\b0 Born near Chinon in 1494, Franτois Rabelais was ordained a priest at a very early age and develop
ed a passion for ancient languages. He became a Benedictine monk but renounced the habit in 1527 and began to study medicine. Later he returned to the Church, becoming first the canon and then, two years prior to his death in 1553, the parish priest of S
aint-Martin de Meudon, near Paris. In the meantime, he created a huge body of literary work centering on the figures of Gargantua and Pantagruel. In these writings, underneath the buffoonery of the situations and the exaggeration of the characters, lay t
he humanism of a man who was deeply hostile to wars, bad priests, the abuse of power, and human folly in general.\par
