SOURCE: “‘Bourde jus mise’? Villon, the Liturgy, and Prayer,” in Villon at Oxford: The Drama of the Text, Rodopi, 1999, pp. 170-194.

[In this essay, first presented at Oxford in 1996, Vitz traces Villon's use of liturgical language and themes, noting that modern scholars wrongly tend to dismiss Villon's serious spiritual concerns. Instead, Vitz argues, Villon is deeply concerned with eschatological questions, in both the Lais and the Testament.]

This paper is part of a large study on the impact of the liturgy on medieval vernacular literature.¹ By “liturgy” I mean not merely the Mass, but more broadly the official and public life of church prayer. I thus include the various Offices—most importantly perhaps the Office of the Dead as well as hymns, prayers, and litanies to the Virgin and to the saints. Since the distinction between the official and the unofficial, the public and the private, is far from clear in the Catholic tradition, no firm line will be drawn between formal liturgy and personal prayer. Thus, following the example of the French liturgy scholar A.G. Martimort, much of the time I will define liturgy simply as “l'église en prière”.²

It may seem surprising to study the liturgy and prayer—or at least to take them, as it were, seriously—in the work of Villon.³ Villon's secularism is widely recognized.⁴ His religious themes are frequently seen, and dismissed, as part of his medieval inheritance, as distinct from the “originality” of his art. Who poked more fun at religion than Villon? Indeed, who jeered at the clergy more snidely than Villon, and on occasion attacked bishops and priests, monks and nuns more violently? But it is important to distinguish among different kinds of religious themes, though they are sometimes lumped together and subsumed under a single heading like “religious themes in Villon”. In fact, the way in which a poet or writer handles matters bearing on the institutional church and its representatives may be quite different from his (or her) treatment of sacramental or liturgical themes. Moreover, there may be variations within a poet's handling of particular religious themes.

In these pages I will argue that liturgy and prayer play a highly important role in Villon's poems; that they should not be understood as dissolved by the acid bath of irony and sarcasm that surrounds them; and that they are an expression of Villon's powerfully eschatological preoccupations.

There are many references in Villon's work to liturgy and prayer. More precisely, there are both references to prayer and actual prayers. These fall roughly into four groups in terms of their use (though there is some overlap): 1) liturgical openings and closings—thus, liturgical “frames” 2) prayers for the dead 3) prayers for the dying and 4) prayers for the living.

LITURGICAL FRAMES

Villon uses liturgical elements for both opening and closing his wills. In both the Lais and the Testament he begins the actual “testating” with the words of blessing that open virtually every liturgy: “In the name of the Father …”:

Premierement, ou nom du Pere,
Du Filz et du Saint Esperit,
Et de sa glorieuse Mere
Par qui grace riens ne perit,
Je laisse, de par Dieu, mon bruyt
A maistre Guillaume Villon
(Qui en l'onneur de ce nom bruyt),
Mes tentes et mon pavillon.

(L, [Le Lais] 65-72)⁵

Thus, Villon sets his will within a liturgical framework; he aligns himself with a certain tradition. Many other medieval poets also began their stories or poems (and singers and story-tellers their performance) with this or other liturgical formulas. Most importantly, perhaps, the Testament de Jean de Meung opened with this formula.⁶ Many non-religious literary works, including romances, also began in this manner. People began other kinds of work as well in this way. To take a famous example from the English side of the Channel, in the play Mankind the hero is a farmer who kneels in the field with his rosary beads and starts his work with the words: “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, now I will begin”.⁷ But it should be noted that real wills rarely began in this fashion. (The Testament of Jean de Meung is largely a moral work, not a real or a mock will.) In Villon's Lais, we have a liturgical formula, expanded by an expression of Marian devotion, and followed by gifts that are typically ironic, obscene, or nonsensical.

Villon does something similar in the Testament, only this time the liturgical formulas are still more powerfully invaded and contaminated by ironic discourse. He begins:

Ou nom de Dieu, Pere eternel,
Et du Filz que vierge parit,
Dieu au Pere coeternel,
Ensemble et le Saint Esperit,
Qui sauva ce qu'Adam perit
Et du pery parre les cyeulx …
Qui bien ce croit, peu ne merit:
Gens mors estre faiz petiz dieux.

(T, [Le Testament] 793-800)

As in the Lais, Villon begins with a Trinitarian formula. But almost immediately he expresses his doubt about the dogma (which of course does not exist as such) that dead people become “little gods” in heaven. He goes on to discuss, in amusing terms, theological issues like, did the prophets and patriarchs indeed feel pain—have “chaut aux fesses”—before the Harrowing of Hell by Christ? This whole discussion is comic and somewhat jeering in tone, though Villon concludes the stanzas devoted to jokes about how hot and unpleasant it is in hell with the words: “Dieux nous en gart, bourde jus mise!” (T, 824). (From this latter line, I take the title of my paper. In Villon, of course, we are never confident that we can “set all kidding aside”.) We are by no means sure how we are to interpret Villon's brief return to liturgical formulas in the following stanza:

Ou nom de Dieu, comme j'ay dit,
Et de sa glorïeuse Mere,
Sans pechié soit parfait ce dit
Par moy, plus maigre que chimere.
Se je n'ay eu fievre eufumiere
Ce m'a fait divine clemence;
Mais d'autre dueil et perte amere
Je me tais, et ainsi commence.

(T, 825-832)

There is an interpretive problem—a tension—at the very heart of this passage, and many others like it. This is prayer in its most formal mode, but irreverence and perhaps even the derision of prayer are also very much present. Both are present, and, while it has been common to assume that only the mockery and the irony are genuine, I submit that the prayer cannot be dismissed or ignored.

