Pantagruel’s published theses for disputation recall Pico della Mirandola’s, which were On Everything Knowable.
Rabelais later prudently cut out ‘Not that he stopped the said Sor-bonnical Theologians from tippling and refreshing themselves with their customary quaffing’.
The pleasure taken by Demosthenes in being recognized is mentioned by Erasmus in Adages, I, X, XLIII: ‘To be pointed at with a finger’.]
Pantagruel, bearing in mind his father’s advice, decided one day to make trial of his erudition. And so at all the crossroads throughout town he posted up nine thousand seven hundred and sixty [-four] theses on all subjects, touching upon the greatest controversies which existed in all disciplines.
First of all he defended himself against the dons, the arts-men and the rhetoricians in the rue du Fouarre, tumbling them down on their bums. Then, over a period of six weeks, he defended himself against the Theologians in the Sorbonne from four in the morning until six at night, except for a two-hour break to enable the Theologians to feed and restore themselves. Not that he stopped the said Sorbonnical Theologians from tippling and refreshing themselves with their customary quaffing. Most of the Law Lords were present, as were the Maîtres de Requeste, presidents, counsellors, accountants, principal secretaries, advocates and such-like, together with the city magistrates, the Medics and the Canon Lawyers. Some took the bit between their teeth, but despite their crowing ergo and their flawed syllogisms, he tied them in knots and clearly showed them that they were merely calves [dressed up in gowns]. Everybody began to talk so much of knowledge so wonderful and to noise it abroad that whenever he went through the streets there were no goodwives, washerwomen, peddler-women, kitchen-maids or women hawking pen-knives who did not exclaim, ‘That’s ‘im.’ He was delighted, as was Demosthenes, the prince of Greek orators, when a hunched-up old crone pointed him out and said, ‘It’s that one there.’
Now in that very season a lawsuit was pending between two gross lords. One of them, the plaintiff, was the Sieur de Bumkis. On the other side was the defendant, the Sieur de Slurp-ffart. The contention between them was so high and hard in law that it was all Double Dutch to the Court of Parlement.
And so by command of the king there were gathered together four of the most learned and obese members from each of the Parlements of France and from the Grand Conseil as well as all the principal regents of the universities not only of France but of England and Italy, such as Jason de Maino, Philip Decius, Petrus de Petronibus [and other rabbi-like dunces].
Despite being thus assembled for forty-six weeks they had found nothing they could sink their teeth into, nor could they grasp the case clearly enough to set it to rights in any manner whatsoever. At which they were so annoyed that they shat themselves for shame like villeins.
But one of them called Du Douhet – the most learned, the most experienced and the wisest of them all – said to them one day when their minds were all philo-garbidged:
‘My Lords: we have already been here a long time, doing nothing but squander money. In this matter we can plumb no bottom, reach no shore: the more we study it, the less we understand it. That is very shameful and a burden on our consciences. We shall get out: of this, I think, with nothing but dishonour since we are merely raving in our deliberations.
‘But this is what occurred to me: you have all often heard tell of that great personality Maître Pantagruel, who, in great public debates held against all comers, has been acknowledged learned beyond the capacity of this present age. In my opinion we should summon him and discuss this matter with him. If he cannot get to the bottom of it all, then nobody can.’
All the Counsellors and Doctors-of-Law readily agreed to it. They at once sent to find Pantagruel and begged him to peg out their case, go into it thoroughly and report to them as he saw fit.33
And they handed over to him the bundles and documents, which were enough to load four, fat, well-furnished asses.
But Pantagruel said,
‘My lords. The two noblemen concerned, are they still living?’
‘Yes,’ they replied.
‘Then what the devil is all this bumpf for, all these transcriptions you are handing me? Would it not be better to hear them relate their differences viva voce than to read through all these monkey-puzzles, which are nothing but deceptions, devilish ruses à la Cepola and subversions of the Law?
