ABSTRACT
Idolatry is a recurring and dominant theme in the Quart Livre de Pantagruel. It is the thread running through its most celebrated episode: the visit to the Isle of Papimanes. As their name shows, the Papimanes – Papimaniacs – are mad, maniacal. Luther's mocking tongue lashed the Vatican, accusing it of cynical idolatry. It was built on the money-grubbing cult of the God-on-earth with the powers he abusively claimed over this world and the next. Instead of homing in on the hypocrites of the Vatican with their God-on-earth, he invents a far-off island of Bon Christian, silly superstitious simpletons who swallow all the venal nonsense peddled by the Vatican. Christian laughter is often nothing if not partisan – hence the favourable allusions to Germany and England. Royalist-Gallican Frenchmen were attracted by Luther's Germany and Anglican England. Rabelais himself once fled to German lands. Rabelais had developed a keen awareness of the cruelty of much laughter, especially in farces.
