ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE

SCHOOL OF ENGLISH

THE VAGANTENDICHTUNG

The Secular Latin Poetry of the Wandering Scholars of the

Middle Ages

by

David Zakarian

A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in English Literature

2009

CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter One Historical Background 8

Chapter Two Goliardi or Vagantes or… ? 16

Chapter Three The Authors of the Poetry of Vagantes 27

Chapter Four The Cambridge Songs 43

Chapter Five Carmina Burana 56

Conclusion 71

Appendix: The Vagantenstrophe 73

Works Cited 82

INTRODUCTION

The Middle Ages can undoubtedly be considered to be one of the most important stages in the formation of modern Western civilisation, since it is the very historical period when the national identity of virtually all the contemporary European nations is forged.

Despite many a cultural difference, the common Christian religion and Latin – the universal language of education – created a fertile ground for the emergence of an extraordinarily rich literature (both religious and secular), which later, in conjunction with the vernacular tradition, laid the foundations for the national literatures of the Romano-Germanic peoples.

Unfortunately the ensuing turbulent centuries of various socio-political cataclysms, such as wars and revolutions, witnessed the destruction and disappearance of many manuscripts which were meant to keep the precious gems of medieval literature. As a result very scarce, as compared to the actual amount of the material, information is currently available to contemporary scholars who aspire to shed light on the centuries which are conventionally, though erroneously (to my mind), known as the „Dark Ages‟.

In 1927 Charles H. Haskins published one of his most influential studies of the Middle

Ages under the title “The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century,” with the obvious intention to stir the minds of European scholars who connected the term „Renaissance‟ primarily with

Italy of later centuries. Yet, without doubt, however provocative the title was, it had sound grounds to be applied to the particular period of time in history. Haskins describes this period as one that witnessed “great economic changes,” “the influx of the new learning from the

East, the shifting currents in the stream of mediaeval life and thought,” “the mediaeval revival of the Latin classics and of jurisprudence, the extension of knowledge by the absorption of

ancient learning and by observation” (The Renaissance 4). All in all, a great social transition took place and it led to a more centralised type of government, the creation of a certain social and ecclesiastical hierarchy, as well as the establishment of a more powerful feudal rule. All these factors, in their turn, created favourable conditions for a spiritual resurgence thus leaving its imprint on the literature of the epoch, both Latin and the budding vernacular ones.

One of the most enchanting pages of the newly-emerged literature that has survived to some extent is the poetry attributed to the so-called „goliards‟ or clerici vagantes, otherwise known as the wandering scholars. The richness of topics and the freshness of the forms of expression that have survived in the manuscript of Cambridge University Library MS Gg.

5.35 of the eleventh century and the very famous thirteenth century Bavarian manuscript widely known as Carmina Burana or Codex Buranum allow us to speak about new peaks in

Latin poetry.

Throughout this paper the historical approach is applied to present the extensive research that has so far been carried out in the field of medieval secular Latin poetry. In addition, some concepts of Cultural Materialism and New Historicism are deployed to illuminate certain significant aspects of the Vagantendichtung, for the theoretical framework that has been established by Cultural Materialists and New Historicists over the past four decades contains approaches which can provide a new perspective for the study of the poetry of the vagantes. For this thesis, I have drawn generally upon the work by Jonathan Dollimore,

Alan Sinfield, Raymond Williams, Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose and others. Both

Cultural Materialism and New Historicism attach great importance to the socio-political context in which a literary work was written. Culture, however, “is not by any stretch of the imagination – not even the literary imagination – a unity”: it is created as a result of a

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complex interaction of dominant and non-dominant elements (Dollimore 6). In addition, the

Cultural Materialists suggest three aspects of historical and cultural process: consolidation, subversion and containment. Dollimore explains that the first phenomenon “refers, typically, to the ideological means whereby a dominant order seeks to perpetuate itself; the second to the subversion of that order, the third to the containment of ostensibly subversive pressure”

(10).

At some points, Greenblatt argues, it seems that the dominant ideology is quite tolerant of oppositional voices, but ultimately it “denies the possibility of plenitude” (27):

“[t]he subversive voices are produced by the affirmations of order, and they are powerfully registered, but they do not undermine that order” (38). The poetry of the vagantes is one such voice that distinguished itself from the dominant discourse of religious literature.

The Vagantendichtung was not a part of the dominant, ideologically orientated discourse of power which was promoted by the ruling class and the Church. On the contrary, it attempted to subvert the ecclesiastical dogmas that were imposed on the masses, since religion was one of the levers used by the newly emerging political system to sustain its continuity. The vagantes did manage to stir the political life of medieval Europe by providing an alternative way of thinking which, in some cases, was totally unacceptable from the position of power. First of all, the number of wandering scholars, most of whom were students, was large, a fact which in itself meant that they could pose a certain threat to the social structure of an area. A clear example of this is the student riot at the University of Paris in 1229, which was actually caused by the considerable pressure that the Church exerted on the scholars in its attempt to establish powerful control over the newly-emerging educational system. It ended with the papal bull Parens scientiarum of 1231 by which Gregory IX

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confirmed King Philip Augustus‟ decision to exempt students from lay jurisdiction and granted them more freedom to regulate the academic life of the university (Haskins, Rise of

Universities 22-3).

