Biography (Dictionary of World Biography: Renaissance)  Article
abstract: Rabelais, although a physician by trade, is best known
for his writings, which satirize the Church and its officials
while capturing the spirit of the Renaissance through grandiose
characters who have an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
Rabelais’ strong challenge to spiritual authority is
representative of a new period in literary thought and action.
Early Life  François Rabelais was most likely born in 1494 or
1495 in the Loire valley of France, at La Devinière, near
Chinon, in the province of Touraine. His father was a lawyer, a
prominent member of the landowning middle class. Little is known
of his youth and, in fact, scarcely a date in his biography is
beyond dispute. At some point, he entered the Franciscan
monastery of La Baumette at Angers as a novice. Since his
subsequent actions and especially his writings suggest the
opposite of the stereotypical monastic temperament, Rabelais,
the scholars surmise, entered the order so that