Goliard
Encyclopedia
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
who wrote bibulous, satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were mainly clerical students at the universities
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
and financial abuses, expressing themselves through song, poetry and performance.
Etymology
The derivation of the word is uncertain. It may simply come from the Latin gula, gluttony. It was said by them to originate from a mythical "Bishop Golias", a mediæval LatinMedieval 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,...
form of the name Goliath, the giant
Giant (mythology)
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...
who fought King David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, suggestive of their posing as heavy drinking yet learned students who lampooned the ecclesiastical and political establishment. Many scholars believe it goes back to a letter between St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Innocent II, in which he referred to Pierre Abélard as Goliath, thus creating a connection between Goliath and the student adherents of Abélard. Others support its derivation from gailliard, a "gay fellow".
Satirical poets
The satires were meant to mock and lampoon the Church. For example, at St. Remy, the goliards went to mass in procession each trailing a herring on a string along the ground, the game being to step on the herring in front and keep your own herring from being trod on. In some districts, there was the celebration of the ass, in which a donkey dressed in a silly costume was led to the chancelChancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar in the sanctuary at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building...
rail where a cantor
Cantor (church)
A cantor is the chief singer employed in a church with responsibilities for the ecclesiastical choir; also called the precentor....
chanted a song of praise. When he paused, the audience would respond: "He Haw, Sire Ass, He haw!". The University of Paris complained:
"Priests and clerks.. dance in the choir dressed as women.. they sing wanton songs. They eat black pudding at the altar itself, while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play dice on the altar. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap throughout the church, without a blush of their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby carriages and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and with scurrilous and unchaste words."
The Goliards used sacred sources like texts from the Roman Catholic Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
and Latin hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s and warped them to secular and satirical purposes in their poems. The jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
of scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
also frequently appears in their poems, either for satirical purposes, or because these concepts were familiar parts of the writers' working vocabulary. Their satires were almost uniformly directed against the church, attacking even the pope. The Goliard were a protest movement and marked a distinct step in the growing criticism of Church abuses from within its own ranks.
The Goliards faced retribution from the Church. In 1227, the Council of 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....
forbade them from taking part in the chanting service. In 1229, Goliards played a part in disturbances at the University of Paris
University of Paris strike of 1229
In 1229, a student riot at the University of Paris resulted in the deaths of a number of students, and the ensuing "dispersion" or student strike in protest lasted more than two years and led to a number of reforms of the medieval university...
in connection with intrigues of the papal legate
Papal legate
A papal legate – from the Latin, authentic Roman title Legatus – is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic Church. He is empowered on matters of Catholic Faith and for the settlement of ecclesiastical matters....
. They were the subject of numerous Church councils, notably in 1289, where it was ordered "no clerks shall be jongleurs, goliards or buffons", and in 1300 at 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...
, when they were forbidden to preach or engage in the indulgence traffic. Often the "privileges of clergy" were withdrawn entirely from the Goliards.
Much of the Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana , Latin for "Songs from Beuern" , is the name given to a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces were written principally in Medieval Latin; a few in Middle High German, and some with traces...
collection of Latin poetry belongs to this school. One Goliardic author, otherwise anonymous
Anonymous work
Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."...
, has been given the name of the Archpoet
Archpoet
The Archpoet , or ' , is the name given to a 12th century anonymous author of ten poems from medieval Latin literature, the most famous being his "Confession" found in the manuscript...
. Other Goliards whose names are known include Peter of Blois
Peter of Blois
Peter of Blois or Petrus Blesensis was a French poet and diplomat who wrote in Latin. Peter studied law in Bologna and theology in Paris...
and Walter of Châtillon
Walter of Chatillon
Walter of Châtillon was a 12th-century French writer and theologian who wrote in the Latin language. He studied under Stephen of Beauvais and at the University of Paris. It was probably during his student years that he wrote a number of Latin poems in the Goliardic manner that found their way...
.
Significance
The Goliards have literary significance in that they wrote Latin verse using stress-based prosody, rather than the Classical quantitative meters, since syllable-weight had long ceased to be an actual part of Latin pronunciation. This literary movement ultimately made possible new sacred Latin verse, such as Thomas of Celano's Dies IræDies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...
or St Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
's Pange Lingua
Pange Lingua
Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium is a hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi . It is also sung on Maundy Thursday, during the procession from the church to the place where the Blessed Sacrament is kept until Good Friday...
, sequence
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...
s written in Latin poetic forms the Goliards helped to develop.
With its quick pace and scathing subject matter, the Goliards' poetry became part of the model for English satirical verse that flourished in the age of Samuel Butler, Jonathan Swift, and others.
The word "goliard" outlived the original meaning and passed over into the French and English literature of the 14th century, generally meaning jongleur or wandering minstrel, no longer related to its original clerical association. It is thus used in Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...
and by Chaucer.
Further reading
- Waddell, HelenHelen WaddellHelen Jane Waddell was an Irish poet, translator and playwright.-Biography:She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her...
, The Wandering ScholarsThe Wandering ScholarsThe Wandering Scholars is a non-fiction book by Helen Waddell, first published in 1927 by Constable, London. It deals primarily with medieval Latin lyric poetry and the main part is a study of the goliards...
, 1927. - Symonds, John AddingtonJohn Addington SymondsJohn Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love , which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible...
, Wine, Women, and Song, 1966 [1884].