What is the Veld of South Africa? An open grazing area of southern Africa. It is the term applied to grassy plateaus of the Republic of South Africa and of Zimbabwe.
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy. Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine.
And, indeed, the threat of being burned at the stake was very real in those days. In January of 1532, only a few months before Rabelais was to publish his first book, Pantagruel, a law professor at the University of Toulouse, Jean de Cahors, had been accused of heresy for having criticized the clergy during dinner. He was burned at the stake in June of the same year.