THE VILLON LEGEND PART THREE

This is the third 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 and a notorious outlaw.

FRANCOIS VILLON PART THREE – We left off last time with Villon forced to flee Paris after killing the priest Sermoise in a duel over a woman named Isabeau. Already well-versed in the criminal underworld of the region from his career as a thief, Francois hid out just 17 miles southwest of Paris at the Abbey of Port Royal-des-Champs.

In that June of 1455 the abbey was often called “l,abesse de Pourras (rotten)” because it was in the era when the infamous Abbess Huguette du Hamel ran the place. Typical of the chaotic tableau and moral ambiguity of the time, though the Abbess played the game of public piety, on the side she was as corrupt as many of her male counterparts. 

The Abbess often disguised herself as a man to enter tawdry establishments that were barred to women. She was also noted for drinking like a man and cursing like a man. 

Also like her male counterparts, this notorious woman was more than happy to succumb to sins of the flesh and condoned such behavior among the young women in her charge … for a fee, of course. Stark facts like this are why so much of the Villon legend was often neglected by the 20th Century, replaced by the bowdlerized and historically inaccurate nonsense of dramas like If I Were King and The Vagabond King. 

The Abbess Huguette’s preference was for men, and Francois was happy to “put out” for her while hiding out at her establishment. Like many such enterprising women over the centuries, she had connections among the rich and powerful thanks to the way she and her ladies catered to their more depraved tastes. 

At one point during his stay at the Abbey of Port Royal des Champs, his hostess took Villon with her for a one-week getaway in Bourg-la-Reine. The two are known to have stayed at an inn run by Perrot Gerart, where they feasted on roast suckling pigs and drank plenty of wine.

To end that week-long holiday, Villon “tipped” Gerart with a stolen kettle and basin set. Back at the Abbey, Francois contrived – or forged, by some accounts – a pardon for himself for killing Sermoise and returned to Paris in 1456.

At his favorite underworld tavern, the Pommes de Pin (Pinecone), Villon learned that his efforts were unnecessary. As he died, the priest Sermoise had forgiven the outlaw poet and absolved him of responsibility for the slaying.

During his months-long absence, well-to-do Catherine de Vaucelles, one of the women wooed by Villon, had replaced him with Noel de Jolys, whom she deemed a social equal compared to a notorious criminal and iconoclast who scandalized the nation with his irreverent poetry. 

Francois attempted to resume competing for Catherine’s affections, but she had de Jolys hire a handful of armed thugs to dissuade our main character. Their numbers proved to be too much for Villon in combat, and they added insult to injury by leaving him stripped naked and in need of medical aid.

Always drawing upon his real-life experiences and always candid, Francois penned a poem about the ugly, humiliating incident. The work has survived and begins with the words Though but a humble suitor, I.

Over the centuries, some of the accounts of Villon’s life, both non-fiction and otherwise, have depicted the poet winning Catherine’s love, sometimes late in life. No evidence of that has come down to us, and Catherine was from a noted family whose doings were chronicled. 

Rejected by de Vaucelles, Francois returned to Paris’ street-walking “daughters of joy” and young maids at the finer homes. He also returned to – or by some accounts first officially became part of – the Coquillards, the hardcore, nationwide network of outlaws.

Embellishments of the Villon saga often made him the leader of the Coquillards, but he himself never made such claims and he seems to have been simply a member of the figurative Thieves’ Guild department of the criminal network.

Come December of 1456 Villon assembled nine cohorts and prepared to pull off one of the most renowned armed robberies of his criminal career. I’ll cover that in the next part.

FOR PART FOUR CLICK HERE.