11. Some of the above oaths are changed or attenuated in ’35: Rabelais cut out the favourite oath of François I, ‘Nobleman’s honour’; replaced ‘God’ with ‘Gosh’, then ‘By Saint Cock’ with ‘O Gawd, my Gawd’ (in the patois of Touraine); and the Italian ‘Da heada di Christo!’ by a German oath, ‘Ja martre schend’. From ’42 almost all the oaths are cut out altogether, the text finally reading:… they began to curse and swear, some in anger, some per ris: Abracadabra. – By our Lady, woe is me: Per ris we’re all awash in pee. And that is why…
12. From ’35: omit,… or, more accurately, the apathy.
The original word stupidite means apathy not stupidity but was too strong to use of the king, not least after the affaires des placards. The very word placard had to be removed. So from ’35 the phrase ‘to see whether I couldn’t make some fine be-shitten placards there’ below is replaced by ‘to reveal them to the brotherhoods of my parish’.
13. ’42:… assembled was Nesle, where… (Was the ‘oracle’ which was the Sorbonne eclipsed by the Trilingual Academy founded by François I?)
14. Janotus is tautological: Darii is ‘the third of the first’ (the third mode of the first figure of syllogisms).
15. A legal term of conclusion followed by a deformation of the phrase which ends the comedies of Terence: ‘Farewell, and applaud. Calliopus’ play is done.’ Janotus, a figure of farce unto the end, confuses the Classical Calliopus (taken by Erasmus to be an actor) with Calepinus, the compiler of a famous contemporary Latin dictionary.
16. The above addition was made in ’35, except for ‘which is a draw-bridge for the bum’, added in ’42
17. All that rises falls (Omnia quae orta cadunt) is an Epicurean maxim.
18. ‘Misery accompanies lawsuits’ figures amongst the three famous adages of Chilon, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. It was sculpted on the temple at Delphi and commented upon by Erasmus in his Adages (I, VI, XCVII).
19. ’42,… his old tutors had bidden him…
20. Cant: the theologians justify their sloth with a verse of Psalm 127 (126):2 wrenched from its context.
21. From ’35:… expose himself to the most adventurous to see whether…
22. ’42:… in the workshop of the Sophists…
23. From ’35:… His divine clemency…
24. From ’42:… drawn from it. Similarly they would go…
25. ’42:… to draw you back from all this quarrel… (Rabelais’ initial phrase is a Latinism which foxed some publishers.)
26. When the addition was made in 1535, the phrase ‘Here is how’ was permanently struck out. For the flattery and the jest see Pantagruel, Chapter 10, at the break later numbered Chapter 11.
27. From ’35: omit: slogging through the Caspian Mountains.
28. The Dialogues of Salomon and Marcolf (or, Malcon) was a popular work consisting of an exchange of proverbs between Salomon, the wise King of Israel, and a man of popular wisdom.
29. From ’35 omit: I disavow, damme! the flesh…, the death…, the blood…!
30. ’35 reads:… I snap, I knap, I bay, I slay!…’42 reads:… I snap, I knap, I bay, I disavow!…
31. A deformation of a saying of Cyrus the Great: ‘Let him who loves himself follow me.’
32. From ’35:… which was a hundred rods long…
33. From ’35:… seven score of pheasants…
34. From ’35:… his hide that he felt nothing…
35. ’42:… such impostors poison the souls…
36. ’42:… They amounted in all to two thousand five hundred men-of-arms, sixty-six thousand foot, twenty-six thousand harquebusiers, the crews of four hundred great artillery-pieces, and six thousand pioneers…
37. An error in the first edition (‘Leave the eels of Melun’) is corrected as above. (‘The eels of Melun which squeal before they’re skinned’ were proverbial.)
