François Rabelais

François Rabelais was born about 1494 near Chinon in western France. As a young Franciscan friar he was rebuked for studying forbidden Greek books; he moved to the Benedictines and finally left the cloister, studied medicine at Montpellier and became physician at the Hôtel-Dieu in Lyon. One of the most learned men of his age, master of Greek, Latin, law, medicine and theology, he corresponded with Erasmus and published editions of Hippocrates and Galen. Under the anagram 'Alcofribas Nasier' he published Gargantua and Pantagruel, which the theologians of the Sorbonne condemned as soon as it appeared but which ordinary readers loved.