François Rabelais mentions Villon in
Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel, roy des Dipsodes (The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Renowned Pantagruel, King of the Dipsodes, 1532) and quotes from his poetry in the
Quart livre (Fourth Book, 1548). Over the next five hundred years such widely different authors as the classical French critic Nicolas Boileau, the English poet A. C. Swinburne, and the American poet Ezra Pound praised Villon. Villon's life has been romanticized in novels, plays, and motion pictures, and many modern literary anthologies cite him as the best of the late medieval poets in France.
Much of Villon's popularity arises from sympathy for the difficult life he led, which is described with both humor and poignancy and at great length in his largely autobiographical poetry. In fact, little is known for certain of Villon's life beyond what he relates. In two court documents dated January 1456 he is referred to as “François des Loges, autrement dit de Villon” (François des Loges, otherwise called de Villon) and “François de Montcorbier.” Most scholars agree that Montcorbier and Villon were one and the same.
From a remark in the first line of Le Testament, which he wrote in 1461 at the age of thirty, one can surmise that Villon was born of poor parents in 1431:
Povre je suis de ma jeunesse
De povre et de petite extrasse;
Mon pere n'eust oncq grant richesse,
Ne son ayeul, nommé Orace;
Povreté tous nous suit et trece.
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