In addition, the clerici vagantes used poetry as a very effective means to attack and discredit certain low and high-post clergy and, sometimes, even the Pope himself, accusing them of various sins. These facts, perhaps, were taken into consideration by Helen Waddell when she described the vagantes as “one of the earliest disintegrating forces in the mediaeval church” (Wandering Scholars v). Yet, we should not perceive them as “avowed enemies of established religion and of Christianity” since the Church “was an integral part of their lives, as it was to every European of that day” (Zeydel 15). The subversive element of the

Vagantendichtung was directed at certain individuals and practices that discredited the

Christian faith, but on the whole the subversion ended up sustaining the existing power. Peter

Dronke‟s remark on Speculum stultorum by Nigel of Longchamps supports this point, since, as Dronke writes, “Nigel‟s masterpiece, the Speculum stultorum (or as Chaucer calls it, “Daun

Burnel the Asse”), is far more than anti-clerical satire, to amuse and instruct, by an author who has his own high but unpompous ideal of what the clerical life could be (The Medieval

Poet 285).

Besides this idealistic reason behind the poetry of the vagantes, there was also a practical one: in the Middle Ages good education was a source of economic wellbeing and a good chance to become a part of the power system. With regard to this Ernst R. Curtius writes,

A great many medieval authors wrote poetry because one had to be able to do so in

order to prove oneself a clericus and litteratus; in order to turn out compliments,

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epitaphs, petitions, dedications, and thus gain favour with the powerful or

correspond with equals; as also for the sake of vile Mammon. (468)

Different aspects of the Vagantendichtung or „goliardic poetry‟ have been thoroughly analysed by many prominent medievalists, such as Wilhelm Meyer, Peter Dronke, Karl

Strecker, Helen Waddell, Otto Schumann, to name but a few. Nevertheless, even these scholars do not provide us with a definite answer which poetry should be considered

„goliardic‟ and who the authors of those poems were. Is it exclusively the poetry written by the wandering scholars? Then its history should be traced back much earlier than the eleventh century since it is a fact that already in the sixth century, for instance, Venantius Fortunatus wandered throughout Europe in search of new experiences, knowledge and, why not, patronage (Wandering Scholars 26-7). Or maybe we should attach this name to a “kind of medieval lyric poetry typically celebrating love and drink” and sometimes containing “satire against the clergy” which was supposedly written by wandering scholars or goliards in

France, Germany, and England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the Oxford

Dictionary of Literary Terms1 suggests (143-44)? Then it becomes absolutely impractical to attribute these poems only to wandering scholars, since this kind of poetry could easily be written by anyone who spoke and wrote in Latin. In addition, the scholars who created this kind of poetry are known to have composed religious, love or philosophical poems as well. It

1 The complete entry in the dictionary is the following: goliardic verse [gohli-ard-ik] A kind of medieval lyric poetry typically celebrating love and drink, attributed to the goliards, who were supposedly wandering scholars in France, Germany, and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. Some of the goliardic lyrics also contain satire against the clergy. The most famous examples of goliardic verse appear in the Carmina Burana, a 13-century collection of Latin and German poems discovered in a Bavarian monastery in the 19th century. (143-44)

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is obvious that medievalists have not yet come to a certain conclusion, which still leaves space for discussion.

In this paper, by bringing together the existing historical and philological information and the researches in the field of medieval studies, I will attempt to outline the main distinctive characteristics of the Vagantendichtung, and show that it is secular poetry written by educated clerics most of whom were wandering scholars who deployed their extensive knowledge of classical literature to write learned pieces of poetry. Not only was their poetry entertaining but it also aimed at condemning the existing social conditions and the corruption of values among the clergy. Last but not least, this kind of poetry could enable them to find a powerful patron in whose service they would secure a comparatively carefree life.

Chapter One of this paper will provide a historical overview of the development of secular Latin poetry and the socio-political conditions (10th - 13th centuries) which shaped the form and the content of the Vagantendichtung. In Chapter Two I will try to clarify the confusion which has been created by the indiscriminate use of the word „goliard‟ and

„goliardic‟ wrongly attached to the poetry of the vagantes. Chapter Three presents the major names of the Vagantendichtung: the poets that belonged to different generations and contributed to the formation of this original „movement‟ in the Middle Ages. Chapter Four deals with the Cambridge Songs, which are basically written by the early vagantes, while

Chapter Five focuses on songs and poems from the Carmina Burana, the largest and most important collection of the Vagantendichtung, with the aim to show how their form and content developed as compared to the ones in the Cambridge manuscript. Finally, in the

Appendix one of the original characteristics of the Vagantendichtung, the so-called „goliardic

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metre‟ or the Vagantenstrophe, is discussed and illustrated by examples. This section also traces how this metre influenced, to some extent, later vernacular literatures.

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Chapter One

Historical Background

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which Curtius describes as the “culminating point of Latin poetry and learning” (26), a unique social and cultural milieu emerged on the basis of the Classical and Christian traditions. During this period the Vagantendichtung blossomed but unexpectedly faded away in the middle of the thirteenth century. Certain elements in that milieu directly affected and eventually shaped the body of the poetry of the clerici vagantes. So, to understand in what way the Vagantendichtung was formed, it is necessary to follow the development of secular Latin poetry up to that point from a much earlier period in literary history, and this should be done bearing in mind the fact that it is impossible to trace the changes in secular poetry without a close examination of the religious literature.

