François Rabelais

François Rabelais was a French Renaissance writer, physician, and humanist, author of the connected comic narratives Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534) and their sequels, published in part under the anagrammatic pen name Alcofribas Nasier. Trained first as a Franciscan then Benedictine monk, he studied Greek, law, and medicine, taking his medical degree at Montpellier and practising at Lyon. His prose combined bawdy comedy, classical learning, and wordplay, and was repeatedly censured by the Sorbonne. He enjoyed the protection of the du Bellay family and travelled to Rome. He later held the benefice of Meudon and died in 1553.