Villon also closes these major poems on a liturgical note. The Lais ends—or perhaps one might more truly say, grinds to a halt—in a very curious way, right after Villon says he has prayed the evening Angelus, that famous prayer honoring the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin⁸:

Finablement, en escripvant,
Ce soir, seulet, estant en bonne,
Dictant ces laiz et descripvant,
J'ouys la cloche de Serbonne,
Qui tousjours a neuf heures sonne
Le salut que l'ange predit;
Si suspendis et mis en bourne
Pour prier comme le cueur dit.

(L, 273-280)

And then, Villon says, he lost track of time; he “forgot himself”. In the next several, highly opaque, stanzas, Villon speaks of his various faculties, which eventually got recollected. His mind was finally at rest and his thinking clear, but now his ink was frozen and his candle was about to go out. So when he was ready to go on, it was too late:

Puys que mon sens fust a repotz
Et l'entendement demeslé,
Je cuidé finer mon propos;
Mais mon ancrë estoit gelé
Et mon cierge trouvé freslé,
Et n'eusse peu de feu finer,
C'estoit assés tartevelé;
Pourtant, il me convint finer.

(L, 305-312)

This passage has caused a good deal of un-frozen ink to flow. But from the present perspective what is primarily interesting is that Villon ends—he represents himself as having to end—on the Angelus: on official liturgical prayer.

The Testament, too, has a decidedly liturgical ending, however riddled it may be with complex ironies. The last few hundred lines of the poem involve Villon's wishes concerning his last rites, funeral service, and burial. Villon claims to die—indeed he claims to have already died—a martyr's death, and he swears it upon his (apparently single) testicle: “son couillon”. Thus, he deserves that his friends should come attired in red liturgical vestments in his honor (T, 1996-2003). Villon's last act, as described in the third person by an imaginary narrator, is to throw down a final gulp of “vin morillon” before dying (T, 2022). This defiant gesture, which expresses love of life, is at the same time liturgical or sacramental, and anti-liturgical, anti-sacramental.

Despite all the bravado in these lines, Villon also asks for prayers at several points. He gives a gift to the lovesick, “Pourveu qu'ilz diront ung psaultier / Pour l'ame du povre Villon” (T, 1810-11). His epitaph entreats: “POUR DIEU, DICTES EN CE VERSET …” (T, 1891), and the rondeau that this line introduces begins on, and thus keeps returning to, lines from the Office of the Dead: “REPOZ ETERNEL DONNE A CIL, / SIRE, ET CLARTÉ PERPETUELLE …” (T, 1892-3). Despite the strongly comic elements of this rondeau,⁹ it nonetheless revolves around Villon's wish that his friends should pray in God's name for his “Eternal Rest”. Here again we have a dramatic and, I believe, unresolvable tension between Villon's prayers and his irreverent and mocking handling of them.

Since both the Lais and Testament provide an account of a life as a whole, it is significant that both begin and end in something resembling a prayerful and liturgical frame of mind. The official and public liturgical formulas are surrounded with off-hand private doubts and jokes in that complexity of tone that is, we have seen, so characteristic of Villon. Words from the liturgy possess here a certain hardness or toughness; Villon's irony does not crush or destroy them. I would not wish to argue here that the liturgy has an intrinsically adamantine quality (though many medieval men and women may have felt this to be the case). What is striking is that Villon typically gives to liturgical passages structural pride of place, in the small as well as the large sense. That is, he frames with liturgical quotations not only his works as a whole, but also poetic units. He often begins stanzas and lines with them: “Ou nom de Dieu …”; “REPOS ETERNEL DONNE A CIL …”; “Aiez pictié, aiez pictié …” and so on. He also, though less reliably, ends poetic units liturgically, often through the return of a refrain. His own irreverent words are thus presented as afterthoughts and line-fillers, trivial “sornettes”, a gloss by someone lacking in authority. In short, liturgical elements are placed in strong positions; his mockery of them in weaker spots.

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD

I noted the importance of the Office of the Dead¹⁰ in the closing lines of the Testament. This Office brings us to our second category: Villon's numerous references to prayers and liturgy for the dead.¹¹ There are a good many prayers for dead friends and relatives of Villon.¹² One thinks of these moving lines:

Ou sont les gracieux galans
Que je suivoye ou temps jadiz,
Si bien chantans, si bien parlans,
Sy plaisans en faiz et en diz?
Les aucuns sont mors et roidiz;
D'eulx n'est il plus riens maintenant:
Respit aient en paradis,
Et Dieu saulve le remenant!

(T, 225-232)

Villon also prays for the souls of his poverty-stricken ancestors:

Povreté tous nous suit et trace.
Sur les tumbeaux de mes ancestres,
Les ames desquelz Dieu embrasse!
On n'y voit couronnes ne ceptres.

(T, 277-280)

He prays for his father: “Mon pere est mort, Dieu en ait l'ame! / Quant est du corps, il gist soubz lame”. (T, 300-1). In all these passages, we see what appears to be a genuine concern for the souls of the dead.

Villon evokes heads piled up in the Cemetery of the Innocents, and says:

Or sont ilz mors, Dieu ait leurs ames!
Quant est des corps, ilz sont pourriz
Aient esté seigneurs ou dames
Souëf et tendrement nourriz
De cresme, froumentee ou riz,
Et les os declinent en pouldre,
Ausquelz ne chault d'esbat ne riz.
Plaise au doulx Jhesus les assouldre!

(T, 1760-67)

This is one of those passages where Villon's typical resentment against the rich seems to drop away as he contemplates the fragility and tragic vulnerability of all human life: “Plaise au doulx Jhesus les assouldre!”.

He writes a very funny prayer cum drinking-song for Master Jean Cotart: “Pour son ame, qu'es cieulx soit mise, / Ceste orroison j'ai cy escripte” (T, 1236-7). The poem for Jean Cotart has strongly parodic elements,¹³ but the basic message is that figures such as Noah, Lot, and Archetriclinus, all lovers of wine, even to excess, should come and rescue another lush, and take “l'ame du bon feu maistre Jehan Cotart!” to Heaven (T, l. 1245).

