Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

Rabelais is now ‘however’ to retell not a tale but an histoire, an historical event: the death of Pan vouched for by Plutarch’s professor of grammar, Epitherses. If that god Pan really did die in the sense of his soul’s having been snuffed out, then even the higher souls are mortal and come eventually to an end. But with a second ‘however’ Pantagruel will proceed to unveil the hidden truth. By inserting the word ‘god’ into his text – ‘the great god Pan is dead’ – Pantagruel opens the way for what is for Christians the only God truly to die, Jesus, and his death is no snuffing out into nothingness. The dying Lord who lies veiled behind Pan can be revealed by a deeper understanding of his name: behind Pan the Shepherd god (Πάν) lies the great ‘Shepherd of the sheep’ of Hebrews 13:20; and there also lies Pan in the sense of All (Πάν), for the crucified Lord is Pantagruel’s All, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’, as he is for Paul and for Luke (Acts 17:28). To his other veiled sources Pantagruel adds Virgil in his Second Eclogue, 33 who is taken to mean that Pan (truly understood) ‘Takes care of the sheep and their pastors too’, of whom Rabelais was one.