‘I am convinced that you and all the others through whose hands this case has passed have produced all the pro-et-contra machinations that you can. Where the controversy was patently easy to determine you have obscured it with the daft and unreasonable reasons and irrelevant opinions of Accursius, Baldus, Bartolus, Castro, Imola, Hippolytus, Panormitanus, Bertachinus, Alexander, Curtius and other old curs who have never understood the least law of the Pandects. They were mere fatted glebe-calves, ignorant of everything necessary for the understanding of the laws (that is quite certain for they knew no languages: no Greek – and no Latin save the Gothick and barbarous kind). And yet the laws originally came from the Greeks, for which you have the testimony of Ulpian on the posterior law of ‘On the Origin of Justice’ – and are full of Greek words and sayings.
‘Next, the laws are drafted in the most elegant and polished language in all the Latin tongue, not excepting Sallust or Varro or Cicero or Pliny or Seneca or Livy or Quintilian. So how could those crazy old madmen understand the text of such laws, they who have never seen a book in good Latin, as is manifest from their style, which is that of a chimney-sweep, a kitchen-lad or a scullery-boy, not of a jurisconsult.
‘Moreover, since the laws are rooted in the contexts of moral and natural philosophy, how on earth can those fools understand them, having gone less into philosophy, by God, than my mule!
‘As for humane letters and a knowledge of Antiquity and the ancient histories, they are as burdened with them as a toad is with feathers, and use them as a crucified uses a fife!34 Yet the laws are full of them: without them they cannot be understood. One of these days I will put pen to paper and demonstrate that more clearly!
‘Now then; if you want me to deal with this lawsuit, first burn all those documents for me, and secondly, summon the two noblemen to appear in person before me. When I have heard them out I will deliver my opinion without feint or fiction.’
At which some of them raised an objection since, as you know, there are more fools than wise in any assembly with the majority party always overcoming the better [as Livy wrote when talking of the Carthaginians]. But Du Douhet manfully maintained the contrary, contending that Pantagruel had spoken wisely and that all those minutes, testimonies, rebuttals, [counter-rebuttals,] formal discreditings, affidavits and other such devilish trickeries were nothing but subversions of justice and ways of prolonging the process, and that the devil would take them all if they did not proceed otherwise, following evangelical and philosophical equity.
In short, all the papers were burnt and the two noblemen were summoned to attend in person. Pantagruel then asked them,
‘Are you the two who have this great disagreement between you?’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ they said.
‘Which of you is the plaintiff?’
‘I am,’ said le Sieur de Bumkis.
‘Well then, my friend, explain your affair point by point in accordance with the truth, for if you utter one word of a lie, by Gosh I’ll have that head off your shoulders and show you that in matters of justice and judgement one must tell nothing but the truth. So in stating your case take care to add nothing and subtract nothing. Now speak.
*
[There is no chapter-break here in the original edition. Later texts read: How the Sieurs De Bumkis and de Slurp-Ffart Pleaded Their Cases Before Pantagruel Without Legal Counsel. Chapter 11.
The ramblings of Bumkis and Slurp-ffart nearly make sense: one recognizes for example a comic Beatitude: ‘Blessed are the dullards, for they have stumbled’ (cf. Matthew 5); contemporaries would have been intrigued by teasing, glancing allusi
ons to the ‘privileges of the University’ (first added in the Juste 1534 edition) and the ‘Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges’ of 1438, which, for the French at least, subordinated papal authority to that of Councils, which were topical issues in Rabelais’ time, when the royal powers in Prance were being extended over Church, university and papal domains.
Philip Decius was the legal authority who persuaded the French king to call the Council of Pisa against the warrior Pope Julius II. The allusion to a year ‘36 hints at 1436, when stormy sessions of the Council of Basle sought to restrain papal powers. Such powers (a project to limit which dominated the Council of Basle) were subject to arbitrary French royal decrees in the PRAGMATIC SANCTION. Further attempts against papal power dominated the (allegedly heretical) Council of Pisa of 1511, called on the advice of Philip Decius. The matter was settled in the French interest by the Concordat of 1517, which ceded great powers to the French monarchs, not least in the nomination of bishops, archbishops and abbots. Such points are touched on lightly, but would not have been lost on students of the Law and the inhabitants of the QUARTIER LATIN or on a reasonably educated readership.]
