ABSTRACT

A contemporary of Erasmus - who greatly admired him - nevertheless thought that buffoonery has its rightful place in the spreading of the Gospel. Erasmus is an exemplar of Christian wit; Francois Rabelais, of Christian comedy. Rabelais is, if ever there was one, an artist in French. It is a form of the French language which he created, moulded, exploited and exemplified. Doubtless Rabelais learned from Erasmus that Christian truths can be defended by laughter, and that laughter is the means of reducing heresy and error to the kinds of worldly madness which Christians can contain. Writing well in Latin could secure for a Humanist a wide audience made up of the intellectual elite. Rabelais came to his writing with few constrictions to limit the scope of his comedy. In 1532 Rabelais published an edition of the Testament of Cuspidius. He saw it as an example of simple and elegant legal Latin.