Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  For the building and furnishing of the Abbey Gargantua sent twenty-seven hundred thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one golden Agnus-dei in ready coin, and then, each year until all was completed, sixteen hundred and sixty-nine thousand Sun-crowns [and as many golden Pleiades] raised from tolls on the river Dive. For its basic endowment and maintenance he gave, in perpetuity, twenty-three hundred and sixty-nine thousand five hundred and fourteen rose-nobles from ground-rents, free of all liens and depreciations, payable every year at the portal of the Abbey. The deeds, duly executed, were handed over.

  The building was hexagonal, in such a manner that there was built at each angle a solid round tower with an inside measurement of sixty paces in diameter. Each was exactly alike in size and construction; on the northern side flowed the river Loire, on one of whose banks was set one of the towers, named Arctice. Another, facing east, was called Calaër; the next one round was Anatole; the next again, Mesembrine; the next after that, Hesperie; and last of all, Cryère.

  Between each tower there was a distance of three hundred and twelve paces. The whole was built in six storeys, counting the underground cellars as one. The vaulting of the ground storey was in the shape of basket-handles. The remainder had stuccoed ceilings with culs-de-lampe in Flemish plaster. The roof was clad in fine slate and had lead finials artistically interspersed with gilded figures of little manikins and beasts. Gargoyles projected from the walls between the casements, into pipes diagonally painted in gold and blue stripes right down to the ground, where they ended in great conduits all leading to the river below the edifice. The building was a hundred times more splendid than Bonivet, [Chambord or Chantilly,] for it contained nine hundred and thirty-two chambers, each including an anti-chamber, a dressing-room, a private closet, a chapel, and a vestibule leading into a large hall.

  In the middle of the main structure, between each tower, stood an inner spiral staircase. The steps were [partly of porphyry, partly of Numidian stone, and partly] of serpentine marble, twenty-two-foot long and three fingers thick, arranged in flights of twelve between each landing.

  On each of the landings were two handsome classical-style arcades which let in the light; through them one entered into a loggia, with lattice-work gratings as wide as the staircase itself which, mounting to the main roof, terminated in a slightly raised pavilion.

  The stairs led on either side to a great hall and through rooms into the chambers. Stretching from the Arctice Tower to the Cryère Tower were the great and beautiful libraries for Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian and Spanish, arranged by language on different shelves.

  In the middle was a miracle of a winding-staircase, entered from outside by an arcade six arm-spans wide. It was made so broad and symmetrical that six men-at-arms, lance on thigh, could ride abreast to the top of the entire building. From the Anatole Tower to the Mesembrine were beautiful great galleries, all with wall-paintings of ancient prowesses, histories and depictions of localities. On the side facing the river there was in the middle an ascent and gateway like the ones already described. Over that gateway was inscribed the following in large antique letters:

  The Inscription set above the main Gate of Thélème

  CHAPTER 52

  [Becomes Chapter 54.

  This ‘Abbey of the Will’ has no walls to keep people in but does have means of keeping out the enemies of the Gospel. It is an aristocratic fortress of evangelical truth which defends its noble inmates from a hostile world.

  Aristocratic wealth is honoured, but not riches raised by venal lawyers and the like.]

  No hypocrite nor bigot come herein,

  Nor apes of goodness, shoddy and profane,

  Nor stupid Wry-necks, worse than Goths in sin,

  Nor Ostrogoths and all their frightful kin,

  Humbugs fine-shod or clad in hair-shirts vain,

  Tramps, fur-wrapped perverts, true religion’s bane,

  Each puffed-up clown who to make quarrels chooses,

  Be off with you: here peddle no abuses.

  Abuses and hates

  Through my wicket gates

  Would bring faithlessness;

  And all your badness

  My song’s praise abates.

  Abuses and hates!

  Come not here-in, ye lawyers with tight fists,

  Nor clerk, nor legist who poor plaintiffs cogs,

  Scribes, Pharisees, new tortuous canonists,

  Doddering judges fighting in the lists

  ’Gainst parish-folk to tie them up like dogs.