At which Bumkis began as follows:
‘It is, my Lord, true, that a goodwife of my household was taking her eggs to the market…’
‘Don your bonnet, Bumkis,’ said Pantagruel.
‘As your Lordship pleases,’ said le Sieur de Bumkis. ‘But to get to the point: she passed between the two tropics, [some sixpence-farthing] towards the zenith, diametrically opposed to Troglodytes because the Rhiphaean Mountains had experienced that year a great dearth of booby-traps on account of a sedition [of the Yappers] stirred up between the Gibble-Gabblers and the Running-curs of Accursius brought on by the rebellion of the Swiss assembled, up to a number of three, six, nine, ten, to go to the New Year’s mistletoes35 on the first die of the year, when sops are given to cattle and the key to the coal-shed to the maidens in order to supply oats to the hounds.
‘All night long, pledged hand on pot, they did nothing but dispatch papal Bulls by foot-post and lackeys by horseback,36 so as to restrain the boats, since the sempsters wanted to make the pilfered off-cuts into a coverlet for the Ocean Sea, which was at that time great with child, according to the opinion of the trussers-up of hay.37
‘However, the physicians stated that from her urine they could recognize no clear symptoms
… in the tread of a bustard,
Of eating mattocks jellied with mustard,
except that the Lords of the Court should issue an order in B-flat that the pox should no longer glean after the silk-worms and thus walk about during divine service,38 since the beggars had made a good start at dancing a Brigadoon at the right pitch: “head in the middle, one foot in the fire”, as our good Ragot used to say.
‘Ah, my Lords: God governs all things as He pleases, and a carter, against fickle Fortune, smashed his whip [to nose-flicks]. It was on the retreat from Bicocca, when Maître Dolt of the Watercress graduated as Bachelor of Blunders for, as the canon lawyers say, “Blessed are the dullards, for they have stumbled.”
‘But, by Saint-Fiacre-de-Brie! what caused Lent to be so high, is quite simply that
Pentecost
Much does cost.
May is born:
A little rain abates a storm.
‘Seeing that the serjeant never put the white of the target so high at the butts that the clerk might not [orbicularily] lick his fingers, ready and erect, being feathered with gander’s plumes, and we clearly see that everyone feels guilty-nosed, unless one were to gaze ocularily in perspective towards the chimney-piece from which hangs the sign of The Wine with the Forty Girdles, which are needed by twenty panniers [of debt-relief for a quinquennium].
‘Whoever would not – at the very least – loose his falcon [before cheese tartlets] rather than remove its hood, since memory is often lost once a man dons his breeches back to front.
God keep him from blame,
Thibault Mitaine.’
At which point Pantagruel said, ‘Whoa there, my friend! Whoa! Speak with restraint and without choler. I am following your case. Do proceed’.
‘Truly [, my Lord],’ said the Seigneur de Bumkis, ‘It is just as folk say: it is a good thing occasionally to observe people, for one observant man is worth two. Now, my Lord, the aforesaid goodwife, when saying her Rejoice ye alls and her Hear us O Lords, could not protect herself from a back-stroke feint [, arising, by Golly’s virtue, from the privileges of the University,] except by angelically bathing, covering it with a seven-of-diamonds and launching a flying jab at it as close as possible to the place where they sell such old rags as are employed by the Flemish painters when they wish dexterously “to shoe the grasshoppers”; and I am deeply astonished that society does not lay eggs, since it is so beautiful to brood upon them.’
At this point le Sieur de Slurp-ffart desired to make an ex parte appeal and say something, but Pantagruel said to him:
‘By Saint Anthony’s guts! Does it behove you to speak without sanction! Here am I, sweating under the strain of following the process of your quarrel, and you come pestering me! Be quiet! In the devil’s name, quiet, quiet! You shall speak your fill when the one here has finished. Do go on’ (he said to Bumkis) ‘and do not hurry.’