The adoption of Christianity in the fourth century by the Roman Empire can be roughly estimated as the end of the antique world and the beginning of a new era in the history of humanity. Although the influence of antiquity is ubiquitous throughout the history of the Western (and not only) world with the Latin language playing a catalytic role, the

Christian element crucially contributed to the formation of the new civilization. On this account a prominent German medievalist writes:

It is important for an understanding of Medieval Latin to realize that the

Church, apart from its purely linguistic influence, gives this language and

its literature its basic orientation. The ecclesiastical element appears

constantly in one form or another in secular prose and poetry, even if it is

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only in the form of parody. It is this ecclesiastical element that separates

Medieval Latin so sharply from Classical Latin on the one hand and the

Latin of the Humanists on the other. (Strecker, Introduction 25)

The Christian Church starts deploying literature as well as any other means available at the time to spread the word of God and to establish an ideologically supported system of control over the masses. Didacticism, as “a strategy of ideological struggle” (Dollimore 5), constitutes the content of literary works produced at the time. Consequently, sermons that become a very frequently-used means of propaganda are not “simply the occasion for the collective mind to celebrate its most cherished beliefs but an attempt to tell the sectors of an unruly populace what to think „in order‟ to keep them in their place” (Dollimore 5).

As far as poetic form is concerned, the Jewish psalm had been the model of the earliest

Christian hymns (Raby, Christian 2). Later many elements of antique versification were adopted due to the Hellenistic heritage that still remained the dominant cultural element in

Europe and the Middle East. This is the reason why the earliest Christian literature is written wholly in Greek (Raby, Christian 3). Only starting from the fourth century does the first Latin

Christian poetry appear. It is the translation of the Bible by Saint Jerome (c. 340-420) from

Greek to Latin at the beginning of the fifth century that actually established Latin as the official language of the Western Church, and, as Curtius puts it, it was St. Jerome who

“furnished the Middle Ages with an oft-repeated argument for utilising antique learning in the service of Christianity” (40). This is the reason why the quantitative metre of the ancient

Greek versification becomes and remains the predominant pattern of expression in the liturgy of the Church. Still St. Jerome‟s language already shows the changes that happened in the

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system of written Latin as compared to classical Latin (Brittain 5), because the language of his version, the Vulgate, is “the natural, unstilted, everyday Latin of the closing years of the fourth century” (Brittain 6). There were, however, exceptions: for example, St. Augustine of

Hippo (354-430), greatly influenced by Ambrose of Milan, deployed rhythmical verse, which

(although not popular for many centuries) became the forerunner of a kind of poetry that the vagantes quite willingly adopted and enriched.

In the course of time the Latin language was also changing: the spoken or Vulgar

Latin was becoming more and more popular, and the distinction of long and short vowels, which was an essential characteristic of classical Latin, was gradually fading. To some extent, it was the work of Gregory the Great in the sixth century that “gave an impulse to the

„barbarization‟ of Latin” (Raby, Christian 123). As we approach the ninth century, we can perceive that classical Latin had become a “purely cultural tongue” which was used in writing theological, philosophical, legal, and diplomatic pieces as well as poetry and prose fiction (Pei xvi). From the ninth century on, Latin as “the language of people” is replaced, though

“cautiously and hesitatingly at first, then more boldly,” by the new Romance languages (Pei

77). Due to these transitions in the language, it is not strange that in twelfth-century Latin works we find many inconsistencies and deviations from classical standards and the poets composing rhythmical verse would have problems stressing words: thus William Beare writes of Walter of Châtillon (one of the vagantes) that “in any word of more than two syllables, he would not have been able to give the word its correct accent” (12).

In the second half of the ninth century Notcker Balbulus (c. 840-912), a monk of St.

Gall, chooses to write his poems and songs in the form of the Sequence, which becomes one of the most popular forms of versification in the oncoming centuries (Raby, Christian 210-

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19). It achieves perfection in the twelfth century in the works of the authors of the so-called

‟Victorine‟ group of sequences.1 Although originally a religious form of expression, already in the ninth century we can find the first imitations of the sequence-form in some secular poems of early vagantes in the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, namely in Modus Ottinc, Mendosa cantilena, and Modus florum (Raby, Secular 2: 3). The Carmina Burana also possesses a large number of poems written by the vagantes in this genre. This fact indicates that the

Vagantendichtung initially was nothing but a skilful imitation of the already-existing literary forms. It is only in the twelfth century that we for the first time come across original forms of expression in the works of talented poets like the Archpoet and Walter of Châtillon., which will be discussed in Chapter Three and the Appendix.

However, the form is not the only aspect that interests us in this study, for it is primarily the content of the poetry of the vagantes that designates its special place in world literature. The content of a large number of poems is directly linked to the reality in which the poet would find himself. In the Early Middle Ages “the society was shaped by personal relationships like kinship and patronage; these structures were perpetuated not by abstract institutions but by the personal ties of inheritance” (Singman 1) and plenty of poems written by the vagantes give invaluable insights into many instances of those complex relationships.

