Civilization

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?” This line is probably the most famous in all of French poetry. It comes from the Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past, which Villon set into his Testament around 1461. In three stanzas, the poet lists admirable women of antiquity, legend and

Villon is known for his confessions about his own poverty, his irony and his regrets. The Ballad against the Enemies of France shows another side of the poet: a man who steps outside himself to curse, line after line, anyone who would harm the kingdom. Three stanzas, an envoi, a

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

The cathedral builders: how France invented gothic architecture Stand inside the nave of Chartres Cathedral on a summer afternoon. Watch as the light pours through the great rose window, flooding the stone floor with pools of sapphire, ruby, and emerald. Look up impossibly far up to the vaulted ceiling that

How does a nation’s story begin? For France, the answer lies in a period of profound chaos and transformation: the Early Middle Ages. As the Western Roman Empire crumbled, new peoples and powers rose to take its place. It was a murky, violent, and formative era. Without a guide, this

William of Rubruck: the french explorer who beat Marco Polo to the mongol empire When we think of medieval European explorers journeying to the Far East, one name invariably comes to mind: Marco Polo. His tales of Xanadu and the court of Kublai Khan have fired the imagination for centuries.