But Villon's most famous prayer for the dead is surely the “Ballade des Pendus”. This great poem cannot be quoted in its entirety here. But in this ballad it is the dead themselves who speak, asking for mercy from God, and for the prayers and intercession of the living. It opens:

Freres humains qui aprés nous vivez,
N'ayez les cueurs contre nous endurciz,
Car se pitié de nous povres avez,
Dieu en avra plus tost de vous mercis.
Vous nous voiez cy atachés, cinq, six;
Quant de la chair, que trop avons nourrie,
Elle est pieça devoree et pourrie,
Et nous, les os, devenons scendre et pouldre.
De nostre mal personne ne s'en rie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre.

(XI, 1-10)

It ends:

Prince Jhesus, qui sur tous a maistrie,
Gardez qu'enfer de nous n'ait seigneurie.
A luy n'ayons que faire ne que souldre!
Hommes, ycy n'a point de mocquerie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre.

(XI, 31-35).

These men, who are at once dead and strangely alive—able to speak—pray to “Prince Jhesus” apparently for all humanity, all their “human brothers”: “Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre”.¹⁴ What all need to be saved from is clearly hell: “Gardez qu'enfer de nous n'ait seigneurie”.

PRAYERS FOR THE DYING

Thus, Villon prays for the dead, and often. Many of these prayers seem only marginally touched, if at all, by irony. He also prays and requests prayers for the dying—our third category. The “dying” include Villon, for so he represents himself. For example, in the Testament, shortly after his liturgical opening, he continues:

Premier, doue de ma povre ame
La glorïeuse Trinité,
Et la commande a Nostre Dame,
Chambre de la Divinité,
Priant toute la charité
Des dignes neuf Ordres des cieulx
Que par eulx soit ce don porté
Devant le Trosne precïeulx.

(T, 833-840)

He writes as a man who will soon be dead, and who gives his soul over to the Trinity and the Virgin, asking for the intercession of the nine orders of angels. Are we to be suspicious of the tone, which here appears almost blandly pious? We can hardly help being so, knowing Villon! The fact remains, however, that Villon presents himself as a man about to die, and whose soul is in danger.

It is not surprising that Villon should represent himself as dying. A testament is, by definition, the work of a man preparing to die. But several facts here are striking. First, Villon wrote not one but two testaments, and both apparently (fictionally if not historically) in his relative youth—his twenties and perhaps early thirties. It might be argued that, in his writing of wills and his adoption of the stance of a “dying man”, Villon was just joking. One might well respond: some joke!—for in fact Villon was going to die, and he is dead. It may, indeed, be said that the statement that we are going to die is the only certain thing that we can safely say about ourselves. In short, however much Villon may have been playing a game, he was not just kidding—and he knew it. It is very difficult to take merely facetiously such lines as: “Qui meurt, a ses loix de tout dire” (T, 728). Moreover, even outside of his poetic testaments Villon presents himself as a man touched by the hand of death: the “Epistre a ses amis” begins:

Aiez pictié, aiez pictié de moy,
A tout le moins, s'i vous plaist, mes amis.
En fosse giz, non pas soubz houz ne may,
En cest exil ouquel je suis transmis
Par Fortune, comme Dieu l'a permis.

(XII, ll. 1-5)

Those opening lines are a translation of the beginning of Job 19:21, “Miseremini mei, miseremini mei, saltem vos, amici mei”, which was one of the lessons of the Office of the Dead.¹⁵ This fosse, or “ditch,” in which Villon lies is prison—exile from life—but it is also a poor man's grave.

Villon represents himself as being in what we might call today a “liminal state”—not quite dead, but no longer (if he ever was!) fully alive. He is moribund, about to die, half-dead. He is already outside of life, but not yet completely dead. We see this in many passages and many ways, as in his frequent self-representation as a martyr of love—or, more precisely, as a semi-living martyr of love. In the Lais, 47: “Au fort, je suys amant martir / Du nombre des amoureux sains”. We see it with particular clarity at the end of the Testament, where Villon is represented as dead and yet still alive enough to tell his story. We saw this phenomenon as well in the “Ballade des Pendus”: these men are at once dead and still dying.

It is not just with physical death that Villon is preoccupied. To be sure, he describes the progress of mortality in his body: “Je sens mon cueur qui s'affoiblist / Et plus je ne puis papïer” (T, 1785-6); he is bald, thus his head is already a naked skull. He will soon be a corpse, a skeleton in the Cemetery of the Innocents. But it is not only the grave, or the “mal hasle” (T, 1722) of the hanged, that Villon seems worried about. He is not just anxious about time running out in this life. Rather, he presents himself as confronting eternity.

It has escaped no one's notice that Villon often looks at life sarcastically and scatologically. But what I think has been under-appreciated, and what I wish to show, is the remarkable degree to which Villon views himself and those around him eschatologically: he and they are going to die, and are going to be judged. Villon is very concerned with the “Last Things”: death, judgment, heaven and hell. It is as a man on the edge of the eschatological abyss that Villon often sees himself and others.¹⁶ The poem entitled “Quatrain” can be viewed in this light: Villon is about to die and to be “weighed”; that rope replaces the scales of judgment:

Je suis François, dont il me poise,
Né de Paris emprés Pontoise,
Et de la corde d'une toise
Savra mon col que mon cul poise.

