Rabelais Wrote a Greek Epigram While Greek’s Place in France Was Precarious
Rabelais’ oeuvre includes one independent poetic composition in Greek: a short epigram that survives as one of the earliest pieces of Greek composition from early-modern France. It appears as a dedication in the third edition of De Legibus Connubialibus, André Tiraqueau’s treatise on marital law and women’s legal capacity, first published in 1513.
The interesting choice is the language. Rabelais chose Greek over Latin at a time when Greek’s position in France was still precarious, and humanist efforts to strengthen it, his own included, met resistance from ecclesiastical authorities.
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Choosing Greek over Latin at a moment when Greek’s standing in France was precarious is the real content of the gesture: a claim about which readers you want to be counted among, made in a language the establishment distrusted.
Or the gesture is social rather than defiant. The poem is a dedication in a book by André Tiraqueau, the humanist and jurist based in Poitou who was Rabelais’ patron and close acquaintance — a gift to a friend, not a manifesto.
The joke is that the poem need not be good for either reading to hold: it is an occasional short piece, by no means outstanding in its own right, whose value is as a witness to Greek’s growing place in French letters and to Rabelais’ own ambitions. The gesture matters more than the verse.