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...