(XIV)

PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING

Our final category concerns prayers for the living. Villon prays for others and composes prayers that he gives to people to say for themselves. A handful of examples: in the Lais, Villon prays for the unnamed woman who drove him away so cruelly: “Elle m'a ce mal pourchassé, / Mais Dieu luy en face mercy!” (L, 79-80). There is, one assumes, irony in this line. Early in the Testament, Villon prays for King Louis: that he may have good fortune in “ce monde cy transsitoire” (T, 61); that he may have twelve fine sons—“Et puis Paradis en la fin” (T, 72).

He prays for the rich and for the poor, in a prayer with a decidedly ironic edge:

Aux grans maistres Dieu doint bien fere,
Vivans en paix et en requoy;
En eulx il n'y a que reffaire;
Si s'en fait bon taire tout quoy.
Mais aux povres qui n'ont de quoy,
Comme moy, Dieu doint pascïence!
Aux autres ne fault qui ne quoy,
Car assez ont pain et pictence.

(T, 241-248)

He gives to his mother a ballad “Pour saluer nostre Maistresse” (T, 866; 873-909).

Now, in fact, many of these “prayers for the living” could also be called “prayers for the dying”: the living are seen as dying, as sinners approaching death and judgment. As he says in the Lais: “Vivre aux humains est incertain / Et aprés mort n'y a relaiz” (61-2). He repeatedly warns his friends to live wisely and avoid the gibbet: “Ce n'est pas ung jeu de troys mailles, / Ou va corps, et peult estre l'ame …” (T, 1676-7); “Et, pour Dieu, soiez tous recors / Une foyz viendra que mourrez” (T, 1726-7). We are perpetually sliding toward the Last Things: toward eschatology.

The “Ballade” for his “povre mere” is a case in point. This poem presents a woman who is thinking of death, fearing hell, hoping for heaven. This is a strongly liturgical prayer, filled with traditional Marian formulas. In it, Villon's mother is defined—fictionally self-defined—not merely as an “humble chrestienne”, someone who “oncques riens ne valuz,” (T, 877) but as a great “pecheresse”—a sinner in the same league as the prostitute Mary of Egypt or Theophilus who sold his soul to the devil. Without grace, indeed without the powerful help of the Virgin, Villon's mother cannot hope to get to heaven—to be one of “voz esleuz”, to “avoir les cieulx”. Villon shows us a woman who very much wants to get to reach paradise, but who cannot get there without mercy.

It is perhaps not strange that Villon should present his mother as confronting death and judgment: she is defined as “old”. But she is by no means the only person for whom he prays who is shown as simultaneously living and dying, a sinner in God's hands—and the others are not elderly. This tendency for the living to be thought of as people who will soon be dead and judged is clearest perhaps in Villon's prayers—many of them, of course, ironic, even sneering—for his enemy Thibaut d'Aussigny. When Villon prays for the detested bishop, what he is primarily concerned with is not Thibaut's success or health, or lack of them, in this world, but with eternity: with his salvation or damnation. As Villon puts it at one point, asking for justice: “S'il m'a esté misericors, / Jhesus, le roy de Paradis, / Tel luy soit a l'ame et au corps!” (T, 22-24). Villon clearly hopes that Thibaut will be condemned, body and soul, to hell.

Most readers are familiar with Villon's many false starts at prayer for Thibaut: his “Picard's prayer”; his prayer “par cuer”, and so on.¹⁷ The reason for all these (largely abortive) attempts to pray for Thibaut is, of course, the Church's injunction that Christians must pray for their enemies.¹⁸ Villon says:

Et s'esté m'a dur ne cruel
Trop plus que cy je ne raconte,
Je veul que le Dieu eternel
Luy soit dont semblable a ce compte.
Et l'Eglise nous dit et compte
Que prions pour noz annemys!
Je vous dis que j'ay tort et honte;
Quoi qu'il m'aist fait, a Dieu remys.

(T, 25-32)

Christians must pray for those who hate them and for those whom they hate. Villon, on occasion (as in the passage just mentioned), hands the case of Thibaut over to God. But he has a very hard time indeed forgiving Thibaut; he keeps coming back to his hope—a hope that he expresses largely through circumlocution and praeteritio—that God will make Thibaut suffer, apparently through eternity, as he, Villon, has suffered in this world:

Dieu mercy—et Tacque Thibault,
Qui tant d'eaue froide m'a fait boire,
En ung bas, non pas en ung hault,
Menger d'angoisse mainte poire,
Enferré … Quant j'en ay memoire,
Je prie pour luy et relicqua,
Que Dieu luy doint, et voire, voire!
Ce que je pense, et cetera.

(T, 737-744)

We see the struggle between Villon's awareness that he should forgive his enemies, and his deep reluctance to do so, in the penultimate ballad of the Testament, where he cries “mercys” to all. He quite cheerily, if satirically, asks forgiveness from, and offers forgiveness to, all manner of people:

A Chartreux et a Celestins,
A Mendïans et a Devoctes,
A musars et clacquepatins,
A servans et filles mignoctes
Portans seurcoz et justes coctes,
A cuidereaux d'amours transsis
Chauçans sans mehain fauves boctes—…
Je crye a toutes gens mercys …

(T, 1968 - 1975)

Off he goes, waving goodbye, making peace. But by the time he gets to the final stanza, his gorge has risen once again against his hated enemies:

Synon aux traitres chiens matins
Qui m'ont fait ronger dures crostes,
Macher mains soirs et mains matins,
Que ores je ne crains pas troys croctes.
Je feisse pour eulx pez et roctes—
Je ne puis, car je suis assis.
Auffort, pour esviter rïoctes,
Je crye a toutes gens mercys.

(T, 1984-1991)

Though “mercys” is the last word—such is the very nature of a refrain!—one is hard-pressed to say whether Villon has really gone through with his proposed act of forgiveness and peace-making.