38. In ’42 the end is considerably expanded, the Monk explaining the enigma as one of the very allegories he denies it to be:… ‘By Saint Goderan,’ said the Monk, ‘that is not how I expound it. The style is that of Merlin the Prophet. Give it allegories and meanings as grave as you like: for my part I do not think that any other meaning is contained in it save the description of a tennis-match couched in obscure terms. The “seducers of the people” are those who arrange the matches and who are normally friends; after the two “services” are over, the one who is in then leaves the court and the other comes in. They trust the “First” (the one who says whether the ball is above or below the cord). The “waters” are their sweating; the strings of the racquets are made of the “guts” of sheep and goats; the “round globe” is the tennis-ball (the esteuf). After the game, they are refreshed before a bright fire, change their shirts and enjoy a feast, but those who won enjoy it more. And be of good cheer!
1. See Plutarch, Roman Questions, 19.
2. The VI Kalends of March is 24 February.
3. That Julius Caesar corrected the calendar was very well known even to the general reader. It is explained for example in some editions of the Fasti of Ovid.
4. There was an edition of his De die natali published in 1497 in Bologna.
5. The Venerable Bede. There is an edition of his De temporibus by P. M. Aleandre (Venice, 1505).
6. Caius Julius Censorinus. His De situ orbis & de singulis mirabilibus was published as early as 1473 in Venice. Other works followed.
7. Alfonso X, King of Castille. There is an edition of his Celestium motuum tabule [Venice] 1483 and his Tabule astronomice edited by J. L. Santritter (Venice, 1492).
8. Abraham ben Me’ir Ibn Ezra, known as Abraham Avenar (see the following note).
9. Despite the gap I think this should in fact read Abraham Avenar, in which case the combined reference is to Abraham ben Me’ir Ibn Ezra, known as Abraham Avenar. His Dc nativitatibus was published in Venice in 1485 and edited by J. Dryander at Cologne, 1537.
10. The Computus (or Computum or Compost) of Anianus. It was frequently reprinted. An early example in the British Library, Computus cum commento, is dated [Paris ? 1500?].
1. Unlike Pantagruel and Gargantua, the title-page here bears Rabelais’ real name and his medical title. The word Caloyer also reminds his readers that he is a priest (strictly speaking, the word, meaning ‘Good Old Man’ or ‘Venerable’, is applied to Greek Orthodox monks). Rabelais being a secular priest, the word is used in jest. His connection with the Iles d’Hyères, real or imaginary, remains unexplained.
2. Seventy-eight may well have been a way of expressing an imprecise number, like the English ‘a hundred and one’. It appears several times in this text. W. F. Smith in his translation refers to it as ‘strangely affected’ by Rabelais (Rabelais. The Five Books and Minor Writings together with Letters and Documents Illustrating His Life (2 vols., London: Alexander Watt, 1896) II, p. 320, note 1.
3. Perhaps an allusion to Mary the Egyptian.
4. Plato never claims that he heard the music of the spheres, nor that it can be heard. The contention is, rather, Pythagorean. Plato, Republic, 617 B-C does have the Siren in each Sphere uttering one note each which together produce a single harmony. Aristotle does not believe either that we can hear such music. (See On the Heavens, 290 B, 12.) Cf. below, Chapter 17 of the Fifth Book.
5‘52:… ‘Guts of Gosh,’ said Panurge…
6. That is, ‘Enemies’ gifts are no gifts’ (echthrôn adôra dôra). See the introduction to this chapter.
7. The fantastic etymology taken from Plutarch’s Table Talk, 8, 6.
8. A reference to Homer’s ‘grimy old woman poking the fire’ (Odyssey, 18, 27), to whom Irus the beggar compares Ulysses.
9’52;… Italaniate gestures, which senators she had met on the way up. She, not knowing…
10. Rabelais gives this in Greek (from Aristophanes, The Knights, 1, 1, 61) and takes it to mean ‘The old man plays the Sybil’. Yet again he supposes his readers can read Greek.
11. ‘The heretic burnable as a pretty little clo
ck’ has not been satisfactorily explained.
12. In ’52 Rabelais changed ‘Deniorgogon’ (the father of the devils) to ‘Demiourgon’, which evokes the Classical demiurge.
