Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/31

 RABELAIS 15 attacked herself, for Brantome says, " The Constable de Montmorency, when in the greatest favour, speaking one day with the king, did not scruple to tell him that if he really meant to exterminate the heretics from his realm, he must begin with his court and those nearest him, naming the queen his sister." Dolet was imprisoned at Lyons until released by the influence of his protector, Pierre Duchatel, Bishop of Tulle. Rabelais, who had satirised the monks and Catholicism in the last " Gargantua," hurried off to Italy in 1536. In Mr. Besant's words : "He chose the safest place in Europe for a man of heretical opinions — Rome." Jean du Bellay was still there on business of the king, and in high favour with the new Pope, Paul III., who had made him a cardinal ; and Rabelais was again attached to his household, as physician, reader, secretary, and librarian. Rabelais, by the advice of his friends, addressed to the Pope a supplication for apostasy, in which, after confessing his sins against the Church, and particularly his flight from the convent of Maillezais, he besought full absolution for the past, with permission to resume the Benedictine habit and re-enter the monastery, and also to practise medicine wherever he pleased, but for charity, not payment, and using neither fire nor iron. By the intervention of some Roman cardinals, who loved his wit and learning more than they hated his heresies, he got all he asked for, and thus pro- tected by the bulls of the Pope, could defy even the Sorbonne. However, he did not at once return to France, where the persecution was still hot, but remained at Rome till March 1537, when he was recalled to both Paris and Montpellier — to Paris to