  Your fees lie screened behind a gibbet’s fogs;

  Yell for them there! Here’s no judicial maw

  Nor anything to swell your venal Law.

  Law with its gambles

  Here knows no gambols

  Where all live in joy.

  Forensics deploy

  Where for fat fees scrambles

  Bad Law with its gambles.

  Away vile Usury’s filthy money-grubbers,

  Foul beggars, pigs forever with vile snouts in,

  Fat-cats and Scribes, judicial pettifoggers,

  Bent, bluff-nosed rascals stuffing coins in coffers,

  Unsatisfied though thousand crowns are crammed in,

  All teeth on edge, save when there’s gold to win

  And pile up high, with lean and hawkish face:

  May horrid death this day your life efface.

  Efface brutish dial

  Which we e’er revile!

  Bray elsewhere you might:

  Here never ’tis right.

  Be off: you are vile.

  Efface brutish dial!

  Come not herein, ye foolish jealous curs,

  Nor night nor day, by jaundiced envy led,

  Nor you for whom sedition ever purrs,

  Spirits of ill, whom Distrust ever stirs,

  Latins or Greeks, more than the wolf to dread,

  With syphilitic sores from heel to head.

  Your filthy lupus elsewhere feed you might!

  Your poxy scabs can Shame alone delight.

  Delight, honour, praise.

  Here-in we do raise:

  In shared common joy

  Good health we enjoy.

  Happily teach all our days

  Delight, honour, praise.

  Come ye inside, and welcome now abide,

  And doubly so of chivalry the flower.

  Bring riches too: they are not things to hide

  Revenues, wealth, shall have their use inside,

  For Great and Small shall find them their Endower;

  Thousands with me shall enter friendship’s bower,

  All merry friends, with joy beyond compare:

  Wholly and ever true companions fair.

  Companions fair,

  Serene and sans care:

  Banished vulgarity:

  Welcomed civility

  Whose ways are so rare,

  Companions fair.

  Come ye inside; who God’s Good News declare

  With subtle sense while enemies do chide.

  Here find a tower and refuge from the snare

  Of hostile Error whose wiles ever dare

  With falsest style the Truth from all to hide.

  Found faith profound, here ever to abide.

  Then we’ll confound with Truth, written and heard,

  The vilest foes by our God’s Holy Word.

  By God’s Holy Word!

  Truth ever be heard

  In this holy site.

  With Truth gird the knight.

  Dames’ minds’ depths be stirred

  By God’s Holy Word.

  Enter herein you dames of good descent.

  Come with frank minds and with us find true joy:

  Beauteous Flowers, with faces Heaven-bent,

  Upright and pure, on Wisdom all intent;

  Here Honour abides true, without alloy.

  The great lord who bestowed this to enjoy

  By way of guerdon gave it you to hold,<
br />
  Enabling all with his most ample gold.

  Gold given for a gift

  Earns our God’s forgift.

  For gold’s wards may earn

  Rewards in return:

  Forgiveness comes swift:

  For gold given for gift.

  What the dwelling of the Thelemites was like

  CHAPTER 53

  [Becomes Chapter 55.

  Evangelism may well be on the defensive here in a hostile world, but the youthful noblemen and ladies of Thélème live expansively in elegant, disciplined luxury. Their Abbey recalls the splendours of the Dream of Polifilo.]

  In the middle of the inner court stood a magnificent fountain of pure alabaster, topped by the Three Graces with horns-of-plenty pouring water from their breasts, mouths, ears, eyes, and other bodily apertures.

  The inner parts of the building above that court were raised up on pillars of chalcedony and porphyry, with beautiful ancient-style arches, within which were beautiful galleries, long and spacious, decorated with wall-paintings as well as with the horns of stags, [unicorns and hippopotamuses, with elephant tusks] and other objects of note.

  The ladies’ apartments stretched from the Arctice Tower as far as the Mesembrine Gate. The men occupied the rest. Placed outside between the first two towers where the ladies could enjoy them were the tilt-yard, the hippodrome, the amphitheatre and the wonderful baths having basins at three levels, with all sorts of equipment and an abundance of distilled waters of myrrh.