Various socio-political changes that medieval Europe witnessed created a new reality.

Its basic characteristics were: the establishment of a centralised feudal system with its distinct hierarchies and bureaucratic structures; the proliferation of educational institutions and the increase in the number of educated people (though, as compared to modern times, a very

1 The name derives from the school of St. Victor founded in 1108 by William of Champeaux. Many beautiful Sequences were written by the scholars of that institution, the best of whom is considered to be Adam of St. Victor (Raby, Christian 348-75).

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meagre one); the acquisition of great power by the Church and its active participation in political life. The latter, Ierne L. Plunket asserts, “proved to be disastrous in the end,” since the Church succumbed to the temptations of wealth and power and used its influence to obtain more riches, thus turning the bishops into feudal barons; as a consequence “crept into the

Church the sin of „simony‟ or „traffic in holy things‟ so strongly condemned by the first

Apostles” (125). The vagantes, whose life was negatively affected by the emerging social divisions and injustice, undertook the task of criticising and exposing these misdoings.

A very important factor that caused the emergence of this new reality and greatly contributed to the development and, which is equally remarkable, preservation of the

Christian literature was monasticism, introduced by St. Benedict in the sixth century. The monasteries became the first medieval centres of education, which, in the eleventh-twelfth centuries, served as an impetus for the creation of the cathedral schools that were later transformed into universities. Although originally they followed a strict rule, eventually the abbots followed the “example” of bishops and became “feudal landlords with worldly interests” allowing vice and laziness to “spread and cling like bindweed” (Plunket 127).

The increase in the number of monastic and cathedral schools from the ninth century onward was also prompted by the demand for literate people who were needed to fill the positions in the newly-formed bureaucratic systems: the kings, the Church, the nobility and other landowners needed educated clerks to manage their property. In addition, the clerks, due to their extensive education in liberal arts, could entertain their employers by reciting or singing poems and songs, either their own or by a famous poet. At the end of the tenth century the roads of Europe, from south to north, witnessed an unprecedented movement of predominantly young people who were travelling from one school to another in order to

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acquire an education which would ensure a relatively secure future. The knowledge of Latin, which still was a living language and was to a great extent understood and spoken even by the lay people, facilitated the transfer from country to country.

For our study it is quite helpful to learn how the students and their teachers dealt with the harsh reality of the time, since it is they who formed the class of the vagantes and it is their everyday life that provided the bulk of the Vagantendichtung. This is how Plunket describes the conditions in which secular Latin poetry was destined to flourish:

Students lodged where they could, and ‘masters’ lived on the goodwill of

those who paid their fees, and starved if their popularity waned and with it

their audience. The life of both teacher and pupil was vague and hazardous,

with a background of poverty and crime lurking at the street corners to ruin

the unwary or foolish. (201)

The constant movement of students implied in itself the spread of various cultural elements from one area to another, which meant that similar cultural phenomena were observed in various parts of continental Europe as well as in Britain and Ireland. This is the reason why we meet the same or slightly modified versions or even literal translations of poems or songs in manuscripts compiled at different dates and found in various corners of the continent. Thus, we have the example of the eleventh-century Cambridge manuscript with the classmark UL Gg. 5.35, the last folios of which consist of carmina widely known as the

Cambridge Songs or the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, which was actually copied in Saint

Augustine‟s Abbey in Canterbury (Ziolkowski xvii), but as Strecker asserts, the collection

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itself was created on German territory and represents “ein Kulturdokument ersten Ranges”1

(Vorrede v). In addition, Jan Ziolkowski mentions that “the first few verses of one poem (CC

37) recur in the Christmas play contained in the Carmina Burana” (xviii), a thirteenth-century manuscript found in the monastery of Benediktbeuern.

In addition to their educational functions, the monasteries were also the main centres where manuscripts were compiled, copied, translated, and preserved. That is why a large number of manuscripts were later found in the libraries of some major monasteries. But it is interesting to note that, although they constituted a part of the ideological machine that perpetuated the power of the few over the masses, the monasteries also recorded the works of dissident authors, or as Greenblatt calls them “alien voices” (25). In what way this recorded material was used may only be subjected to speculations, since no specific information is available to us.

The manuscripts that contain the majority of the poems and songs written or composed by the „early‟ and „later‟ vagantes are two: the last ten pages (folios 432-41) of the

Cambridge manuscript Gg. 5.35 (XIth century) kept in the Cambridge University Library, and the Codex Buranus, MS No. Clm 4660 and 4660a (XIIIth century) of the Benediktbeuern monastery kept in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. The first manuscript constitutes

“a unique resource for the study of European lyric poetry” (Ziolkowski xviii), whereas the second one is considered to be “[t]he most famous and extensive collection of medieval Latin songs and poems” (Raby, Secular 2: 256). It should also be mentioned that a huge number of individual poems can be found scattered in other medieval manuscripts, sometimes even in a better form: for instance, there are poems by famous vagantes like Walter of Châtillon and

1 “A cultural document of the first order” (my translation).

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Peter of Blois in the manuscript Ff. 17 (1) of Cambridge University Library dated 1180- c.1230 (Stevens 3-4).

