François Rabelais

Francois Rabelais was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A humanist of the French Renaissance and a Greek scholar, he attracted opposition from both the Protestant theologian John Calvin and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Although in his day he was best known as a physician, scholar, diplomat and Catholic priest, he later became better known as a satirist for his depictions of the grotesque and for his larger-than-life characters. He was born between 1483 and 1494 and died in 1553.