  Beside the river were the pleasure-gardens with a maze in the middle, all very beautiful. Between the two other towers were laid out courts for balloon and royal-tennis. Towards the Cryère Tower were orchards full of every kind of fruit trees arranged in quincunxes. Beyond stretched the Great Park, teeming with all sorts of game.

  The firing-butts for harquebus, bow and cross-bow were sited between the third pair of towers. The kitchens were placed outside by the Hesperie Tower and were single-storeyed. Beyond them were the stables.

  In front of them was the falcon-house under the control of expert keepers and trainers. It was replenished annually by the Cretans, Venetians and Sarmatians with all sorts of birds of surpassing excellence: eagles, [gerfalcons,] hawks, goshawks, female lanners, falcons, sparrow-hawks, merlins, and others, so well trained and tractable that they would leave the château, sport over the fields and catch everything they came across. The kennels were a little beyond, towards the Great Park.

  All the halls, chambers and private rooms were hung with tapestries, varied according to the season of the year. All the paving was carpeted in green baize.

  The beds were of embroidered cloths. In each of the anti-chambers stood a crystal looking-glass, framed in fine gold and surrounded by pearls; it was large enough to give a true reflection of the whole person.

  Hard by the entrance leading to the ladies’ chambers were the perfumers and hairdressers, through whose hands the men passed when they called on the ladies. They also furnished the ladies’ apartments every morning with distilled [rose water,] or ange-water and angel-water, as well as that precious thing, a perfuming-pot, exhaling many kinds of aromatic vapours.

  How the monks and nuns of Thélème were dressed

  CHAPTER 54

  [Becomes Chapter 56.

  This luxury Abbey has been reformed, but only by agreement over matters of dress. The ‘sympathy’ which existed between the noblemen and the ladies has wide implications. Renaissance sympathy is, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘A (real; or supposed) affinity between certain things – here, people – ‘by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence, affect or influence one another (especially in some occult way) or attract or tend towards each other’. It embraces the harmony of the Thelemites over their elegant dressing and more widely their harmony and conformity in everything affecting their community.

  No time is wasted over elegant dressing any more than it was for Gargantua in Chapter 21. The dressing is done by others. There is one Greek-derived name, Nausiclète (nausikleitos): ‘renowned for his ships.’]

  At the time of the original foundation, the ladies dressed according to their own fancy and judgement. Subsequently [by their free will] they were reformed in the following manner.

  They wore scarlet or cochineal stockings extending exactly three-fingers above the knee; the selvedge was of a variety of rich embroidery and slashes. Their garters matched the colour of their bracelets and clung to the top and bottom of their knees. Their shoes, pumps and slippers were of crimson, red or violet velvet slashed with the shape of a cray-fish’s beard.

  Over their chemise each wore a beautiful kirtle of lovely watered silk. On top of it they wore a farthingale of various taffetas, white, red, tawny, grey and so on. Over that came a tunic either of silver taffeta embroidered with golden-thread arabesque needlework, or else (when it seemed preferable, depending on the weather) of satin, damask or velvets – orange-coloured, tawny, green, ashen-grey, blue, bright yellow, crimson-red or white – or else (depending on the Festivals) of cloth-of-gold or silver-weave, with gold-and-silver braid or embroidery.

  According to the season, their gowns were of cloth-of-gold fringed with silver, of red satin covered with gold or silver braid, of various taffetas – white, blue, black or tawny – of silk-serge, watered silk, pure silk, velvet, silver-weave, silver-cloth, gold-tissue, or else of velvet or satin with gold fringes in a variety of motifs.

  In summer, in lieu of the gowns they would on occasions wear loose robes decorated as above or else sleeveless Moorish jackets of violet velvet with gold fringes over silver braid or with girdles of gold, garnished at the seams with little Indic pearls. In winter they would wear gowns of the various coloured taffetas mentioned above with furs of lynx, black weasel, Calabrian martens, sables or other costly species.