The Carmina Cantabrigiensia is mainly written in Latin, while the Carmina Burana is an exceptional collection which consists of a large volume of Latin poems and songs alongside many other texts, both vernacular and bilingual. Olive Sayce offers an extensive analysis on the subject of the multilingualism in the manuscript in Plurilingualism in the

Carmina Burana: A study of the Linguistic and Literary Influences on the Codex (1992), but what is pertinent to the current study is the fact that the original poetry of the wandering scholars was written in Latin.

To sum up, the form that the vagantes used to write their poetry developed from the earlier forms of expression which were widely used by poets of the classical and Christian eras. They, however, did not confine themselves to mere imitation but managed to create new form, such as the Vagantenstrophe. The content of the Vagantendichtung, on the other hand, was strongly affected by the socio-political milieu of the time the vagantes lived. This unique combination of sophisticated content and form sets the Vagantendichtung apart from other literary works of the Middle Ages.

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Chapter Two

Goliardi or Vagantes or… ?

A specific answer to the question in the title of this chapter is perhaps the most essential objective of this study, due to the fact that it is still not quite clear what terminology is most appropriate in order to describe the poetic movement of the era that is being discussed.

The arbitrary use of different terms1 has created some confusion which needs to be clarified.

In the English, Italian and French languages2, for instance, a generic name „goliardic poetry‟ is attached to particular poems written in the High Middle Ages, while the Germans and

Russians basically prefer the term “Vagantendichtung” and “poezia vagantov” respectively.

The origins of the word „goliard‟ were the subject of a great controversy in the previous two centuries. One of the most scrupulous studies on the history of the „goliards‟ is found in A. G. Rigg‟s “Golias and other Pseudonyms,” in which the author focuses on the name Golias and how that name was indiscriminately attached to various poems by scribes whose inadequate education was very often the main source of mistakes and wrong attributions. Rigg starts the essay quite promisingly by declaring that his objective is to “clear the air a little and to establish a context for the use of the word Goliardic,” which “is used freely by modern scholars to describe a loosely-defined (my italics) corpus of Medieval Latin poetry” (65). Although the analysis that follows covers many important aspects of the subject

1 I refer to terms like goliards, vagabonds, vagari, ribaldi, wandering scholars and many others which have been deployed by various scholars to describe the authors of the secular Latin poems of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. 2 In Italy at the end of the 19th century we find Corrado Corradino‟s I canti dei goliardi o studenti vaganti del Medio Evo (first published in 1892, and the 2nd edition in 1928), and in France – Les Poésies des Goliards (1931) by Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky. English, German and Russian sources are discussed below.

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(except the most important as he fails to mention Abelard) and provides us with a number of unique insights into the history of familia Goliae, Rigg concludes his essay by admitting that

“[s]ome of the most durable preconceptions about the nature of Goliardic verse need to be re- examined and, in many cases, entirely abandoned” (109).

The debate was apparently ignited by Thomas Wright‟s The Latin Poems Commonly

Attributed to Walter Mapes (1841), in which he spoke of „goliards,‟ goliardi or goliardenses.

Wright assumes that these names derive from Latin gula (= throat) “on account of their [the poets‟] gluttony and intemperance” (Wright xi). On the next page Wright mentions that there is a connection between the goliardi and the Golias (xii) – the main character of the poems that are included in the book: “Golias was the pater and the magister goliardorum; while the latter were the pueri and discipuli Goliae” (Wright xiii). These definitions seem quite satisfactory to many scholars since they explain the burlesque and profane nature of the majority of the poems. This fact, however, has created a tendency to indiscriminately generalize the terms “goliard” and “goliardic” in order to describe all secular rhythmical and rhyming Latin poetry of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries – something that Peter Walsh quite rightly discourages (Love Lyrics xv).

First, let us try to comprehend where the name Golias comes from. Golias is the medieval name for a vir spurius de castris Philisthinorum nomine Goliath, de Geth altitudinis sex cubitorum et palmi [a man baseborn from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of

Geth, whose height was six cubits and a span] (1 Samuel 17). In the Middle Ages, due to St.

Augustine‟s First Discourse on Psalm 33, Cassiodorus‟ Expositio in Psalmos and the Moralia of Gregory the Great, David is perceived as a type of Christ, and Goliath as a kind of Satan

(Walsh, Golias 1). So, Walsh continues, Golias “passes into the early mediaeval

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consciousness as a type of the devil, a foe of the Christian people, and as a title of the heretic”

(Golias 2). In the ninth century in one of his poems Sedulius Scotus describes a cattle-thief as

„Quidam latro fuit nequam de gente Goliae‟ (qtd. in Jarcho 524), “a certain very contemptible robber from the race of Golias” (my translation). It is only in the twelfth century that the name

Golias for the first time is attached to a specific type of poetry by Giraldus Cambrensis in his

Speculum ecclesiae (c. 1215) (qtd. in Walsh, Golias 2). Giraldus refers to poems that criticise and bring disgrace on the Pope and the Curia, and characterises their authors as parasitus (a parasite), gulositate (extremely gluttonous), non bene morigeratus (disobedient) and non minus impudenter (shameless)1 like Golias.

