A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art

by Thomas Wright

Another story, equally worthy of Ulric von Hutten, is satirical enough on priestly pedantry:—

“There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be, because he had seen a little more than his Cato; for he had read De Syntaxi, and his Fauste precor gelida [the first eclogue of Baptista Mantuanus]. And this made him set up his feathers, and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth, in order to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession, he made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked, ‘Here, now, my friend, tell me, art thou ambitious?’ The poor man said ‘No,’ thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had already heard that he was such a great clerk, and that he spoke so grandly, that nobody understood him, which he now knew by this word ambitious; for although he might have heard it somewhere, yet he did not know at all what it was. The priest went on to ask ‘Art thou not a fornicator?’ ‘No,’ said the labourer, who understood as little as before. ‘Art thou not a gourmand?’ said the priest. ‘No.’ ‘Art thou not superbe [proud]?’ ‘No.’ ‘Art thou not iracund?’ ‘No.’ The priest seeing the man answer always ‘No,’ was somewhat surprised. ‘Art thou not concupiscent?’ ‘No.’ ‘And what art thou, then?’ said the priest. ‘I am,’ said he, ‘a mason; here is my trowel!’”

At this time “Pantagruelism” had mixed itself more or less largely in all the satirical literature of France. It is very apparent in the writings of Bonaventure des Periers, and in a considerable number of satirical publications which now issued, many of them anonymously, or under the then fashionable form of anagrams, from the press in France. Among these writers were a few who, though far inferior to Rabelais, may be considered as not unequal to Des Periers himself. One of the most remarkable of these was a gentleman of Britany, Noel du Fail, lord of La Hérissaye, who was, like so many of these satirists, a lawyer, and who died, apparently at an advanced age, at the end of 1585, or beginning of 1586. In his publications, according to the fashion of that age, he concealed his name under an anagram, and called himself Leon Ladulfil (doubling the l in the name Fail). Noel du Fail has been called the ape of Rabelais, though the mere imitation is not very apparent. He published (as far as has been ascertained), in 1548, his “Discours d’aucuns propos ruftiques facétieux, et de singulière récréation.” This was followed immediately by a work entitled “Baliverneries, ou Contes Nouveaux d’Eutrapel;” but his last, and most celebrated book, the “Contes et Discours d’Eutrapel,” was not printed until 1586, after the death of its author. The writings of Noel du Fail are full of charming pictures of rural life in the sixteenth century, and, though sufficiently free, they present less than most similar books of that period of the coarseness of Rabelais. I cannot say the same of a book which is much more celebrated than either of these, and the history of which is still enveloped in obscurity. I mean the “Moyen de Parvenir.” This book, which is full of wit and humour, but the licentiousness of which is carried to a degree which renders it unreadable at the present day, is now ascribed by bibliographers, in its present form, to Béroalde de Verville, a gentleman of a Protestant family who had embraced Catholicism, and obtained advancements in the church, and it was not printed until 1610, but it is supposed that in its present form it is only a revision of an earlier composition, perhaps even an unacknowledged work of Rabelais himself, which had been preserved in manuscript in Beroald’s family.

Pantagruelism, or, if you like, Rabelaism, did not, during the sixteenth century, make much progress beyond the limits of France. In the Teutonic countries of Europe, and in England, the sceptical sentiment was small in comparison with the religious feeling, and the only satirical work at all resembling those we have been describing, was the “Utopia” of Sir Thomas More, a work comparatively spiritless, and which produced a very slight sensation. In Spain, the state of social feeling was still less favourable to the writings of Rabelais, yet he had there a worthy and true representative in the author of Don Quixote. It was only in the seventeenth century that the works of Rabelais were translated into English; but we must not forget that our satirists of the last century, such as Swift and Sterne, derived their inspiration chiefly from Rabelais, and from the Pantagruelistic writers of the latter half of the sixteenth century. These latter were most of them poor imitators of their original, and, like all poor imitators, pursued to exaggeration his least worthy characteristics. There is still some humour in the writings of Tabourot, the sieur des Accords, especially in his “Bigarrures,” but the later productions, which appeared under such names as Bruscambille and Tabarin, sink into mere dull ribaldry.

