GIULLARI (joculares, joculatores). — Giullari were the name given in the Middle Ages to those who made a profession of entertaining the public of different social classes, from the common people to the nobility, in squares as well as in courts. They were also called histriones, mimi, bufones, etc. These names were most often used generically and indifferently, because in reality a clear division was neither possible with regard to the repertoire nor with regard to the different categories that formed the varied and multifarious class of giullari. The name joculares, however, was preferably used to indicate the higher categories of those who practiced poetry, song, and music.
The tradition of the giullari is continuously linked to the histrionism of classical antiquity and extends into the Renaissance.
Throughout this time, the activity of the giullari was intense in Western Europe, in Spain and Portugal as in England, France, Provence, and Italy. To entertain their audiences, the giullari sang, played instruments, danced, recited dramatized monologues, often disguising and masking themselves; they acted as acrobats. They were indispensable at festivals, fairs, pilgrimages, and weddings. For the common people, they sang in public squares or on street corners the songs of chivalry, fabliaux, or even amorous and playful songs. Others, instead, frequented the courts, some wandering from one court to another, others remaining for many years with the same lord; thus in Italy they were often called uomini di corte or milites de curia, sometimes even being confused, given their not well-defined functions, with true courtiers. The giullari, together with buffoons and mimi, formed a large, varied, and restless throng that wandered from country to country, so much so that R. Menéndez y Pidal rightly insists on the international character of the "giulleria": thus, in Italy there were Breton, Norman, French, and Provençal giullari, while in Spain Italian giullari are found. Women also sometimes practiced the profession of giullari. From the mid-12th to the 14th century, the number of giullari in Italy was considerable, especially in the northern regions where they found wide favor among the aristocracy of the courts and the flourishing bourgeoisie of the Communes. Bonompagno da Signa, recounting a jest made by Guido Guerra to giullari who had gathered at his court, estimates their number at several hundred.
The importance of their poetic-musical activity in the history of our early literature is greater than is usually acknowledged. "Through the work of the giullari, the first literary elaborations of the vernacular language took place among us" (De Bartholomaeis): their nomadism served to unify the different dialects, or at least to mitigate their differences, and to create in a certain sense a common "vulgar culture." The repertoire of the giullari can be inferred, for Italy, from the Srivente del maestro di tutte le arti by Ruggero Apuliese of Siena (mid-13th century) and from the later Cantare dei cantari; for Provence, from the so-called Insegnamenti pe' giullari by Giraut Cabreira and others; for France, from the dit of the Deux boréors ribauts.
No less important is the activity of the giullari in the dramatic field, since it is to them that we owe the continuation, throughout the Middle Ages, of the tradition of mimi and histriones; many poetic productions of the early centuries, such as, for example, the Ritmo cassinese, the Lamento della sposa padovana, the Canzone del Castra, etc., are interpreted by some scholars as giullareschi monologues, which the giullari not only recited but also performed.
The Church fought the giullari for their histrionic and buffoonish aspects, often coarse and irreverent; however, later it also made use of their work for the dissemination of the cult of the Saints, in connection with pilgrimages and shrines, and, without needing to think of a special category of "giullari of God," it must be noted that the giullari produced a rich body of hagiographic poetry, which left its mark on the origins of Romance literatures.