Another important fact that should be seriously considered is connected with the figure of Peter Abelard (c. 1079-1142). Perhaps the most eminent philosopher of his time – a

“brilliant young radical, with his persistent questioning and his scant respect for titled authority” (Haskins, Rise of Universities 21) – Abelard was ferociously attacked for his teachings by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The actual outcome of their conflict was the decision of the Council of Sens in 1140, by which Abelard was severely censured and silenced. What is pertinent to our study is the fact that in one of his letters St. Bernard “expressly compared

Abelard with Goliath” (Walsh, Love Lyrics xv). George F. Whicher comments on this fact by saying, “It was apparently in the sense of an adversary of righteousness, sort of antichrist, that

Bernard of Clairvaux stigmatized Abelard as a Golias and Arnold of Brescia as his armour- bearer” (3). At this point it is appropriate to cite Jonathan Dollimore, who writes that in order to legitimise and naturalise the existing social structure those who rule demonise the voices

1 The translations of the words and phrases are mine.

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that express contradiction and dissent (7). Although Dollimore uses the word “demonise” metaphorically, in the case of Abelard we see its literal application.

In the aftermath of Abelard‟s conviction, two extraordinary poems appeared:

Apocalypsis Goliae Episcopi and Metamorphosis Goliae Episcopi (the titles are given according to Wright (1, 21)), the latter written in „goliardic metre.‟ “[B]y vigorously defending Abelard and by bitterly denouncing Bernard and the Cistercian Order which he founded” (Walsh, Love Lyrics xv), the author (or authors, whether it was the same one still remains unknown) fiercely criticised the Church and its servants. There are various suggestions on this account but what seems more probable to me is the one that perceives these two poems, as well as others that followed on the same subject, as spiritual support for the great thinker. The perspective of the poems was later broadened to include a range of fresh subjects. With respect to this, Walsh writes:

From this base ‚Golias‛ was credited with a widening range of satirical and

comic poetic creations […]. The name Goliards was gladly adopted by the

army of vagantes […] bands, reminiscent of the hippies of the 1960s at their

internationally recognized gathering places. (Love Lyrics xv)

In other words, Sedulius‟ gente Goliae, which had a negative connotation and was thus perceived by a medieval mind, acquires a new, rather romanticised, meaning. Many poems with references to or in the name of Golias spring up in different parts of Europe and the name itself obtains mythical fame and turns into a sort of symbol of resistance and disobedience. It becomes a way of subverting authority by showing opposition to the growing pressure from the newly formed feudal centres of power. Satire, especially anonymous satire,

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becomes “an effective weapon, almost the only weapon which could wound such powerful adversaries [such as St. Bernard]” (Raby, Secular 2: 221). St. Bernard‟s attempts to silence

Abelard backfired and contributed to the spread of Abelard‟s teachings.

But is “goliard” a derivative of Golias? Walsh reminds us that “the terms “goliard” and “goliardic” were never used in the High Middle Ages to describe the authors (my italics) of love lyrics or their learned productions” (Love Lyrics xv), but it is a fact that the word goliardus and its variations were already in use in the twelfth century.1 In the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer uses the word “Goliardais” to describe the Miller, “He was a janglere and a Goliardais” (228). In the footnote to the word “Goliardais” the Norton

Anthology explains that “Goliard” means a “teller of ribald stories” (line 562), that is, it was perceived in this way by the contemporaries of Chaucer. So, it is most probable that the terms

“goliard” and “goliardic” actually derive from Golias, but they never acquired positive connotation in the Middle Ages, as happened to Golias after Abelard‟s conviction.

Some very illuminating information on the meaning of the word “goliard” is given by

Wright, yet many scholars seem to ignore it, though the information provided is confirmed by other sources as well, and it sheds light on the social status of “goliards” in medieval society:

The goliardi, in the original sense of the word, appear to have been in the

clerical order somewhat the same class as the jongleurs and minstrels

among the laity, riotous and unthrifty scholars who attended on the tables

of the richer ecclesiastics, and gained their living and clothing by practicing

the profession of buffoons and jesters. (x-xi)

1 As far as the adjective „goliardic‟ is concerned, Rigg, however, claims that it is not a medieval adjective (65).

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Hence, it becomes clear who the „goliards‟ were, but it is very much doubtful whether they are the authors of the poems and songs that came to be known as „goliardic.‟

A very important study that attempts to clarify the issue of authorship is that of Edwin

H. Zeydel. He makes a crucial distinction between the goliards and the vagantes and replaces the word „goliard‟ by the English „vagabond‟ (the title of his book Vagabond Verse: Secular

Latin Poems of the Middle Ages already makes it clear from the very beginning). According to Zeydel, “Mainly, they [the vagantes] were errant students and clerics, some having completed their education, others still hoping to do so, who through force of circumstances or by preference roamed about homeless, without office or preferment” (15). He also admits that

“the vagantes and goliards were sometimes indistinguishable” (17), and “[e]ven in the medieval documents there seems to be confusion of vagi, goliardi, and ioculatores” (41), but in fact, the goliards, although superior to the gleemen (18), should be distinguished as a class that “stood lower in the social scale than the vagantes”. Another distinctive feature of the vagantes was that they “usually wrote their own verse – always intended for their own class or for higher classes” and that they “took a critical attitude in their verse toward the clerical circles they themselves belonged to, even toward their superiors” (18).

