GOLIARDI. – Name given to those « clerici » who, in the 12th and 13th centuries, drawn to university centres by the fame of one master or another, wandered from city to city, often joining in the noisy orgies of the students, despite their ecclesiastical status.
The etymology of the name is uncertain: according to some, it is connected with Galia, an appellation symbolically attributed to one or more of these clerics (Abelard himself was called this by his enemies), which subsequently became the prototype of a numerous group; according to others, with gula, signifying these individuals’ tendency to gluttony. The second explanation appears, in absolute terms, less probable than the first, but it cannot be excluded that a false etymology helped to establish the use of the name definitively. The g. have often been identified with the clerici vagantes of medieval tradition, late epigones—in a different setting—of the circumcelliones mentioned by St Augustine (Euarr. in Ps. 132, 3) and of the wandering monks (semper vagi et numquam stabiles et propriis voluntatibus et gulae inlecebris servientes) to whom the Benedictine Rule refers (chap. 1), and on whom the Regula Magistri dwells at length; in reality, they constitute a particular category: restless spirits who had squandered their prebend or been deprived of it as a disciplinary measure, censured for their conduct by numerous conciliar decrees and sometimes also by direct papal order. The g. lived under the protection of one lord or another, pleased by their antics, or sought hospitality among students and professors, as learned jesters of a world that descended spiritually from the feudal courts and anticipated the setting of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
They are credited with the authorship of a body of poetic compositions in Latin, playful and licentious both in theme and expression, transmitted in a large series of codices, each of which preserves a more or less extensive collection (the largest is that of the so-called Carmina Bu-
rana, cod. Clm. 4660 of the Bavarian State Library in Munich). Goliardic poetry originated on French soil, spread to England and Germany, and subsequently reached Italy as well, where, however, it did not enjoy as vigorous a life as in the countries beyond the Alps. It is rhythmic poetry, often also rhymed, and treats, not without monotony, certain conventional subjects (the unworthiness of the high clergy, the greed of the Roman Curia, the decay of society, the pleasures of wine and love), now in satirical, now in parodic form, always pervaded by an intense sensuality and only rarely illuminated by a tremor of emotion.
Precedents are not lacking, especially in the Merovingian age (the so-called Joca monachorum, the Cena Cypriani, the Banquet, and the love songs of the Cambridge Songbook), but in goliardic poetry the influence of schooling is more evident, as is the learned origin manifested in the elegance of the Latin, in Virgilian and, even more, Ovidian reminiscences, and in the doctrinal substratum that neither the scant popular movements nor the promiscuous use, in essentially Latin compositions, of verses in German or French d’oil can conceal. Above all, there is here an additional tone of rebellion, an attitude of « bohemianism », a conscious uninhibitedness that lays bare a highly interesting aspect of that society of which mystical literature and courtly poetry reveal other facets. Modern criticism has succeeded in giving historical contours to several authors of these compositions: Hugh of Orléans, known as « the Primate », who flourished around the middle of the 12th century; the so-called « Archpoet », originally from the Rhineland and active between approximately 1130 and 1180; Serlo of Wilton, an Englishman and abbot in 1173; Walter of Lille, who reached the threshold of the 13th century; Philip, « cancellarius » of Notre-Dame, who held that office between 1217 and 1219; and other lesser figures, including the Italian Morando da Padova. But most remain concealed behind the veil of anonymity, just as various problems connected with goliardic poetry remain unresolved: among them, whether all the g. were authors of verse or merely minstrels of this poetic genre, and whether ecclesiastical status was in fact common to all the g. (clericus was sometimes used in the Middle Ages as a simple synonym for « learned », « educated »).
Romantic criticism nurtured an understandable but unfounded enthusiasm for goliardic poetry: in reality, it has above all documentary value; from the poetic standpoint, meanwhile, it offers only a few flashes of light amid a dark tangle of poisonous acrimony and base sensuality.