Goliards

(Lat. goliardi).

A common but possibly misleading term now associated with wandering scholars and ecclesiastics (vagantes) who formed a large, disparate group of Latin poets and composers active in France, Germany, England and north Italy from the late 10th century to the mid-13th. Though often frankly secular, many of the songs ascribed to goliards contain religious or moral themes; others are personal, indulging in flattery, complaints and mendicant requests; debate, satire, polemic and admonition are common, as are songs of spring, love, drinking, feasting, gambling and miscellaneous drolleries. Most of the poems were certainly meant to be sung, but music is now lacking; a majority are written in ‘goliardic stanzas’ (Vagantenstrophen) of rhyming 13-syllable lines (seven plus six syllables), as illustrated by this extract from the Archipoeta's Confessio:

Meum est propositum in taberna mori,
ut sit vinum proximum morientis ori.

Yet despite the content of their lyrics, known goliards were not worthless vagabonds: their poetry was written for an educated audience, they were learned, and some were esteemed teachers, while others enjoyed courtly patronage. Much of their self-confessed boorishness is consequently rhetorical embellishment rather than biographical fact. The origin of the word ‘goliard’ has been associated with both the Latin word ‘gula’ (‘gluttony’) and the biblical ‘Golias’ (Goliath) as expressions of reproach, a derivation that stems from Giraldus Cambrensis, who in his Speculum ecclesiae used the term to refer to a tactless Latin poet. However, although the word ‘goliardus’ surfaces occasionally in medieval documents, Giraldus does not specifically equate his Golias with this term.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Wright: Latin Poems Commonly Attributed to Walter Mapes (London, 1841)

T. Wright: Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammists of the Twelfth Century (London, 1872)

J.M. Manly: ‘Familia goliae’, Modern Philology, v (1907–8), 201–9

J.J.A.A. Frantzen: ‘Zur Vagantendichtung’, Neophilologus, v (1920), 58–79

J.W. Thompson: ‘The Origin of the Word Goliardi’, Studies in Philology, xx (1921), 83–98

H. Brinkmann: Geschichte der lateinischen Liebesdichtung im Mittelalter (Halle, 1925)

J.H. Hanford: ‘The Progenitors of Golias’, Speculum, i (1926), 38–58

H. Waddell: The Wandering Scholars (London, 1927, 7/1934/R)

B.I. Jarcho: ‘Die Vorläufer des Golias’, Speculum, iii (1928), 523–79

K. Strecker: Die Apokalypse des Golias (Rome, 1928)

B. Bischoff: ‘Vagantenlieder aus der Vaticana’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, l (1930), 76–100

A. Machabey: ‘Etude de quelques chansons goliardiques’, Romania, lxxxiii (1962), 323–47

A. Machabey: ‘Remarques sur les mélodies goliardiques’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, vii (1964), 257–78

E.G. Fichtner: ‘The Etymology of Goliard’, Neophilologus, li (1967), 230–37

A.G. Rigg: ‘Golias and other Pseudonyms’, Studi medievali, xviii (1977), 65–109

J. Hamacher: ‘Die Vagantenbeichte und ihre Quellen’, Mittellateinisches Jb, xviii (1983), 160–67

P.G. Walsh: ‘Golias and Goliardic Poetry’, Medium aevum, lii (1983), 1–9

C.J. McDonough: The Oxford Poems of Hugh Primas and the Arundel Lyrics (Toronto, 1984)

H. Hüschen: ‘Vaganten- und Scholarenlieder aus der Frühzeit der Universität’, Schnittpunkt Mensch Musik… Walter Gieseler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. R. Klinkhammer (Regensburg, 1985), 46–53

B. Gillingham, ed.: Secular Medieval Latin Song, i: An Anthology, ii: A Critical Study (Ottawa, 1993–5)

For further bibliography see Early Latin secular song.

GORDON A. ANDERSON/THOMAS B. PAYNE