The songs of the Wandering Students were in a strict sense _moduli_ as
distinguished from _versus_; popular and not scholastic. They were,
however, composed by men of culture, imbued with classical learning of
some sort, and prepared by scholarship for the deftest and most
delicate manipulation of the Latin language.
Who were these Wandering Students, so often mentioned, and of whom
nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men,
and for the most part young men, travelling from university to
university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without
responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and
pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting
taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing
judgment upon wine or women than upon a problem of divinity or logic.
The conditions of medieval learning made it necessary to study
different sciences in different parts of Europe; and a fixed habit of
unrest, which seems to have pervaded society after the period of the
Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which
travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage
and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the
bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the
sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation.
"The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are
wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much
learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek liberal arts, in
Orleans authors, at Salerno gallipots, at Toledo demons, and in no
place decent manners."
These pilgrims to the shrines of knowledge formed a class apart. They
were distinguished from the secular and religious clergy, inasmuch as
they had taken no orders, or only minor orders, held no benefice or
cure, and had entered into no conventual community. They were still
more sharply distinguished from the laity, whom they scorned as
brutes, and with whom they seem to have lived on terms of mutual
hostility. One of these vagabond gownsmen would scarcely condescend to
drink with a townsman:[6]--
"In aeterno igni
Cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni
Quod bibisse noverint bonum vinum vini."
"Aestimetur laicus ut brutus,
Nam ad artem surdus est et mutus."
"Litteratos convocat decus virginale,
Laicorum execrat pectus bestiale."
In a parody of the Mass, which is called _Officium Lusorum,_ and in
which the prayers are offered to Bacchus, we find this devout
collect:[7]--"Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui inter rusticos et
clericos magnam discordiam seminasti, praesta quaesumus de laboribus
eorum vivere, de mulieribus ipsorum vero et de morte deciorum semper
gaudere."
The English version of this ribald prayer is even more explicit. It
runs thus:--"Deus qui multitudinem rusticorum ad servitium clericorum
venire fecisti et militum et inter nos et ipsos discordiam seminasti."
It is open to doubt whether the _milites_ or soldiers were included
with the rustics in that laity, for which the students felt so bitter
a contempt. But the tenor of some poems on love, especially the
_Dispute of Phyllis and Flora_, shows that the student claimed a
certain superiority over the soldier. This antagonism between clerk
and rustic was heartily reciprocated. In a song on taverns the student
is warned that he may meet with rough treatment from the
clodhopper:[8]--
"O clerici dilecti,
Discite vitare
Tabernam horribilem,
Qui cupitis regnare;
Nec audeant vos rustici
Plagis verberare!
"Rusticus dum se
Sentit ebriatum,
Clericum non reputat
Militem armatum.
Vere plane consulo
Ut abstineatis,
Nec unquam cum rusticis
Tabernam ineatis."
The affinities of the Wandering Students were rather with the Church
than with laymen of any degree. They piqued themselves upon their
title of _Clerici_, and added the epithet of _Vagi_. We shall see in
the sequel that they stood in a peculiar relation of dependence upon
ecclesiastical society.
According to tendencies prevalent in the Middle Ages, they became a
sort of guild, and proclaimed themselves with pride an Order. Nothing
is more clearly marked in their poetry than the _esprit de corps_,
which animates them with a cordial sense of brotherhood.[9] The same
tendencies which prompted their association required that they should
have a patron saint. But as the confraternity was anything but
religious, this saint, or rather this eponymous hero, had to be a
Rabelaisian character. He was called Golias, and his flock received
the generic name of Goliardi. Golias was father and master; the
Goliardi were his family, his sons, and pupils. _Familia Goliae_,
_Magister Golias_, _Pueri Goliae_, _Discipulus Goliae_, are phrases to
be culled from the rubrics of their literature.
Much has been conjectured regarding these names and titles. Was Golias
a real person? Did he give his own name to the Goliardi; or was he
invented after the Goliardi had already acquired their designation? In
either case, ought we to connect both words with the Latin _gula_, and
so regard the Goliardi as notable gluttons; or with the Provencal
_goliar_, _gualiar_, _gualiardor_, which carry a significance of
deceit? Had Golias anything to do with Goliath of the Bible, the great
Philistine, who in the present day would more properly be chosen as
the hero of those classes which the students held in horror?
It is not easy to answer these questions. All we know for certain is,
that the term Goliardus was in common medieval use, and was employed
as a synonym for Wandering Scholar in ecclesiastical documents. _Vagi
scholares aut Goliardi--joculatores, goliardi seu bufones--goliardia
vel histrionatus--vagi scholares qui goliardi vel histriones alio
nomine appellantur--clerici ribaudi, maxime qui dicuntur de familia
Goliae_: so run the acts of several Church Councils.[10] The word
passed into modern languages. The _Grandes Chroniques de S. Denis_
speak of _jugleor, enchanteor, goliardois, et autres manieres de
menestrieux_. Chaucer, in his description of the Miller, calls this
merry narrator of fabliaux _a jangler and a goliardeis_. In _Piers
Ploughman_ the _goliardeis_ is further explained to be _a glutton of
words_, and talks in Latin rhyme.[11]
Giraldus Cambrensis, during whose lifetime the name Golias first came
into vogue, thought that this father of the Goliardic family was a
real person.[12] He writes of him thus:--"A certain parasite called
Golias, who in our time obtained wide notoriety for his gluttony and
lechery, and by addiction to gulosity and debauchery deserved his
surname, being of excellent culture but of bad manners, and of no
moral discipline, uttered oftentimes and in many forms, both of rhythm
and metre, infamous libels against the Pope and Curia of Rome, with no
less impudence than imprudence." This is perhaps the most outspoken
utterance with regard to the eponymous hero of the Goliardic class
which we possess, and it deserves a close inspection.
In the first place, Giraldus attributes the satiric poems which
passed under the name of Golias to a single author famous in his days,
and says of this poet that he used both modern rhythms and classical
metres. The description would apply to Gualtherus de Insula, Walter of
Lille, or, as he is also called, Walter of Chatillon; for some of this
Walter's satires are composed in a curious mixture of the rhyming
measures of the medieval hymns with classical hexameters.[13] Yet had
Giraldus been pointing at Walter of Lille, a notable personage in his
times, there is no good reason to suppose that he would have
suppressed his real name, or have taken for granted that Golias was a
_bona fide_ surname. On the theory that he knew Golias to be a mere
nickname, and was aware that Walter of Lille was the actual satirist,
we should have to explain his paragraph by the hypothesis that he
chose to sneer at him under his _nom de guerre_ instead of
stigmatising him openly in person.
His remarks, at any rate, go far toward disposing of the old belief
that the Goliardic satires were the work of Thomas Mapes. Giraldus was
an intimate friend of that worthy, who deserves well of all lovers of
medieval romance as a principal contributor to the Arthurian cycle. It
is hardly possible that Giraldus should have gibbeted such a man under
the sobriquet of Golias.
But what, it may be asked, if Walter of Lille, without the cognisance
of our English annalist, had in France obtained the chief fame of
these poems? what if they afterwards were attributed in England to
another Walter, his contemporary, himself a satirist of the monastic
orders? The fact that Walter of Lille was known in Latin as Gualtherus
de Insula, or Walter of the Island, may have confirmed the
misapprehension thus suggested. It should be added that the ascription
of the Goliardic satires to Walter Mapes or Map first occurs in MSS.
of the fourteenth century.