ABSTRACT
At the end of the fifteenth century medieval Europe had largely disappeared. Many of the old families who traced their lineage to the days before the Crusades had died out. With the disappearance of feudal privileges many of the remaining families had become impoverished. The study of the Roman law again promoted absolutism, but now the monarchs rather than the papacy. The model of the Italian despotisms and the prospect of seizing territory in Italy were always before the minds of the kings. In the middle of the fifteenth century appeared The Imitation of Christy, probably by Thomas a Kempis. It was a manifestation of that mysticism which in the fifteenth century appeared in Europe, particularly in the Low Countries. Yet there was a difference between the days of medieval faith and this fifteenth century. In the gutters of Paris lived the first great modern lyric poet of France, Frangois Villon.
