The Cambridge Songs are a collection of Goliard

Goliard

The Goliards were a group of clergy who wrote bibulous, satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were mainly clerical students at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the...

ic medieval Latin

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...

 poems found on ten leaves (ff. 432–41) of the Codex Cantabrigiensis (C, MS Gg. 5.35), now at the Cambridge University Library

Cambridge University Library

The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...

. The songs as they survive are copies made shortly before or after the Norman Conquest

Norman conquest of England

The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II of England...

 (1066). They may have been collected by an English

Kingdom of England

The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...

 scholar while travelling on the continent sometime after the last datable song (1039), and brought back with him to the church of Saint Augustine at Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, where they were copied and where the Codex was long kept. The original manuscript was possibly lost in a fire that struck Saint Augustine's in 1168. The dialect of the few vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 portions found in some of the songs is in the North Rheno-Franconian dialect of Old High German

Old High German

The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...

, suggesting that the Goliard(s) who composed them came from the north or middle Rhineland

Rhineland

Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....

, probably the area between Trier

Trier

Trier, historically called in English Treves is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC....

, Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, and Xanten

Xanten

Xanten is a historic town in the North Rhine-Westphalia state of Germany, located in the district of Wesel.Xanten is known for the Archaeological Park or archaeological open air museum , its medieval picturesque city centre with Xanten Cathedral and many museums, its large man-made lake for...

. It has been suggested that some of the songs originated in France

France in the Middle Ages

France in the Middle Ages covers an area roughly corresponding to modern day France, from the death of Louis the Pious in 840 to the middle of the 15th century...

 or Italy

Italy in the Middle Ages

This is the history of Italy during the Middle Ages.- Transition from Late Antiquity :Italy was invaded by the Visigoths in the 5th century, and Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410. The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 476 by an Eastern Germanic general, Odoacer...

. While most of the Cambridge Songs survive only in the Cambridge manuscript, a few are duplicated in a manuscript, W, from Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, located on the Oker river about 13 kilometres south of Brunswick. It is the seat of the District of Wolfenbüttel and of the bishop of the Protestant Lutheran State Church of Brunswick...

.

The Cambridge Songs were long thought to be forty-nine in number, but in 1982 a missing folio was discovered in Germany that contained twenty-seven more. All these songs were copied in the same hand. Seven songs in a different hand, but occurring in the same Codex (after the first forty-nine) have since been identified as probably part of the collection. The total number of Cambridge Songs is now considered to be eighty-three. None of these survives with music, but they are thought to have been sung. Four of the original forty-nine are called modi (melodies, namely sequences

Sequence (poetry)

A sequence is a chant or hymn sung or recited during the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist for many Christian denominations, before the proclamation of the Gospel. By the time of the Council of Trent there were sequences for many feasts in the Church's year.The sequence has always been sung...

). The purpose of the collection has also eluded scholars. It was probably either a book of instruction on Latin verse, a songbook for wandering minstrel

Minstrel

A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...

s (or the clerici vagabundi, vagabond clerics), or an anthology for private enjoyment.

List of songs

All the songs in the Cambridge codex (ff.432–44) are sometimes catalogued as "Lyrics in honour of the emperors of Germany in the first half of the XIth century". Those songs from Nenia de mortuo Heinrico II imperatore to Gratulatio regine a morbo recreate directly praise the rulers of the Salian dynasty

Salian dynasty

The Salian dynasty was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages of four German Kings , also known as the Frankish dynasty after the family's origin and role as dukes of Franconia...

.

• Carmen Christo dictum
• Modus qui et Carelmanninc
• Laudes Christo acte
• Hymnus paschalis
• Resurrectio
• Ad Mariam
• De epiphania
• Rachel
• De domo s. Cecilie Coloniensis
• De s. Victore carmen Xantense
• De Heinrico
• Modus Ottinc
• Nenia de mortuo Heinrico II imperatore
• Nenia in funebrum pompam Heinrici II imperiatoris
• Cantilena in Conradum II factum imperatorem
• Cantilena in Heinricum III anno 1028 regem coronatum
• Nenia de mortuo Conrado II imperatore
• Gratulatio regine a morbo recreate
• Cantilena in Heribertum archiepiscopum Coloniensis
• Ecclesie Trevirensis nomine scripti ad Popponem archiepiscopum versus
• De Willelmo
• Modus Liebinc
• De proterii filio
• De Lantfrido et Corbone
• Modus florum
• Herigêr
• De Iohanne abbate
• Sacerdos et lupus
• Alfrâd
• Carmen estivum
• De luscinio
• Verna femine suspira
• Invitatio amice
• Magister puero
• Clericus et nonna
• In languore perio
• Lamentatio Neobule
• Admonitio iuvenum
• De musica
• De mensa philosophie
• De simphoniis et de littera Pithagore
• Diapente et diatesseron
• Umbram Hectoris videt Eneas
• Hipsipile Archemorum puerum a serpente necatum plorat
• Argie lamentatio maritum polinicum a fratre interfectum in venientis
• Nisus omnigenti

Sources

• Strecker, Karl (ed.). Die Cambridger Lieder. MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 40. Berlin, 1926. Scans available online from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, html text from Bibliotheca Augustana.
• Breul, Karl (ed.). The Cambridge Songs: A Goliard's Song Book of the XIth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915. Scans Available as PDF from Internet Archive. Reprinted: New York: AMS Press, 1973. Includes images from the manuscript.
• Harrington, Karl Pomeroy; Joseph Michael Pucci; and Allison Goddard Elliott (1997). Medieval Latin. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Further reading

• Breul, Karl (1915). A Goliard’s Songbook of the Eleventh Century. Cambridge University Press (reissued by Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
  
  , 2009; ISBN 9781108003483)
• Rigg, Arthur G. and Gernot R. Wieland. "A Canterbury classbook of the mid-eleventh century (the 'Cambridge Songs' manuscript)." Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975): 113-30.

External links

• Text at Bibliotheca Augustana
• Carmina selecta from IntraText
• Paderborner Repertorium der deutschsprachigen Textüberlieferung des 8. bis 12. Jahrhunderts