  Their prayer-beads, rings, chains and necklaces were of fine stones: carbuncles, rubies, balas-rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, turquoises, garnets, agates, beryls, pearls and unsurpassed unions.

  Their coiffures were arranged according to the season: in the winter they chose the French style; in the spring, the Spanish; in the summer, the Italian, except on Sundays and Festival-days, when they adopted the French style as being more becoming and savouring more of feminine modesty.

  The men were dressed in their own style: their hose of wool or of thick serge, scarlet or cochineal, black or white. Their breeches were of matching, or nearly matching, velvet, embroidered and slashed to their own designs. Their doublets were of cloth-of-gold, silver-weave, velvet, satin, damask, and taffeta in the same colours, slashed, embroidered and trimmed in the height of fashion. Their fly-cords were of like-coloured silk with tags of thick-enamelled gold. Their cloaks and jackets were of cloth-of-gold, gold-weave, silver-weave or velvet, with such embroidered borders as they wished. Their gowns were as costly as those of the ladies. Their belts were of silk in the colours of their doublets: each bore at his side a beautiful sword with a gilt handle; the scabbard was sheathed in velvet to match the breeches and hose; its tip was of gold and gilt-work. So too for the dagger. Their bonnet was of black velvet, furnished with plenteous jewels and gold buttons; above it rose a white feather, delicately divided by golden spangles, at the ends of which dangled pendants of fine rubies, emeralds and so on.

  But there was such sympathy between the men and women that they dressed every day in matching clothing. So as not to fail in this, certain gentlemen were delegated to inform the men each morning of the style which the ladies intended to wear that day – for that entirely depended on the will of the ladies.

  You should not think that either the gentlemen or the ladies wasted any time over those noble vestments and most rich apparel, for the Masters of the Wardrobe had everything ready each morning, whilst the Women of the Bedchamber were so expert, that their ladies were ready and dressed in next to no time.

  And so that the apparel might be most conveniently supplie
d, a large building, half-a-league long, well lit and equipped, was erected by the edge of the wood at Thélème; there lived the goldsmiths, jewellers, embroiderers, tailors, drawers of gold thread, velvet-makers, tapes try-workers and artists. All plied their crafts there, entirely for the monks and nuns of the Abbey, being supplied with their materials and cloths by the hand of the Sieur Nausiclète, who, year by year, brought them the cargoes of seven ships sailing from the Perlas and Cannibal Islands bearing gold ingots, pure silks, pearls and precious stones.

  If any of the union-pearls tended to age and lose their natural whiteness, the jewellers revived them by their art, passing them through some splendid cockerels just as one feeds castings to falcons to purge them.

  On the Rule of the Thelemites: and how they lived.

  CHAPTER 55

  [Becomes Chapter 57.

  The famous Rule of the Order of the Thelemites contains only one clause: ‘Do what thou wilt’. Such a rule cannot apply to everyone: it is restricted to the well-born and well-bred who have a developed and trained synderesis. Synderesis is that guiding force of conscience which, though weakened at the Fall, was not obliterated by it and so can be cultivated. Rabelais calls it ‘honour’, but his definition of honour is word for word that of the more theological concept of synderesis. Honour is a term which all his noble readers would have understood: synderesis is not.

  Pauline freedom (eleutheria,) releases men and women from the ‘yoke of bondage’, the jugum servitutis (Galatians 5:1; 4:31): Christians are at liberty to do or not to do anything which is indifferent, that is, anything which, of itself, does not concern salvation.

  The concept is central to Lutheran theology. So is the stoic Lutheran paradox met here in Thélème and in Luther: the Christian is free and subject to no one: the Christian is most obliging, the servant of all and subject to everyone. The Thelemites live in harmony because they are freely obliging and willingly subject to each other in all matters good or indifferent.

  ‘We strive for the forbidden and yearn for what is denied’ is cited from Ovid’s Art of Love, 3, 4, 17. Rabelais is not alone in quoting that line of Ovid’s beside Saint Paul. It memorably reinforces Pauline morality and theology.]