13. This gesture makes horns at a cuckold.
14. Some technical terms now little known: haruspicine: the haruspex examined entrails; extispicine: the extispex did likewise; the oscines are the birds from whose song or cry divinations were made; the ‘tripudiation solistime’ (tripudium solistimum) is a measured, solemn liturgical dance.
15. In ’52 ‘fitting’ (duisant) changed to ‘shining’ (luisant).
16’52, omit: and codpiece-ites.
17. The blason of Panurge’s sorry bollocks was subject to some minor rearrangement and omissions in ’52. Omitted are: ‘aborted b.’ (after ‘drained b.’), ‘censored b.’ (after ‘mitred b.’), ‘farinated b.’ (before ‘marinated b.’), ‘extirpated b.’ (after ‘ragged b.’), ‘chalotted b.’ (after ‘scattered b.’), ‘mortified b.’ (after ‘scrupulous b.’). Three of these were transferred to Frère Jean in Chapter 26. One epithet appears twice: wormy.
18. Toby’s dog is called ‘Dog’ in Greek (that is, Kyne from kunos). Toby and his dog represent both loyalty and, for evangelicals, a great exemplum to use against clandestine marriages.
19. As a platonizing physician, Rondibilis respects the Golden Mean, whereas Galenists were suspicious of it in medicine. He is using technical philosophical terms. The Mean may be reached either per participationem or per abnegationem, or by both in turn as appropriate. For the modest theologian, Saint Paul says the same thing more simply when, in I Corinthians 7:29, he advises his followers ‘to have wives as though they had none’.
20. Pantagruel is diametrically opposed to Panurge. The good wife is the ‘help meet’ for man of Genesis 2:18. Woman was made for man (I Corinthians 11:9), but a man is not made for himself: a husband also has the duties to God, country, profession and friends summed up in the adage, ‘No one is born for himself alone’.
21. Bridoye misuses a brocard which states that weakness in old age is compensated for by freedom from lusts, greater wisdom and maturity of judgement.
22. The brocards here really refer to physical disadvantages. The first, ‘He Who Has but One’, states that a man is liable to military service even if he has but one testicle.
23. The gloss stated that there are ‘accusers of Nature’ who make a difference between men and women!
24. Civil Law most certainly did allow eventual recourse to dice in perplexities (where facts are certain but the application of the law to them is obscure. Behind the smiles the ground is being prepared for an eventual volte-face. 26 q.ii Sors (translated here as Decreta, 26, question ii, chapter ‘Of lots’) will be taken up seriously by Epistemon in Chapter 44. Previously, C. Communia de leg. l. si duo (translated here as ‘Codex, “Generalities Concerning Legates”; the Law ‘If Two Persons’) was cited at the outset by Pantagruel at the end of Chapter 12 to state authoritatively that no appeal can be lodged against Fortuna.
25. A joke for the initiate. The word Muscarii gave great difficulty to students of the Law, many of whom thought it required emendation. But it looks like muscus (fly, mouche); hence the game in which one man becomes the fly whom the others try to swat.
26. Bridoye misunderstands a brocard listed in the legal Lexicon of Albericus under both Judex (Judge) and Vir Bonus (A Good Man), which explains that in the context of the laws cited Good Man means Judge.
27. A well-known cause of laughter. To explain the elegant Latin word olfecit, used when a horse caused difficulties by ‘flairing’ (smelling) a mule, a medieval glossator of the Law Agaso (Ostler) notoriously explained it in basic Latin as ‘put its nose to her arse’. Bridoye quotes the gloss with comic automatism as soon as he hears himself using the verb sentir in another sense.
28. An indirect quotation from II Thessalonians 3:10 listed in the Flowers of the Laws and the Brocards of the Law, where it is cited, as in the Third Book, in a Latin form slightly different from the Vulgate’s. But the deformation of manducet (let him eat) into mangeducat (let him manger not) is Bridoye’s own.
29. A legal brocard known for its mixture of French, plus que le pas, with the Latin: necessity can make even an old woman run fast.
30. A line of the ancient Roman poet Ennius, ‘Deficiente pecu deficit omne nia’, remembered above all for its tmesis (its breaking of pecunia into pecu and nia, as are the in and come of income in this translation).
