher gained
the title of “Master.”
 Rabelais disagreed with this setting