Zeydel‟s analysis lacks only in one point: he does not provide us with a clear distinction of the class of goliards. Nevertheless, we may complete the image of a goliard by combining the information given by both Wright and Zeydel: thus, a goliard will appear to be a social outcast, who was in clerical orders but who, most probably, had not completed his education, and who used to entertain people in order to make ends meet. On the other hand, the vagantes were much better educated, and they were fond of publicising their literary skills. They were the first representatives of the up-and-coming class of intellectuals who

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would get high posts in different offices: for instance, Walter of Châtillon served under Henry

II and later became the secretary of the Archbishop of Reims (Parlett 44); the Archpoet was at the court of Reginald von Dassel, Archbishop of Cologne and Chancellor to Frederick

Barbarossa (Waddell, Mediæval 328). Their works showed that the vagantes had “an acute consciousness of belonging to a learned class”, which, in many cases, would perceptibly turn into a sense of superiority over the Church and the court1 (Yiavis 5).

Let us now consider the origins of the word vagantes: it derives from the Latin verb văgo(r) which means wander, roam. The stem of the word implies that people whom it described were wanderers, but at the same time they were recognisable as such all around

Europe since vagantes was used to characterise a certain category of people. In this respect,

Zeydel suggests the term “vagabond verse,” since it reflects the wandering nature of people who wrote that poetry.

The emergence of the class of vagantes within the hierarchy of the Church was caused by the demand that the new feudal relationships created. Zeydel draws the following picture of the time,

From the eleventh century on, students flocked from all direction to hear the

most famous professors, at first in the scholae publicae of Tours, Liège, St.

Gall, then in universities like Ravenna, Bologna, Padua, Paris, and Oxford.

The highways saw more and more of such wayfarers. They were often

penniless, although living was comparatively expensive and courses of

study long. Many who had finished their ecclesiastical studies, in which the

majority were engaged, could not secure the office they sought because of

1 Zeydel has earlier expressed a similar idea, “Proud as a class, the vagabonds acknowledged no intellectual superiors” (17).

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an over-supply of the candidates and an accumulation of the benefices in a

few hands. (15)

The last remark that Zeydel makes helps us understand why sometimes vagantes were confused with goliards: the most probable explanation is that a number of goliards were vagantes at some point of their life, but being unable to secure someone‟s patronage or find a

“decent” job (i.e. a job that would keep their status of educated clergy) due to “an over-supply of the candidates” (which was the direct result of an increase in the number of schools) they turned to entertaining people, something that was then considered to be an occupation of the lowest classes.

From what is said above, a legitimate question may arise: if the vagantes were wandering scholars, then how can we understand the fact that some known authors of the poetry of the vagantes were scholars that held high posts like Walter of Châtillon, for example? The answer lies in the fact that all educated men of the time, at one period of their life, had to travel from one school to another in order to acquire the many-sided education which no single school could successfully provide. Later in their lives they stood out as well- educated and clever clerks to whom kings and other men of power could entrust the running of some of their affairs. Another explanation is that the poetry of the vagantes became very popular at the time and many contemporary poets were definitely influenced by it. As a consequence, the Vagantendichtung was imitated and, as it is shown in the Appendix, it even influenced the religious verse of the time.

There are, however, some very influential medievalists who do not approve of this explanation. Peter Dronke, for instance, agrees with Wilhelm Meyer and Karl Strecker and

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assumes that it is incorrect to attribute the poems to “a ragged band of bohemians,” as he names the wandering scholars, but instead he suggests that the authors of the poems were

“hard-working, intellectually distinguished professional men” (Medieval Lyric 21). The main argument that lies behind this statement is the fact that many poems are of very high quality

(Dronke cites the example of the Archpoet), and show profound familiarity of the author with both classical and Biblical language, as well as “an intimate knowledge of Roman poetry such as even Renaissance humanists would have envied” (Dronke, Medieval Lyric 21). Although

Dronke‟s remark is absolutely true for a number of poems, there are still many mediocre pieces. Zeydel explains this by the fact that among those poems written by vagrant clerics,

“some of the songs are naturally of average calibre, others, however, are the products of genuine poets” (15).

As we can see, the scholars have not come to any definite conclusion due to the lack of sufficient historical material. Nevertheless, the poems themselves provide us with some clues such as elaborate language, extensive allusions to and quotations from both classical and

Christian authors as well as direct and indirect references to personal experiences. This material enables us, to a certain degree, to build a specific though incomplete image of people who wrote secular poems in Latin in the eleventh-thirteenth centuries.

The term vagantes appears to be the most appropriate to characterise these people. Not only does this word reflect the lifestyle of a number of poets at different stages of their lives, but it also tells us the story of the poems and songs: they were known around Europe due to the simple fact that they travelled with wandering scholars and goliards either orally or in written form, and that is how we find poems written in Germany preserved in a manuscript compiled in England as is the case of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia.