Yet Villon seems to see that he cannot demand from God only justice for his enemies—that God should treat them as they deserve—but only mercy for himself and those he loves. At many points he makes it clear that he fears justice: he, too, is a sinner, “bitten” by sin. For example, he says in huitain 14 of the Testament:

Je suis pecheur, je le sçay bien;
Pourtant ne veult pas Dieu ma mort,
Mais convertisse et vive en bien,
Et tout autre que pechié mort.
Combien qu'en pechié soye mort,
Dieu vit, et sa misericorde,
Se conscïence me remort,
Par sa grace pardon m'acorde.

(T, 105-112)

But, of course, as Villon also makes clear repeatedly, he does not convert and live “right”: he represents himself as a “paillard”. He is “mau rat” to Fat Margot's “mau chat”; they both love “ordure” and it loves them. In short, Villon paints himself as not merely an ordinary sinner but as inveterate: he is a largely unrepentant sinner.¹⁹ He is a semi-willing prisoner in the “bordeau”—indeed he helps run it. His conscience may gnaw (“remordre”) him, but not hard enough to make him change his life. This is also clear in the “Debat de Villon et son cuer” (XIII) with its refrain: “‘Plus ne t'en dys'—Et je m'en passeray.”

Thus we have, in Villon's poetry, prayers and echoes of the liturgy mixed in with violent anger and bitterness, sarcasm and irony. Scatology is cheek-by-jowl with eschatology. Indeed, we have prayerful elements contrasted with actual mockery of prayer. For example, when discussing the course of study to be undertaken by his “troys povres orphelins” (T, 1275)—actually rich and powerful merchants and usurers—Villon says that the Donat (the Latin grammar by Donatus) is too hard for them; they hate to “give”. They should learn: “Ave salus, tiby decus” (T, 1287)—nothing more complicated. They won't be up to the “grant Credo,” he says (T, 1292). “Ave salus, tiby decus” was a parodic transformation of a Latin hymn in honor of the Blessed Virgin: “Ave, decus virginum, Ave, salus hominum” (“Hail, glory of virgins, Hail, salvation of mankind”), and it meant “Hail to you, money; honor to you, arses”!²⁰ This was apparently a standard joke, consecrated, so to speak, by wide usage. So was the pun on the Credo, meaning “long-term credit”—something for which these usurers are definitely not ready. These jokes are as much satire of the userers as they are parody of the liturgical elements being employed. Villon also speaks derisively—more bitingly, surely—of the “contemplation” achieved by Turlupins and Turpulines under the curtains after a tasty dinner (T, 1161-5). These are, in any event, comic or parodic uses of the liturgy. It should, however, be noted that in Villon there is little real blasphemy; some medieval works, such as Branch VII of the Roman de Renart, pushed derision of the liturgy a great deal farther than Villon.²¹

But, in any case, we have a complex blend of elements here. The question is: what are we to make of this mix? How are we to interpret these elements and hierarchize them conceptually?

The Protestant tradition—and most Western scholars today are to an important degree the intellectual heirs of Protestantism—demanded a unified and uniformly high standard of religion, or religiosity, in literary works. If a work was not perfectly or purely pious, and, in particular, if it contained a significant amount of laughter or comedy, it was not pious at all; it was, rather, im-pious. (The mystery plays were abolished largely, though not exclusively, on such grounds: they mixed profane, comic, even occasionally obscene elements, with scenes of catechism and powerful devotion.)²² Villon is not, therefore, a “pious” poet.

Modern criticism, starting from very different premises—vastly more sceptical, even cynical, premises—has had a curiously similar thrust. To some degree since the 18th century, and perhaps especially since Freud, when we have a complex situation with high and low elements—elevated spiritual thoughts and low carnal thoughts—readers are inclined to resolve matters downward. We are inclined to decide that when confronted with a contrast between high and low—courtly and obscene, magnanimous and base, devout and impious—it is the low things that are true; they show up the hollowness, hypocrisy, or falseness of the higher ones.²³ In Villon, many have considered that only the mockery is “sincere.”

But neither of these ways of resolving discrepancies between high and low is, I think, appropriate to medieval literature in general. Neither the Protestant nor the Modernist model will do. As many scholars have noted, medieval works were often strongly internally conflicted—extraordinarily discordant—by our esthetic and conceptual standards. These discordances appear to have been a fundamental part of what has been called (in particular, by Paul Zumthor) the medieval “contrastive poetics”. One might cite examples from the lyric—for example, from motets.²⁴ But in fact a great many works contain extraordinary inner tensions—tensions that it would be a serious interpretive oversimplification to resolve in favor of the low. We cannot, I submit, simply dismiss Villon's prayers as derision of prayer.

Issues of general poetics aside, there is an important conceptual framework within which we should examine the prayers in Villon's poetry: medieval theology, and more specifically, what we might call “theory of prayer”. We have a largely parodic and satirical work that contains many prayers. Are—were—these lines really supposed to qualify as prayers? After all, as we have seen, Villon represents himself as a confirmed sinner who is, at best, semi-repentant and disgusted with himself and who does not have the will to change. Since he surrounds his bits of liturgy and his prayers with jokes and derision, is he, from a medieval Christian point of view, in a moral position to pray? Is he really praying?

Some medieval theologians emphasized the ideal of prayer: one should have purity of intention; prayer should be “the clamor of the heart”; in prayer one should be in submission to God's will; in prayer one should be thinking about what one says. All this is the ideal, and we see it expressed in similar terms in works ranging from Peter the Chanter's Manual of Prayer in the 12th century,²⁵ to the Testament of Jean de Meung in the late 13th, to the Imitation of Christ in the 15th, and well beyond.

