Note 106 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE
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About 1532 he produced his Gargantua and Pantagruel, the first two books of his great humoristic romance; and in 1533 began his series of almanacks, continued till 1550, presumably as printer’s hack-work. From the fragments which have been preserved, they appear to have been entirely serious in tone, one containing a grave theistic protest against all astrological prediction. Along with the almanack of 1533, however, he produced a Pantagruelian Prognostication; and this, which alone has been preserved entire,106 passes hardy ridicule on astrology,107 one of the most popular superstitions of the day, among high and low alike. Almost immediately the Sorbonne was on his track, condemning his Pantagruel in 1533.108 A journey soon afterwards to Rome, in the company of his friend Bishop Jean du Bellay, the French ambassador, may have saved him some personal experience of persecution. Two years later, when the Bishop went to Rome to be made cardinal, Rabelais again accompanied him; and he appears to have been a favourite alike with Pope Clement VII and Paul III. At the end of 1535 we find him, in a letter to his patron, the bishop of Maillezais, scoffing at the astrological leanings of the new Pope, Paul III.109 Nonetheless, upon a formal Supplicatio pro apostasia, he obtained from the Pope in 1536 an absolution for his breach of his monastic vows, with permission to practise medicine in a Benedictine monastery. Shortly before, his little son Théodule had died;110 and it may have been grief that inspired such a desire: in any case, the papal permission to turn monk again was never used,111 though the pardon was doubtless serviceable. Taking his degree as doctor at Montpellier in May, 1537, he there lectured for about a year on anatomy; and in the middle of 1538 he recommenced a wandering life,112 practising in turn at Narbonne, Castres, and Lyons. Then, after becoming a Benedictine canon of St. Maur in 1540, we find him in Piedmont from 1540 to 1543, under the protection of the viceroy, Guillaume de Bellay.113