It may be hard to imagine, but before the year 1532, there was no such word as “Gargantuan.” Only after the author Francois Rabelais published his exuberant Renaissance Classic about a pair of giants, Pantagruel and his father Gargantua – of the gargantuan appetite, did the word appear. Rabelais’ satirical novel denigrated old-fashioned medieval scholasticism (which got him into hot water with the clergy), and applauded the contrasting humanist ideals of King Francois I, the prototypical Renaissance King. Rabelais spent some time in Poitiers, where his friend and protector Geoffroy d’Estignac, Prior of the Abbey of Ligugé and Bishop of Maillezais, built his residence. Several of the legends, traditions and ways of speaking in the Poitou inspired tales in his five books about Pantagruel and Gargantua, from the author’s stay in and around Poitiers.
- The Hotel d’Estignac, built by Rabelais’ friend in 1504, can be found at #22 Rue de la Tranchée. Rabelais spent time staying there. Since the 1880s, this building housed the Ecole Normale d’Instituteurs, and since 2019 has become apartments. One can imagine Rabelais hanging out of one of the Renaissance windows, thinking up his next story.
- The most famous link to Gargantua is Poitiers’ Neolithic Dolmen. The Dolmen, called “La Pierre Levée”, is on the heights east of the Clain where the main Roman road from Italy and Lyons arrived at Limonum. In Rabelais’ story, Gargantua is sent to Poitiers by his father Grandgousier to study law: “Since he saw that the students had nothing to entertain them, he took a great rock, which he called Passelourdin, and set it on four pillars in a field. That way, when the students did not know what else to do, they could spend time climbing up to the rock, and there have banquets with bottles, hams and pâtés, and write their names on it.” As an origin story for a monument, it is… original.
- Just west of the Pierre Levée, on the heights above the River Clain at Montbernage, is another large rock. This is known as Gargantua’s Chair, and is said by Rabelais to be where the giant sat in order to wash his feet in the Clain below.
- The Rue Rabelais, while not connected to any known episode of the author, has a place of honor in the city, linking the Square de la Republique with the ancient Rue du Calvaire (now Rue Girouard).
Elsewhere in Poitou, more than fifty place names are borrowed for Gargantua and Pantagruel’s tales, among them Fontenay le Comte, Lusignan, and Sanxay. The fine cloth made in Chatellerault, finest among the Poitou’s celebrated Medieval textile products, is the only cloth good enough to make diapers for Gargantua’s son, Pantagruel. Several friends of Geoffroy d’Estignac from Ligugé make appearances under altered names, including the poet Jean Bouchet, theologian Jacques Prévost, lawyer Nicolas Petit, and traveler Jean Quentin. The half-serpent Mélusine, mythical ancestor of the Counts of Lusignan and possibly the Poitou’s most-famous legend (think of Mendelsohn’s Fair Melusina Overture), appears in Gargantua’s genealogy. The architecture of the book’s Abbey of Theleme, arguably the first “utopia” in European literature and which is built by Gargantua for a religious friend, was modeled by Rabelais on the chateau of Bonnivet, and some of the stones from Bonnivet are preserved in the Musee Sainte-Croix in Poitiers.
Gargantua’s renown has proved limitless, like his appetite, and reached across the galaxy! The first Black Hole ever “seen” by scientists, at the heart of Galaxy M87, is gigantic, with an estimated mass of 6.6 billion suns, and a size equal to our solar system. It is thought to have grown this massive – by far the most massive object in the “nearby” universe – by eating hundreds of galaxies that crossed its path. An appetite which deservedly brought it the very appropriate name of “Gargantua.”
