(1431 - c. 1463)
“I am François, they have caught me,” wrote François Villon in 1462, shortly before being banished from Paris for theft and then disappearing forever. The French lyric poet had fled the city once before, after he had run a priest through with a sword, and had also been arrested multiple times for fighting and stealing.
Miscellany
For brawling with a papal scribe in 1462, poet François Villon was imprisoned and sentenced to be “strangled and hanged.” While awaiting his death, he wrote this quatrain: “Francis I am, which weighs me down, / born in Paris near Pontoise town, / and with a stretch of rope my pate / will learn for once my arse’s weight.” On January 5, 1463, the sentence was commuted to banishment from Paris. Nothing further is known of his life.