But there also was, and is, another approach to prayer; one might call this the “low road” as it was concerned with the minimal definition of prayer. We can find this approach authoritatively discussed in the work of Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologica (II, ii—especially question 83), Aquinas took up many fundamental questions concerning the nature and definition of prayer. One of them was, in article 16, “Whether Sinners Impetrate [or Obtain] Anything from God by Their Prayers?” That is, does God consider that their prayers are in fact prayers? Does He listen to them, answer them? After reviewing the position that the prayer of sinners is not heard by God, Aquinas states:

“On the contrary: If God were not to hear sinners, the publican would have said in vain: Lord, be merciful to me a sinner; and Chrysostom says: Everyone that asks shall receive, whether he be righteous or sinful …

There can be no godliness in the sinner's prayer as though his prayer were quickened by a habit of virtue: and yet his prayer may be godly insofar as he asks for something pertaining to godliness. Even a man who does not have the habit of justice is able to will something just … And though his prayer is not meritorious, it can be effective with God since impetration rests on grace”.²⁶

In short, while the prayers of sinners are not “meritorious”, nonetheless God hears and answers them, provided that sinners ask for good things such as mercy and forgiveness.

Villon does not represent himself as possessing merit. He is “good” only in that he is “un bon follastre” (T, 1883). He is not even a repentant man, at least not often. He is just a poor sinner. He rarely listens to his conscience, or “heart,” and doesn't follow its advice. His prayers are riddled with doubts, jokes, impieties, and occasionally with blasphemies. Yet still he prays, and does so frequently. He prays for his own soul and for the souls of others. He hates his enemies, but he tries (or tries to try) over and over to forgive them; he may even occasionally succeed. To be sure, we see him slide,²⁷ in his poetry, repeatedly, into sin—Deadly Sins: anger and the desire for vengeance, envy, sloth, despair, avarice (he is stingy about things he does not even possess); he longs to be able to indulge more amply in lust and gluttony. (I am not sure that there is any major sin he misses, except, perhaps, pride, traditionally considered the deadliest of all.) He begs, nevertheless, in his own voice and in the sepulchral voices of hanged men: “Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre”. (XI, 1.10) So although Villon's soul keeps falling down, and back, into states that are far from prayerful, it must also be noted that he perseveres in trying to lift it back up to God.

In this context, it is important to recognize that one of the most striking features of Villon's poetry is its extreme range of tones and intentions. He moves back and forth—up and down—from moments of intensely religious utterance all the way to mockery and despair. He can, indeed, shift remarkably fast from one to the other. We should not accept only the crudeness and the jokes as “true”. Nor should we homogenize Villon's poetry, averaging out into something monotonous and predictable his extraordinary range and breadth. In such a reading, Villon's great “contradictions” lose their power.²⁸

In a word, it seems likely that Villon's audience, and Villon himself, understood his prayers to be the words of a sinner, but nonetheless real prayers.

All this suggests that Villon's reputation as a “poet of religious satire” is in need of re-evaluation. Should Villon be ranked among the “Christian poets”? Perhaps not. As we have seen abundantly, he is not a “pious” poet. And yet … Are piety of tone and a virtuous self-representation necessary criteria? It would certainly be hard to find a poet who gave to Christian faith, hope, and the need for God's mercy more compelling expression.

Villon wrote, early on in the Testament, after lamenting his sufferings:

Combien, au plus fort de mes maulx,
En cheminant sans croix ne pille,
Dieu, qui les pelerins d'Esmaulx
Conforta, ce dit l'Evvangille,
Me monstra une bonne ville
Et pourveut du don d'esperance.
Combien que pechiez si soit ville,
Riens ne het que perseverance.

(T, 97-104)

He received, he says, the gift of Christian hope. True, he presents himself as a sinner, a “persevering” sinner.²⁹ Yet he also expresses considerable trust in the readiness of “doulx Jhesus”—who is also “Prince Jhesus, qui sur tous a maistrie” (XI, 1.31)—to save sinners. He expresses belief in the power of intercessory prayer. If a boozing buffoon like Jean Cotart (or a “bon follastre” like François Villon?) can end up in paradise, it will be because his friends in heaven and on earth have helped him.

Perhaps most importantly, Villon—like his mother as he represents her, like Mary of Egypt and Theophilus whom he evokes, like many Catholics of his age, and others—expresses apparently limitless confidence in the Virgin. She was, he said as he presented his poem to his mother, the only fortress protecting him from peril:

Item, donne a ma povre mere
Pour saluer nostre Maistresse
(Qui pour moy ot douleur amere,
Dieu le scet, et mainte tristesse)—
Autre chastel n'ay ne forteresse
Ou me retraye corps ne ame,
Quant sur moy court malle destresse,
Ne ma mere, la povre femme!—

(T, 865-872)

He gives us to understand that he counts on the Virgin's aid to save him.³⁰ And in the “Louange à Marie D'Orléans,” in which he conflates the little princess and the Blessed Virgin, he speaks of these redemptive maidens, linked through the name “Marie”, in terms such as the following: “Fons de pitié, source de grace, / La joye, confort de mes yeulx” (I, 6-7) and “… joye du peuple, / Confort des bons, des maulx retraicte” (I, 17-18). He says of Marie, who is clearly not just the young princess, but the Virgin herself:

O grace et pitié tres immense,
L'entree de paix et la porte,
Some de benigne clemence
Qui noz faultes toust et supporte,
Se de vous louer me deporte
Ingrat suis, et je le maintien,
Dont en ce refrain me transporte:
On doit dire du bien le bien.

(I, 89-96)

These strongly liturgical lines—they are virtually a summary of themes from Marian hymnody—emphasize Mary as the gateway to peace, the essence and summit of mercy; she removes sin and supports sinners.

