Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/38

 22 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES its mordant satire of theologians and legists. At first sight the act appears audacious to the verge of frenzy, when it was criminal to render the Gospels and Psalms into the vernacular ; when praying to God in French was a crime punished with the gibbet and the stake ; when Francis I. had declared that he would cut off his own arm if he knew it to be gangrened with heresy. It is true that he had power- ful protectors, but so had Berquin, and likewise the special favour of Francis ; yet all had not availed to save him. But, most wonderful of all, the friends of Rabelais actually succeeded in getting the royal authority and privilege for this third book valid for ten years from its date, which license we can still read. He is supposed to have been chiefly indebted for it, in addition to the Du Bellays and D'Estissac, to Pierre du Chatel, Bishop of Tulle, almoner and reader to the king, and a secret supporter of the Protestants, and to Odet, Cardinal de Chastillon (brother of Admiral de Coligny), who subsequently avowed himself a Huguenot, and married in his pontifical robes. To crown his hardihood, Rabelais put his own name to this book, caUing himself Doctor of Medicine and callo'ier (reverend father) des isles Hieres, adding : " The above-named author begs his benevolent readers to reserve their laughter till the seventy-eighth book." In this book he abandons the romances of chivalry, the giants with their horrible and dreadful deeds, and his native Touraine. The burlesque has become satire ; for local allusions we have general. He passes in review the leading pro- fessions embodied in typical personages — the theo- logian, the physician, the legist, the philosopher,