Colonna's work was a great influence on the Franciscan monk François Rabelais, who in the 16th century, used Thélème, the French form of the word, as the name of a fictional Abbey in his novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel.

The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras ( Do what thou wilt ), a philosophy of life associated with François Rabelais ' fictional abbey at Thélème and later used by Aleister Crowley.

French satirist François Rabelais wrote in Gargantua and Pantagruel that a swan's neck was the best toilet paper he had encountered.

The University of Poitiers was established in 1431 and welcomed many famous thinkers ( François Rabelais ; René Descartes ; Francis Bacon ).

* François Rabelais, ( c. 1493-1553 ), was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor and humanist

François Rabelais (; c. 1494 – 9 April 1553 ) was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar.

Although the place or date of his birth is not reliably documented, and some scholars put it as early as 1483, it is probable that François Rabelais was born in November 1494 near Chinon, Indre-et-Loire, where his father worked as a lawyer.

Rabelais was first a novice of the Franciscan order, and later a friar at Fontenay-le-Comte, where he studied Greek and Latin, as well as science, philology, and law, already becoming known and respected by the humanists of his era, including Guillaume Budé.

Harassed due to the directions of his studies, Rabelais petitioned Pope Clement VII and was granted permission to leave the Franciscans and enter the Benedictine order at Maillezais, where he was more warmly received.

However, after the king's death, Rabelais was frowned upon by the academic elite, and the French Parliament suspended the sale of his fourth book.

Rabelais traveled frequently to Rome with his friend Cardinal Jean du Bellay, and lived for a short time in Turin with du Bellay's brother, Guillaume, during which François I was his patron.

Rabelais ' use of his native tongue was astoundingly original, lively, and creative.

François Rabelais himself was Roman Catholic.

Hilaire Belloc was a great admirer of Rabelais.

He also wrote a short story entitled " On the Return of the Dead " in which Rabelais descended from heaven to earth in 1902 to give a lecture in praise of wine at the London School of Economics, but was instead arrested.

George Orwell was not an admirer of Rabelais.

Rabelais was a major reference point for a few main characters ( Boozing wayward monks, University Professors, and Assistants ) in Robertson Davies's novel The Rebel Angels, part of the The Cornish Trilogy.

Rabelais was also mentioned in Davies's books The Lyre of Orpheus, and Tempest-Tost.

* Honoré de Balzac was inspired by the works of Rabelais to write Les Cent Contes Drolatiques ( The Hundred Humorous Tales ).

* Asteroid ' 5666 Rabelais ' was named in honor of François Rabelais in 1982.

It was first mentioned on a written reference dating to 1535, in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais.

Pseudonyms adopted by authors are sometimes transposed forms of their names ; thus " Calvinus " becomes " Alcuinus " ( here V = U ) or " François Rabelais " = " Alcofribas Nasier ".

In one dialogue, Rabelais speaks of coprophagia as a Christian gesture, saying that monks swallow the shit of the world, that is the sins, and for this they are ostracized by society.

The Renaissance writer François Rabelais ( b. 1494 ) helped to shape French as a literary language, Rabelais ' French is characterised by the re-introduction of Greek and Latin words.

François Rabelais gives tarau as the name of one of the games played by Gargantua in his Gargantua and Pantagruel ; this is likely the earliest attestation of the French form of the name.

* Gargantua, written by François Rabelais ( 1532 ).

* Gargantua is published by François Rabelais.

* Pantagruel is published by François Rabelais.

Impressed by Proudhon's corrections of one of his Latin manuscripts, Fallot sought out his friendship, and the two were soon regularly spending their evenings together discussing French literature by Montaigne, Rabelais, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and many other authors to whom Proudhon had not been exposed during his years of theological readings.

In literature, he has been referenced by Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel and by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida.

Rabelais probably spent some time in hiding, threatened by being labeled a heretic.

Only the protection of du Bellay saved Rabelais after the condemnation of his novel by the Sorbonne.

du Bellay would again help Rabelais in 1540 by seeking a papal authorization to legitimize two of his children ( Auguste François, father of Jacques Rabelais, and Junie ).

Between 1545 and 1547, François Rabelais lived in Metz, then a free imperial city and a republic, to escape the condemnation by the University of Paris.

It is in the first book where Rabelais writes of the Abbey of Thélème, built by the giant Gargantua.

Rabelais gives us a description of how the Thélemites of the Abbey lived and the rules they lived by:

Timothy Hampton writes that " to a degree unequaled by the case of any other writer from the European Renaissance, the reception of Rabelais's work has involved dispute, critical disagreement, and ... scholarly wrangling ..." But at present, " whatever controversy still surrounds Rabelais studies can be found above all in the application of feminist theories to Rabelais criticism ".

I ... deny I have gone as far as Swift: he keeps a due distance from Rabelais ; I keep a due distance from him.

Around this time he attracted the attention of Jean de Guise, the patron of Erasmus, Clement Marot, and Rabelais ; it was a welcome career boost, and, in 1548, with the additional assistance of Charles de Ronsard ( the brother of poet Pierre de Ronsard ), he became curate at Unverre, not far from Chartres.

Mikhail Bakhtin wrote Rabelais and His World, praising the author for understanding and unbridled embrace of the carnival grotesque.

The work discusses the life and times of the writer and satirist François Rabelais with emphases on what the author considers to be the powerful role of humour in medieval and early times.

" British author Thomas Hughes referred to Lowell as one of the most important writers in the United States: " Greece had her Aristophanes ; Rome her Juvenal ; Spain has had her Cervantes ; France her Rabelais, her Molière, her Voltaire ; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine ; England her Swift, her Thackeray ; and America has her Lowell.

The French author Rabelais in his epic Gargantua and Pantagruel also penned a list of imaginary and often obscene book titles in his " Library of Pantagruel " an inventory which Browne himself alludes to in Religio Medici.

Among the writers who lived in Saint-Maur are: François Rabelais, La Rochefoucauld, Boileau, Raymond Radiguet, Madame de Sévigné, Madame de La Fayette, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, père and ‘ Quo Vadis ’ author Henryk Sienkiewicz.