Villon’s main work is Le Testament, which he conceived under the shadow of the gallows that were beckoning him. As Karlheinz Stierle notes that Villon’s Testament is urban poetry about Paris (without the city being specifically named) with scenography that reveals an enormous comédie humaine in which lust for life is found alongside a closeness to death.
Villon is a kind of guide through the Paris of that time. He had the same significance for 15th-century Paris, as Rétif de la Bretonne had for the 18th century. Both were acute observers, whose eyes missed nothing.
Grand Bal paré et masqué (Masked Costume Ball), c. 1835. Coloured lithograph.
Erotic fairytales.
Erotic fairytales, 1909. Illustration. Vienna.
Miniature illustration for Boccacio’s Decameron, 14th century.
The Court in the 16th Century
The historian Leopold von Ranke once said about the time of Henri II: “If you wish to learn about the ideas and opinions of contemporary France, you must read Rabelais.” Anyone who wishes to learn about the times of Charles IX and Henri III must read Brantôme.
In the Paris of François Rabelais (1483–1553), as in that of Villon’s time, public incitation to depravity was just as much on the agenda. Prostitutes and pimps, as well as male and female procurers, offered their services in broad daylight. Whilst public procuresses exercised more or less strict supervision over the brothels, private procuresses advertised their wares vigorously in all conceivable places – especially in churches. It is no wonder that prostitution – albeit in a primitive form – was already booming. After sunset, remarks Grand-Carteret, Paris no longer belonged to the King of France but to the roi des Ribauds (king of the ribalds; officer of the royal household, overseeing the policing of prostitution in Paris) and the “priestesses of Venus”.
In his novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais, the supreme master of crude satire, depicts the vices and immorality of his contemporaries. He shows the unrestrained sexual life of his times as vulgar as it actually was, never deviating from depicting repulsive words or images. Nor did he spare the female gender his coruscating mockery, being shown as lustful and shameless. They never got tired of the “stick”. He doesn’t shrink from any kind of exaggeration. On his wanderings, Pantagruel meets women whose clitorises, the laborator naturae, are so highly developed that they could wrap them around their bodies several times and use them as spears if they needed a weapon. With unsurpassed humour, Rabelais castigates the shortcomings of the Church and the monks, as well as their scandalous lives. In his Psychology of French Literature (1884), even the prudish literary historian Eduard Engel is forced to confess that:
Consistently and without any scruples whatsoever does he use the most offensive word in the language for the appropriately offensive action, and he often seems drunk on the vulgarity of his vocabulary. Many chapters in Gargantua and Pantagruel are complete dictionaries of pornography – more complete than anything else in the wide territory of French literature. But he does not take pleasure in doing so – using such passages for no other purpose than for the accurate depiction of uncouth characters in scurrilous situations.
Towards the end of the 16th century, coarseness in morals slowly began to fade away. Uncouth prostitution began to give way to gallantry. A dense network of royal castles was built around Paris. The Court and its courtiers practically settled in Paris, and the reflected glory of its splendour and magnificence soon gave Paris the character of the animated and luxurious metropolis, which gradually became the central focus of Europe. Brantôme remarks:
As far as our lovely French women are concerned, in the past they have been extremely uncultivated – contenting themselves with a clumsy form of love. However, over the last 50 years, they have acquired from other nations so many forms of beauty and flattery, charms and outstanding qualities, and learnt so much in terms of clothing, grace, and lasciviousness, either acquiring these things naturally or taking the trouble to teach themselves, that now one must say that they surpass all others in every way. I have also heard strangers say that they are far worthier than others, except insofar as unchaste words sound much more lascivious, more exciting, and more melodious from a French mouth than any other.
For a long time, there were rivalries between Parisiennes and the women of Lyon and Rouen. Yet now – as a result of the Renaissance – there began a form of competition against those women skilled in the most sophisticated arts of love – the Italians. As Grand-Carteret writes: “The influence exercised by women from Genoa, who were ‘of wondrous beauty’, and those from Milan ‘with looks worthy of Venus’ on French women was so enormous that genuine rivalry broke out between them and Parisiennes, or, to be more exact, French women in general. The letters sent by the Venetian Ambassador, which are valuable documents about the moral history of this period, give convincing testimony of the admiration which even the most listless city-dwellers and socialites accorded to Paris, in terms of being the international centre of culture and pleasure. What was the ideal beauty in this period? Chestnut brown hair and golden-brown, lively, and mischievous eyes were lauded. Piquant little faces, with animated features and blazing eyes seem to have been characteristic for Parisiennes even in those days. A cheeky smile, cherry lips, and a little mouth that promised more than it haughtily rejected were prized even then as signs of amorous delight. Calmness and tenderness were especially desired in women.
The art of emphasising one’s charms and underlining them through fashion became increasingly widespread. Ladies of the Court as well as gallant ladies set the example which Parisiennes followed. Parisian fashion started to become international. It is the Court, along with all its accompanying unrestricted freedom of morals to which Paris owes its reputation.
In the work Vie des Dames Galantes, by Pierre de Bourdeille, Sieur de Brantôme (1540–1614) can be regarded as the Chronique scandaleuse of the late 16th century. It provides a revealing picture of the court life of its day. The author’s gaze is fixed on the title-tattle at court, on affairs, intrigues, and amours. “Natura non sunt turpia” (“What nature is cannot be damaging”) was the motto with which he prefaced his book.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Judgement of Paris, 1528.
Oil on lime wood, 84.7 × 57 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel.
Robinet Testard, The Gaze of Desire, illustration for The Book of Love’s Failures, by Évrart de Conty, 1496–1498.
Bibliothèque nationale, MS. Fr. 143, fol. 198v°, Paris.
Brantôme writes “about the ladies who cultivate love and make their husbands cuckolds”. He posed the question: “Which gives the greatest delight in love – the feelings, the face, or the words?” He gives an account of “lovely legs and their charms” and “of older