There had arisen, however, by the side of this satire which smelt somewhat too much of the tavern, another satire, more serious, which still contained a little of the style of Rabelais. The French Protestants at first looked upon Rabelais as one of their towers of strength, and embraced with gratitude the powerful protection they received from the graceful queen of Navarre; but their gratitude failed them, when Marguerite, though she never ceased to give them her protection, conformed outwardly, from attachment to her brother, to the forms of the Catholic faith, and they rejected the school of Rabelais as a mere school of Atheists. Among them arose another school of satire, a sort of branch from the other, which was represented in its infancy by the celebrated scholar and printer, Henri Estienne, better known among us as Henry Stephens.

The remarkable book called an “Apologie pour Herodote,” arose out of an attack upon its writer by the Romanists. Henri Estienne, who was known as a staunch Protestant, published, at great expense, an edition of Herodotus in Greek and Latin, and the zealous Catholics, out of spite to the editor, decried his author, and spoke of Herodotus as a mere collector of monstrous and incredible tales. Estienne, in revenge, published what, under the form of an apology for Herodotus, was really a violent attack on the Romish church. His argument is that all historians must relate transactions which appear to many incredible, and that the events of modern times were much more incredible, if they were not known to be true, than anything which is recorded by the historian of antiquity. After an introductory dissertation on the light in which we ought to regard the fable of the Golden Age, and on the moral character of the ancient peoples, he goes on to show that their depravity was much less than that of the middle ages and of his own time, indeed of all periods during which people were governed by the Church of Rome. Not only did this dissoluteness of morals pervade lay society, but the clergy were more vicious even than the people, to whom they ought to serve as an example. A large part of the book is filled with anecdotes of the immoral lives of the popish clergy of the sixteenth century, and of their ignorance and bigotry; and he describes in detail the methods employed by the Romish church to keep the mass of the people in ignorance, and to repress all attempts at inquiry. Out of all this, he says, had risen a school of atheists and scoffers, represented by Rabelais and Bonaventure des Periers, both of whom he mentions by name.

As we approach the end of the sixteenth century, the struggle of parties became more political than religious, but not less bitter than before. The literature of the age of that celebrated “Ligue,” which seemed at one time destined to overthrow the ancient royalty of France, consisted chiefly of libellous and abusive pamphlets, but in the midst of them there appeared a work far superior to any purely political satire which had yet been seen, and the fame of which has never passed away. Its object was to turn to ridicule the meeting of the Estates of France, convoked by the duke of Mayenne, as leader of the Ligue, and held at Paris on the 10th of February, 1503. The grand object of this meeting was to exclude Henri IV. from the throne; and the Spanish party proposed to abolish the Salic law, and proclaim the infanta of Spain queen of France. The French ligueurs proposed plans hardly less unpatriotic, and the duke of Mayenne, indignant at the small account made of his own personal pretensions, prorogued the meeting, and persuaded the two parties to hold what proved a fruitless conference at Suresne. It was the meeting of the Estates in Paris which gave rise to that celebrated Satyre Ménippée, of which it was said, that it served the cause of Henri IV. as much as the battle of Ivry itself.