All this can serve to bring us back, one last time, to the “Last Things”, and to the fact that Villon is a remarkably eschatological poet.³¹ Eschatologically, he is in the same league as Dante. Death, judgment, heaven, and hell are for him, as for the poet of the Divine Comedy, major and on-going themes. There are, of course, vast differences in treatment. If, in Dante's great poem, it is the other world—the after-life—that primarily occupies our attention, in Villon's poetry it is this world that seems “real”. Like church candles against the dark walls of a church, images of heaven and hell flicker onto the passing, but gripping, scenarios of this life. And Villon seems to focus primarily on postponing death just as long as possible, pleading for merciful judgment and trying to escape hell, rather than on reaching heaven; Villon's work is no “divine comedy”. And yet he does say: “Plaise a Dieu que l'ame ravye / En soit lassus en sa maison!” (T, 1793-94).

Villon's eschatological preoccupations flow repeatedly into references to the liturgy and into prayers which are not dissolved by the corrosive irony and sarcasm around them. They subsist, they gleam. One is reminded of the medieval Bibles in which the words of Christ are printed in silver or gold, thus standing out from the surrounding discourse. The very blackness of Villon's humor derives in large part from the dramatic contrast between his worldliness, crudeness, and carnality, on the one hand, and, on the other, the prospect of eternity.

Notes

1. See Evelyn Birge Vitz, “The Liturgy and Vernacular Literature”, in The Medieval Liturgy, ed. Thomas Hefferman and Ann Matter (in press: Kalamazoo, 1999). I am working on a book on this topic.

2. A. G. Martimort, ed., L'Église en prière: Introduction à la liturgie (Tournai, 1961).

3. One of the few studies to have done so is Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur's Brothers of Dragons: Job Dolens and François Villon (New York, 1990); but Sargent-Baur's concern is more with the figure of Job in Villon's poetry (and elsewhere) than with Villon's use of the liturgy or prayer. See also David Fein's useful comments in A Reading of Villon's Testament (Birmingham, 1984), especially pp. 80-83.

   A valuable article that studies in detail the importance of the liturgy in the Testament—in particular, the liturgies of Holy Saturday through Easter Monday—is Rupert T. Pickens's “Villon on the Road to Paris: Contexts and Intertexts of Huitain XIII of the Testament”, in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy (Amsterdam, 1994), pp. 425-54. Pickens focuses on the importance of themes and liturgies of the Harrowing of Hell and Resurrection. His points are compatible with those which will be made in these pages.

   In her unpublished doctoral dissertation, “Villon's Testament: A Burlesque Requiem” (Cornell University, 1980), Susan Darrow Hussar Randall sees the many parallels between the Testament and a Requiem Mass primarily in comic terms.

4. One recent example: Nancy Freeman Regalado, “Saying Your Prayers: Poetic Expression of Secularism in Villon's Testament”, presentation at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium on “Secularism in the Middle Ages”, April 1985.

5. I will be using the recent edition with translation of Villon's poetry by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur: François Villon: Complete Poems (Toronto, 1994). While in these pages I do not provide the translation of the passages I quote, it is my hope that interested readers who do not read medieval French will be able to follow my argument by having recourse to Sargent-Baur's fine translation. Another attractive translation to consult is that of Galway Kinnell: The Poems of François Villon (Hanover, 1982; new edition).

   Quotations from the Lais will be identified by an “L” before the line numbers; those from the Testament by “T.” Villon's miscellaneous poems will be identified by their title in the discussion, and also by their number in the Sargent-Baur edition.

6. See Silvia Buzzetti Gallarati, Le Testament Maistre Jehan de Meun: Un cas letterario (Turin, 1989), p. 121.

7. In Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Boston, 1975), pp. 901-38 (p. 923, l. 544).

8. On the Angelus, see e.g. Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1913), i, pp. 487-9.

9. In it he describes himself as looking like a peeled turnip, as having been whacked on the arse with a shovel, etc.

10. In Brothers of Dragons, Sargent-Baur notes that Job—to whom Villon's poetry contains numerous references—was known in the medieval period largely though references to him in the Office of the Dead; indeed, that Office was composed almost entirely of passages from the Psalms and references to the Book of Job (pp. 35-41).

11. That Villon is “obsessed” with death comes as no news; many scholars have noted this fact. What has not been adequately appreciated, however, is that this obsession often takes a liturgical form and is strongly linked to prayer.

12. Whether these or other people referred to in Villon's poetry should be taken as “real” or, rather, as fictional is, for our purposes, neither here nor there; they are represented as real.

13. In Recherches sur le Testament de François Villon, seconde édition revue et augmentée, 2 vols. (Paris, 1973), ii, pp. 405ff., Jean Dufournet put forward the view that this ballad is a “sotte chanson” rather than a real prayer; that in it Villon “a entrepris de ruiner définitivement la réputation de ce haut fonctionnaire ecclésiastique, d'ôter toute valeur à ces actes et à ces jugements. Car quel crédit accorder à un homme qui sacrifiait tout au vin et dépensait jusqu'à la dernière maille pour satisfaire sa passion … ?” (p. 410). But even if this poem is a burlesque oraison funèbre—and for Dufournet it has a very hostile edge, to boot—it is, nonetheless, presented by Villon as a prayer. We will return later to the question: just what is a prayer?

14. My emphasis.

15. See Sargent-Baur, Brothers, pp. 70 -82.

16. In “Deux poètes du Moyen Age face à la mort: Rutebeuf et Villon”, Jean Dufournet has argued that, in contrast to Rutebeuf who thinks of death in terms of judgement, Villon does not. Dufournet says: “L'on retrouve, dans deux ballades de Villon, certaines formules et évocations, les infernaux palus (vers 874) où damnés sont boullus (vers 897); mais l'une de ces ballades, la Ballade pour prier Notre Dame, au cœur du Testament, Villon l'a mise dans la bouche de sa mère: l'autre, celle des Pendus, est demeurée exclue de Testament. Pour faire bref, jugement dernier et enfer sont absents de son œuvre, sinon sous forme d'allusions, souvent burlesques …” (p. 163); in Dufournet's view, Villon seeks to “échapper à l'obsession [of death]” (p. 164); Dufournet says: “Le trépas, aux yeux de Villon, n'est pas loin d'être seulement un accident mauvais en soi, un terme après quoi il n'y a plus rien à attendre … Villon découvre dans la mort une revanche sur les injustices sociales puisque tout le monde est logé à la même enseigne …” (p. 172); in Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages (Proceedings of the 1983 Manchester Colloquium), ed. Jane H. M. Taylor (Liverpool, 1984), pp. 155-178.