‘Seeing therefore,’ said Bumkis, that
The Pragmatic Sanction
Of it makes no mention,
and that the Pope gave everyone permission to break wind freely and at will, provided that the whites were not bespattered however much poverty there be in the world, and that one did not sign oneself with the left hand, that goodwife began to dish up the soups by the faith of the little well-bollocked fishes, which, at that junction, were needed to understand the cobbling of old boots.39, However, Jean de Veau, her cousin-german, excited by a brand from the scuttle, advised her most definitely not to put herself to the hazard of doing her washing40 without first steeping the paper in alum at the spin of a top (tick tock tack) for,
If from a bridge you wisely fall:
You never cross it after all;
seeing that the Gentlemen of the Accompts were not in accord over the summonings of the German flutes, from which had been constructed The Spectacles of Princes, newly printed in Antwerp.
‘And that, my Lords, constitutes a very poor endorsement, and, I believe on this matter the party opposite upon his faith, or upon the clerge of a Wordyman; for, desirous of obeying the king’s good-pleasure, I armed myself from top to toe, with padding for the belly, so as to go and see how my grape-pickers had slashed their tall bonnets, the better to tinkle about with their virginals, since the weather was a little dangerous for merchants with the runs, on account of which several free-shooting bowmen had been rejected at the muster, notwithstanding – Baudichon, my Love – that the flues were quite tall enough in proportion to the distended synovial bursa and malanders of the horses.
‘And that is why it was a bumper-year for snail-shells throughout the whole country of Artois, which was no mean advantage to my lords the hodmen of the vendanges when, with unbuttoned bellies, the snail-shells were consumed [without a sword being drawn].
‘Would that everyone had so fine a voice: far better tennis would be played! And those sleights that folk employ when wearing high-soled clogs41 would flow more readily down into the Seine, there to serve forever at the Pont des Meuniers, as was heretofore decreed by the King of Canarre: which decision is herein in the Archives.
‘Wherefore, my Lord, I plead that your Lordship state and declare in this case that which is reasonable, awarding costs and damages.’
Whereupon Pantagruel said, ‘Have you anything to add, my friend?’
Bumkis replied, ‘No, my Lord, I have said it all, right down to the world without end, Amen; and upon my honour I have falsified nothing.’
‘And now, my dear Sieur de Slurp-ffart, it is your turn to speak,’ said Pantagruel. ‘Be brief, but omit nothing relevant.’
*
&
nbsp; [A new chapter begins here: The Plea of le Sieur de Slurp-ffart before Pantagruel. Chapter 12.
Bumkis meets his match in obscurity. For the glancing allusions to the years ‘36 and ‘17 see the Introduction to the previous section.]
At which le Sieur de Slurp-ffart began as follows:
‘My Lord, my Lords: if the wickedness of men could be as readily seen by our [categorical] judgement as flies are in milk, the world [, Four Beeves!] would not be so nibbled at by rats, and there would be many an ear on earth most cowardly gnawed at. For – despite the fact that everything alleged by the plaintiff is eiderdownedly most true to the letter and historical fact – nevertheless, my Lords, artfulness, trickery and piddling little cavillings are secreted within the pot of roses.
At the very moment when I am eating my soup [at par], thinking no evil, speaking no evil, must I put up with someone plaguing and rasping my brain by dancing me a jig and chanting,
Eat your soup while wine you drink:
Dead, you’ll have no eyes to blink.
And by our Sainted Dame, how many fat captains have we seen on the open field of battle (during the distribution of knocks of holy bread to the Brotherhood) playing the lute, trumpeting their bums and performing little exhibition dances in fine slippers decorated with prawn-beard slashes, so as the more honourably to be seated at table. But now the world has entirely lost her way on account of the angle-irons on the bales of Leicestershire serge: one of them sinks into debauchery; the other five into four plus two. And unless the Court were to issue an order, this year it will be as hard to glean as ever it was, or else take three weeks.42
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