This satire originated among a party of friends, of men distinguished by learning, wit, and talent, though most of their names are obscure, who used to meet in an evening in the hospitable house of one of them, Jacques Gillot, on the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris, and there talk satirically over the violence and insolence of the ligueurs. They all belonged either to the bar or to the university, or to the church. Gillot himself, a Burgundian, born about the year 1560, had been a dean in the church of Langres, and afterwards canon of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and was at this time conseiller-clerc to the parliament of Paris. In 1589 he was committed to the Bastille, but was soon afterwards liberated. Nicolas Rapin, one of his friends, was born in 1535, and was said to have been the son of a priest, and therefore illegitimate. He was a lawyer, a poet, and a soldier, for he fought bravely in the ranks of Henri IV. at Ivry, and his devotion to that prince was so well known, that he was banished from Paris by the ligueurs, but had returned thither before the meeting of the Estates in 1593. Jean Passerat, born in 1534, was also a poet, and a professor in the Collège Royal. Florent Chrestien, born at Orleans in 1540, had been the tutor of Henri IV., and was well known as a man of sound learning. The most learned of the party was Pierre Pithou, born at Troyes in 1539, who had abjured Calvinism to return to Romanism, and who held a distinguished position at the French bar. The last of this little party of men of letters was a canon of Rouen named Pierre le Roy, a patriotic ecclesiastic, who held the office of almoner to the cardinal de Bourbon. It was Le Roy who drew up the first sketch of the “Satyre Ménippée,” each of the others executed his part in the composition, and Pithou finally revised it. For several years this remarkable satire circulated only secretly, and in manuscript, and it was not printed until Henri IV. was established on the throne.

The satire opens with an account of the virtues of the “Catholicon,” or nostrum for curing all political diseases, or the higuiero d’infierno, which had been so effective in the hands of the Spaniards, who invented it. Some of these are extraordinary enough. If, we are told, the lieutenant of Don Philip “have some of this Catholicon on his flags, he will enter without a blow into an enemy’s country, and they will meet him with crosses and banners, legates and primates; and though he ruin, ravage, usurp, massacre, and sack everything, and carry away, ravish, burn, and reduce everything to a desert, the people of the country will say, ‘These are our friends, they are good Catholics; they do it for our peace, and for our mother holy church.’” “If an indolent king amuse himself with refining this drug in his escurial, let him write a word into Flanders to Father Ignatius, sealed with the Catholicon, he will find him a man who (salva conscientia) will assassinate his enemy whom he has not been able to conquer by arms in twenty years.” This, of course, is an allusion to the murder of the prince of Orange. “If this king proposes to assure his estates to his children after his death, and to invade another’s kingdom at little expense, let him write a word to Mendoza, his ambassador, or to Father Commelet (one of the most seditious orators of the Ligue), and if he write with the higuiero del infierno, at the bottom of his letter, the words Yo el Rey, they will furnish him with an apostate monk, who will go under a fair semblance, like a Judas, and assassinate in cold blood a great king of France, his brother-in-law, in the middle of his camp, without fear of God or men; they will do more, they will canonise the murderer, and place this Judas above St. Peter, and baptise this prodigious and horrible crime with the name of a providential event, of which the godfathers will be cardinals, legates, and primates.” The allusion here is to the assassination of Henri III. by Jacques Clement. These are but a few of the marvellous properties of the political drug, after the enumeration of which the report of the meeting of the Estates is introduced by a burlesque description of the grand procession which preceded it. Then we are introduced to the hall of assembly, and different subjects pictured on the tapestries which cover its walls, all having reference to the politics of the Ligue, are described fully. Then we come to the report of the meeting, and to the speeches of the different speakers, each of which is a model of satire. It is not known which of the little club of satirists wrote the open speech of the duke of Mayenne, but that of the Roman legate is known to be the work of Gillot, and that of the cardinal de Pelvé, a masterpiece of Latin in the style of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” was written by Florent Chrestien. Nicolas Rapin composed the “harangue” placed in the mouth of the archbishop of Lyons, as well as that of Rose, the rector of the university; and the long speech of Claude d’Aubray was by Pithou. Passerat composed most of the verses which are scattered through the book, and it is understood that Pithou finally revised the whole. This mock report of the meeting of the Estates closes with a description of a series of political pictures which are arranged on the wall of the staircase of the hall.

These pictures, as well as those on the tapestries of the hall of meeting, are simply so many caricatures, and the same may be said of another set of pictures, of which a description is given in one of the satirical pieces which followed the “Satyre Ménippée,” on the same side, entitled, “Histoire des Singeries de la Ligue.” It was amid the political turmoil of the sixteenth century in France that modern political caricature took its rise.