    It is certainly true that Villon does not address issues of repentance and judgement as directly and explicitly—as descriptively or as narratively, or as allegorically and as didactically—as Rutebeuf; Villon's poetry is in general strongly allusive and, indeed, elusive. The purpose of these pages, however, is to show that Villon's work as a whole (I do not limit myself to the Testament) is in fact deeply permeated with eschatological concerns.

17. Especially Testament, 9-48. On this issue see, for example, Jean Dufournet, Recherches sur le Testament (Paris, 1971), i, pp. 131ff.

18. This injunction is based primarily on Christ's words in Matthew 5:44: “I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven …” Another source is the Lord's Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

19. On this issue, see for example Grace Frank, “The Impenitence of François Villon”, Romanic Review, 37 (1946), 225-236, and Janis Pallister, “Attrition and Contrition in the Poetry of François Villon”, Romance Notes, 11 (1969), 392-398.

20. See François Villon: Œuvres, édition critique avec notices et glossaire, ed. Louis Thuasne, 3 vols. (Paris, 1923), iii, p. 342ff. “Arses”: decus = d'écus = des culs.

21. See Vitz, “La liturgie, Le Roman de Renart, et le problème du blasphème dans la vie littéraire au Moyen Age, ou: Les bêtes peuvent-elles blasphémer?”, in press, Reinardus, 11 (1998).

22. See e.g. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 579ff.

23. An interesting example of the difference between the medieval (and classical) way and the modern manner of handling this conflict can be seen in John of Salisbury's discussion of Julius Caesar's dream that he slept with his mother. We are inclined to interpret such a dream in a Freudian fashion (what John would call “obscenely”): that, indeed, Caesar wanted to have sexual intercourse with his own mother. John, however—like the dream-interpreters that Caesar consulted—viewed it differently: as revealing the “magnanimous” Caesar's ambition, and destiny, to subject the entire world (“universam terram”) to his power. John of Salisbury [Ioannis Saresberiensis], Policraticus, I-IV, ed. by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Turnhout, 1993); II, 16, p. 100.

24. Motets offer highly interesting examples of medieval contrastive poetics, often with a liturgical component. A motet is a polyphonic composition combining two or three distinct melodies and texts. Some motets have strong unity: all the texts may be in Latin and on a sacred theme. But it is also common to find marked divergencies in language (Latin and the vernacular), inspiration, tone, and so on. For example, one anonymous motet, whose opening phrases are respectively: “Aucun vont—Amor qui cor—Kyrie”, is constructed as follows: the top voice (or Triplum) sings a sprightly French song, which complains about those who denigrate love: loving loyally is wonderful. The middle voice (or Duplum) sings a much slower—fewer words, fewer notes—Latin text which reflects on the power of “carnalis affectio”, noting that the more one loves ephemeral things, the less God is loved. The lowest voice (or Tenor) just sings the words “Kyrie eleison”—Lord have mercy! See Anthology of Medieval Music, ed. Richard H. Hoppin (New York, 1978), 54, p. 112.

25. The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual, attributed to Peter the Chanter (d. 1197), ed. Richard C. Trexler (Binghamton, NY, 1987).

26. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, transl. Fathers of the English Domican Province, 5 vols. (Westminster, MD, 1981), iii, pp.1544-5. I have made a couple of small emendations in the translation, for purposes of clarity.

27. That is, he represents himself as sliding.

28. See the following ballads: “Des contradictions” (II), “Des menus propos” (VI), and “Des contre-vérités” (VII).

29. This emphasis on the centrality of sin, and of sinners, to Christianity will come as no surprise to readers of modern fiction by major Catholic writers. Graham Greene took as introductory epigram for his novel The Heart of the Matter this quotation from Péguy: “Le pécheur est au cœur même de la chrétienté … Nul n'est aussi compétent que le pécheur en matière de chrétienté. Nul, si ce n'est le saint.”

30. It is interesting to note that this poem was included in Prier au Moyen Age: pratiques et expériences (Ve- XVe siècles): Textes traduits et commentés, ed. Nicole Bériou, Jacques Berlioz et Jean Longère, intro. by Nicole Bériou (Turnhout, 1991). This is, indeed, a prayer—and a beautiful one.

31. In this context, I can hardly do better than quote from Pierre Demarolle's Villon: un testament ambigu (Paris, 1973). Demarolle speaks of the religious dimension of Villon's poetry (e.g. pp. 166ff.) and concludes: “La pire des erreurs serait sans doute de sous-estimer l'importance de la foi chrétienne chez Villon en se laissant égarer par les attaques contre les moines, la rancune qu'il exprime à l'égard de l'évêque Thibaut d'Aussigny, les plaisanteries ou les banalités. Si les passages où la foi du poète se manifeste n'occupent qu'une part relativement restreinte du texte, ils correspondent toujours à une référence à un Au-delà du monde (et pas seulement à un Au-delà de la mort) qui transcende en leur donnant un sens les injustices des hommes et les faiblesses de l'être …” (p. 169).

This article has benefited in many ways from the discussions at the Oxford Conference at which this paper was originally presented. My gratitude goes—as ever!—to Nancy Regalado for her help, and thanks to Marilyn Lawrence.