While education and literacy had been important components of aristocratic service in the Carolingian period, by the eleventh century and continuing to the 13th century, the lay (secular) public in France—both nobles and peasants—was largely illiterate, except for (at least to the end of the 12th century) members of the great courts and, in the south, smaller noble families. This situation began to change in the 13th century (where we find highly literate members of the French nobility like Guillaume de Lorris, Geoffrey of Villehardouin (sometimes referred to as Villehardouin, and Jean de Joinville (sometimes referred to as Joinville)). Similarly, due to the outpouring of French vernacular literature from the 12th century on ("chanson de geste", chivalric romance, troubadour and trouvère poetry, etc.), French became the "international language of the aristocracy".