31. A line of Ovid (Amores, 3, 2, 35
32. Bridoye knows even his Bible from his legal texts and glosses. Here he is citing indirectly Acts 20:35.
33. A maxim from Aristotle’s Physics: a well-known legal brocard, the last to be cited by Bridoye.
34. ’52:… uncommon for stepfathers, second husbands and stepmothers to feel affection…
35. Compare what is said here with Chapter 37 about the Celestial Intelligences and the selfless man, which prepared the reader for Bridoye’s Folly to be inspired. Rabelais employs a second time a quotation from II Corinthians 11:15: ‘for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light’ (Cf. above, Chapter 14). Rabelais goes on to apply the condemnation of Paul literally to the perverted ministri justitiae – the ‘ministers of justice’ – of his day (crooked lawyers and judges and so on, who are genuinely doing works of the devil). Devils work through phantasmes, ‘misleading illusions’, as was true of Picrochole in Chapter 29 of Gargantua.
God the Father is called ‘the just Judge’ in II Timothy 4:8.
The term ‘Talmudists’ here is not used for the experts in Jewish Law but for the (Christian) Canon Lawyers. Rabelais is citing word for word the judgement of Augustine in his second Sermon on Psalm 30 (31):16 (15, Vulgate text): ‘My lots are in thine hands’. The words of Augustine are quoted in the Decreta of Gratian, 26 question 2 § Sors, the very first law cited by Bridoye in his defence of the ‘dice of justice’ in Chapter 39. (Tiraqueau cites it too.)
36. Tribonian, the sixth-century jurisconsult who compiled the Pandects under the Emperor Justinian, is similarly attacked by Guillaume Budé in his Annotations on the Pandects, which in an earlier edition is one of the major influences on Rabelais in the Third Book. The law-courts and spikes are taken from Pliny, Natural History, 19, 1. The spikes are probably caltrops (iron balls with spikes so placed that one of them is always pointing upwards). Rabelais exploits the same chapter of Pliny apropos of pantagruelion-asbestos later in the Third Book.
37. Cf. Servius on Virgil, Aeneid, 3, III; kubisthai is treated as a verbal noun.
38. In the Sixth Eclogue, verses 3–4: ‘When I would sing of kings and battles Apollo Cynthius tugged my ear and warned me’. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, VII, XL, ‘To tug the ear’.
39’52:… since the Mole was there…
40’52:… in partnership with his Mole, clandestinely seducing…
41‘52:… abetted by his Mole suborning his daughter.
42. In Ovid (Metamorphoses, 9, 297 ff.) Juno kept her fingers interlocked in the form of a pecten (comb). In Latin to comb (pecto) also means to card and to heckle.
43. The prophet is Jotham, who tells this fable in Judges 9:8 ff. The following myth of the Hamadryads, the tree-nymphs, is eventually from Athenaeus, Banquet, 3, 78.
44. The Ancients ‘cured’ bad behaviour in children and slaves by beating them with elm-rods.
45. Possibly a confusion between Carpasium, a town in Crete, and carbasus, a fine flaxen cloth.
46. Echoes of Virgil (Second Georgic, 109–22): ‘Not all soils can bear every fruit…; see, tamed by tillage, the eastern houses of the Arab and the painted Gelonians: trees are divided by their homelands. India alone brings forth black ebony; to the Sabaeans alone belongs the incense branch… or nearer the seas the woody glades of India.’ See an adage of Erasmus, IV, III, XX, ‘Not every land produces everything’, which gives place of honour to Virgil and the Georgics.
1. Counting magpies as humans often are counted in the N
ew Testament, without the women and children, a practice which amused Rabelais here and elsewhere.
2. Cited from Horace (Epistles, 1, 17, 35) taking principes to mean princes not principal citizens.
3. A fresh-water physician (on the model of a fresh-water sailor) is one of limited skill and experience. Rabelais has probably modelled his phrase on the ‘fresh-water lawyer’ of Pathelin.
Gargantua and Pantagruel Page 107