He killed a priest, burgled a college, came within a rope’s length of the gallows, then vanished without trace at thirty-one. François Villon is also the greatest French poet of the Middle Ages, the one who brought into the language the ache of passing time and the voice of a man alone before his own death. We know this life of wandering and crime mostly through court records and through his own verse, where he stages his faults without ever apologising. Here is who Villon was: the University of Paris student who became the original cursed poet.
Key facts
- François Villon, born around 1431 in Paris, real name François de Montcorbier, is the most widely read medieval French author today.
- Orphaned young, he was raised by the canon Guillaume de Villon, whose name he took, and became a Master of Arts of the University of Paris in 1452.
- His life turned in 1455 when he killed a priest in a brawl, then took part in the 1456 burglary of the Collège de Navarre.
- Sentenced to hang in 1462, he had the sentence commuted on 5 January 1463 to ten years of banishment from Paris. After that date, his trail goes cold for good.
- His work amounts to only a few thousand lines, among them The Testament and the Ballad of the Hanged Men, which have survived six centuries.
A student of the University of Paris
François Villon was born around 1431 in Paris, under the name François de Montcorbier. His father died while he was still a child. He was taken in by Guillaume de Villon, a canon and chaplain of the Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné chapel, a short walk from the Sorbonne. This guardian gave him his name, his home and his schooling. The poet would later describe him as one who was kinder to him than a mother to her child.
Young Villon followed the curriculum of the University of Paris, one of the most prestigious in Europe. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1449 and the title of Master of Arts in 1452. He was then about twenty-one, with every door open to him: the Church, teaching, administration. He lived in the heart of a bustling student district, the turbulent Latin Quarter that the medieval University of Paris, with the Sorbonne at its centre, had brought to life.
From murder to burglary: a life on the run
On 5 June 1455, a quarrel broke out in the cloister of Saint-Benoît. Villon fatally wounded a priest, Philippe Sermoise, with a dagger. He fled the city. He won a royal pardon in January 1456 and returned to Paris, but the respite was brief.
At Christmas 1456, he took part in the burglary of the Collège de Navarre, from which a large sum was stolen. He left the capital again, this time for long years of wandering. It was in this period that he composed the Lais, also called the Lesser Testament: a farewell poem, half serious and half mocking, in which he bequeaths, in jest, goods he does not own. On the road, he was for a time received at the court of Charles d’Orléans, prince and poet, at Blois.
In 1461 he was imprisoned in harsh conditions at Meung-sur-Loire, on the orders of Bishop Thibault d’Aussigny. He was freed when the new king, Louis XI, passed through. Out of this ordeal came his masterpiece.
A body of work born at the margins
After his release, around 1461, Villon wrote The Testament, a long poem of roughly two thousand lines into which his most famous ballads are set. The tone is dizzying: it opens on a bitter reckoning with his own life, when, in his thirtieth year, he had drunk down all his shame.
Villon speaks of himself plainly: poverty, prison, lost loves, the fear of growing old and dying. It is this personal, almost modern voice that sets him apart from the courtly poetry of his time. In the Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past, he captures the whole flight of time in a single line, “But where are the snows of yesteryear?”, probably the best-known line in French poetry.
Late in 1462, back in Paris, he was caught up in another brawl and sentenced to be hanged. While awaiting the rope, he wrote the Ballad of the Hanged Men, in which he imagines his own corpse swinging from the gibbet and begs the living for mercy: “Brother men who live after us, do not harden your hearts against us.”
The disappearance of 1463, then silence
On 5 January 1463, the Parlement of Paris overturned the death sentence and commuted it to ten years of banishment from the city. Villon was a little over thirty. He left Paris. After that date, no document mentions him again. Where and when he died is unknown.
This final silence fed the legend of the cursed poet, gone like one of those fugitive, marginal figures he had written about. He left behind no tomb and no certain portrait, only a brief, burning body of work that printers were already publishing in 1489, a sign of immediate success.
Why read Villon today
Six centuries on, Villon is still read because he speaks of what does not age: poverty, remorse, desire, death. His language, Middle French, asks for a little effort, but modern editions make it accessible, and the reward is immediate. The poets who reread him, from Rimbaud to the songwriters of French chanson, owe him something.
Reading Villon in the original is also a way to measure how far the French language has travelled. That is the point of learning French at its source: at the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne, the language is studied together with its literature and history. Discover our French courses in Paris, from beginner to advanced level.
Frequently asked questions
Who was François Villon?
A fifteenth-century French poet, born around 1431 in Paris and gone after 1463. A Master of Arts of the University of Paris, he led a bohemian life marked by a killing, a burglary and a death sentence, while writing one of the major bodies of work of the Middle Ages.
Why is Villon called the “cursed poet”?
Because his life combined the margins, prison and flight, and because he finally vanished without trace in 1463. The phrase, popularised later, describes poets with tragic destinies, of whom Villon is the first French model.
What are Villon’s best-known works?
The Testament, his masterpiece, along with the ballads set within it: the Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past (“where are the snows of yesteryear?”) and the Ballad of the Hanged Men. He also wrote the Lais, or Lesser Testament.
How did François Villon die?
Nobody knows. After his sentence of banishment on 5 January 1463, no further document mentions him. His disappearance remains one of the great mysteries of French literary history.
Did Villon study at the Sorbonne?
He studied at the University of Paris, of which the Sorbonne was the most famous college, and lived in the nearby Latin Quarter. He earned the title of Master of Arts there in 1452.
Article written by the team at the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne and editorially reviewed before publication. Last updated: June 2026. Biographical details drawn from standard reference sources on Villon (Encyclopædia Universalis, Britannica). Dates before 1463 are established from court records and from the poet’s own works.
