Rabelais | ©Public domainRabelais went to the countryside
Did you know bishop Geoffroy d’Estillac hosted here his friend Rabelais, famous French doctor-writer from the Renaissance, who lived here 7 years?
Rabelais, who used to be a Franciscan monk, clashed with his superiors who charged him with heresy (the swine one red Greek). All his books were seized.
So Rabelais changed of religious order, he left for the Benedictine Maillezais abbey, with all those well-read, open-minded monks…
Whoa, real happiness! Rabelais wrote a big part of his famous novel Gargantua here in the quiet library...
D'Aubigné: poet and Protestant from Charente
Let's meet another famous French man, now, in our abbey: Agrippa d’Aubigné, grand-father of the famous Madame de Maintenon (king Louis XIV’s mistress)!
He was born in Charente and was a great Protestant poet: in Maillezais, he was appointed governor during wars of religion.
