THE VILLON LEGEND PART TWO

This is the second part of Balladeer’s Blog’s look at the swashbuckling legends that surround Francois Villon (1431-1463?), remembered as one of France’s greatest poets.

FRANCOIS VILLON – This part picks up with one of the most infamous incidents from Villon’s career as an outlaw and iconoclast. He graduated from the Sorbonne as a Master of Arts and had acquired such a reputation for youthful rebellion and hard-drinking bad craziness that “Villonerie” had become a catch-all term for disorder and disobedience. 

Along the way Francoise had turned out a body of verse attacking and satirizing callous royalty and hypocritical religious leaders. In 1451 Villon and some of his rowdier cohorts targeted an elaborate theft as a prank against one Mademoiselle de Bruyeres, a huffy woman who led a personal crusade against every woman she believed to be a prostitute.

Recently she had harassed the honest young women who worked as linen weavers in the Marche au Fille, her paranoid mind labeling them all as sex workers based on no evidence. Villon and company sought to strike for the honor of those slandered ladies. 

They stole a huge stone that separated Mademoiselle de Bruyeres’ home from the street. That rock was bawdily nicknamed “the Devil’s Flatulence” (Pet au Diable) and Francois wrote a mock epic poem about how he and his fellows had made off with it. Sadly, that poem is among Villon’s works lost to time. His separate poem defending the linen weavers has survived, however, and is titled Ballade of the Women of Paris. 

The police recovered the huge stone and held it at the Palais Royal while a replacement stone was placed near Mademoiselle de Bruyeres’ home. Villon led a second theft of the Pet au Diable stone AND its replacement. That same night they stole exterior signs from shops & taverns and slung them around the two stolen items. A mock ceremony “marrying” the two stones to each other followed. (I guess ya had to be there.)

Over the next few years Francois left his student days behind him and immersed himself in the “gutter theatrical” of criminal hangouts and taverns. Villon graduated from mischief, roguery and drunken fighting to thievery. Pickpocket Rene de Montigny became one of our poet’s friends. 

His surviving poetry draws a detailed – albeit romanticized – picture of the Paris underworld. Thieves, highway bandits, and other criminals were plentiful. Nineteen gallows around the city saw frequent executions. The condemned were paraded around the streets in wooden cages before hanging.  

Villon’s favorite tavern was the Pomme de Pin (pine cone), one of over 4,000 such establishments in 15th Century Paris. Patrons drank, gambled at billiards, cards, dice and ninepins. Some taverns featured attached tennis courts for summer play.

Tennis was played with the competitors stripped almost naked because the establishment’s staff would hold the players’ clothing as security against lost balls, broken rackets and torn nets. Servants in monied households would plunder some of their employers’ food and booze to sell cheap during the overnight hours. 

Some housemaids made extra money by moonlighting as prostitutes. There were few brothels, so each young woman was an independent agent, unmolested by the law as long as they paid protection money to the Captain of the Guard and his cronies. The ladies were called “daughters of joy.” Figurative stage names were used by the prostitutes, names like the Candlemaker, The Sundial Maker, the Grand Halberd Maker, the Beautiful Helmet Maker, and so on.

Along the riverfront, Villon sometimes joined other outlaws in daylight robbery of the cargo on the many commercial barges. Some barges had paid guards but some of those guards could be bribed to look the other way while goods were misappropriated. Jehan the Wolf and Casin Cholet were among Francois’ allies in these undertakings. 

And through it all, Villon churned out poetry depicting the criminal tableau as well as the abuses of the rich and the powerful which drove many citizens to crime or at least tolerance of criminals, who were seen as fellow sufferers at the hands of society’s overclasses.

Some of our hero’s poems were in clear language, but some were in the criminal slang and whose coded meaning is still debated to this day. Among the latter were the infamous “Thieves’ Dozen” of eleven poems depicting life among the lawless. Some even debate if Villon wrote all of them.

On June 5th of 1455 Villon got involved in a violent duel with a priest named Philippe de Sermois. The two fought over a mutual lover, a young lady named Isabeau. Father Philippe died from Villon’s blade, prompting Francois to quickly have his own wounds from the duel treated under an assumed name by a barber, then flee Paris to avoid arrest.

The poet would not find out until later that with his dying breath Father Philippe piously forgave Francois and freed him from responsibility for his death. In the meantime, this milestone event led to fresh experiences for the fugitive Villon, experiences I will cover in the next part.

FOR PART THREE CLICK HERE.

FOR PART ONE OF THE VILLON LEGEND CLICK HERE.