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The vagantes should be perceived as a separate class in the ecclesiastic hierarchy of the Catholic Church from approximately the early eleventh century, a class consisting of educated scholars, many of whom had to wander with the hope of securing patronage, or finding a job as a clerk, or, at least, receiving some food and shelter. Working for an influential patron would not only mean “securing the poet‟s sustenance” but also the patron

“was equally important for providing an audience” since “[t]he vagans could not sing his

Latin poems to the populace at large” and needed “a relatively intelligent and receptive audience” (Witke 206).

As it will be shown in the following chapters, the vagantes were well-educated and wrote poetry on various subjects, both religious and secular, but what distinguishes them from other scholars is the fact that they became the first European intellectuals who used literature to directly criticise and challenge the ecclesiastic authorities.1 Furthermore, in the aftermath of

Abelard‟s conviction, a “myth” of Golias2 was created, and Golias became a symbol of defiance3: not only did the followers of Golias/Abelard bring to light the sins and misdoings of the clergy, but they also criticised the established public morals by satirising them and promoting a more liberal lifestyle. Being part of the system, the clerics attempted to subvert the power from within, thus becoming one of the reasons why the punitive machine of the

Inquisition was created. Yet, the merits of the vagantes were not confined solely to socially

1 As Ronald E. Pepin rightly observes, this criticism was caused by social conditions that followed the Gregorian reforms. Those conditions sparked “the cynical responses which a learned group was able to express with biting wit and polished verse” (2). 2 Rigg (108) comes to the conclusion that the scribes created the literary myth of Goliards: it was a common practice in the Middle Ages to ascribe poems to famous personalities just by supposing that they might be the authors. 3 Waddell suggests that the Archpoet‟s Confession is “the first defiance by the artist of that society [the court of Rainald of Dassel] which it is his thankless business to amuse” (Wandering Scholars 169).

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and politically orientated poetry since they have also left us a large number of ingenious love lyrics preserved primarily in the Benediktbeuern manuscript. Moreover, the vagantes greatly contributed to the development of satire, petitionary poetry, erotic and drinking songs, as well as to the creation of new forms of versification which transcended Latin poetry and became an inseparable part of the national literature of many nations.

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Chapter Three

The Authors of the Vagantendichtung

In our attempt to understand the position of the vagantes within the society and in what way their poetry initially deviated from the dominating religious themes and later was orientated towards condemning and subverting the existing dogmas of the Catholic Church, we need to examine the scanty biographical information available about some of the major authors of the Vagantendichtung.

In the final notes to his Poezia Vagantov (1975)1 Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov, one of the most prominent Soviet specialists in the study of European literature and versification, rightly distinguishes between the “predvagantskaya literatura” (pre-vagantes literature) – an early stage of poezia vagantov that comes from the late Early Middle Ages (c. 5th-10th centuries), the basic representatives of which were poor clergy and students – and poetry of the vagantes of the High Middle Ages (c. 11th-13th centuries), which was predominantly written by churchmen of the highest ecclesiastical circles. This differentiation becomes plausible in the light of the analysis of two manuscripts: the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, which chiefly consists of early poems, and the Carmina Burana, which reflects a later development of the genre.2

1 Gasparov, M. L. Poezia Vagantov. Moscow: Nauka, 1975. Unfortunately, I could only find Gasparov‟s comments online (the same text from various sources), that is why my quotations lack page references. 2 As an example of a poem that can be considered to be a forerunner of the Vagantendichtung, Gasparov (Poezia Vagantov) mentions Coena Cypriani, which was probably written in the fifth-sixth centuries as a school exercise to help students get acquainted with the variety of biblical names. Although, to my point of view, it does not have a high literary value, Coena Cypriani has a large number of satirical elements. It describes the wedding festivity organised by King Joel to which many characters of both the Old and the New Testament are invited.

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The vast majority of poems from the abovementioned collections remain anonymous because the majority of vagantes were not accustomed to signing their works.1 The names of

Sedulius Scotus (9th century), Hugh Primas (c. 1090 - 1160), the Archpoet (12th century),

Peter of Blois (c. 1130 - 1212), Walter (Walther) of Châtillon, otherwise known as Gualterus de Castellione (end of the 12th- beginning of the 13th centuries), and of some others are attached to certain poems due to common characteristics which they share. The poets I have chosen to present here share plenty of common characteristics though they belong to different generations. I believe this will help us follow the developments that the poetry of the vagantes underwent.

The class of the vagantes consisted of clerics of different ages and naturally this fact was directly reflected in the content of the poetry they wrote. Younger students of cathedral schools and universities mostly wrote poetry in praise of drinking and debauchery with their youthful urge to stand out, show off and go against the established social conventions. The older vagantes for the most part preferred satirical, philosophical and petitionary poems and songs. However, the subject that formed the nucleus of the Vagantendichtung and was the favourite among the vagantes was, without doubt, love, both spiritual and sensual.

Initially, the early vagantes did not write love poetry or poems about carnal desires, apparently because the scholars in the Early Middle Ages still stood very close to the Church and more ardently followed the main concepts of the Christian belief. This is the main reason

The poem does not directly criticise religion, but the humorous mood is discernible, something that was quite audacious for the time. 1 In this respect it is quite surprising that Stella Georgala-Priovolou, in the introduction to a collection of one of few translations of the Vagantendichtung into Greek, attributes this fact to the “μετριουροσύνη” (modesty, unpretentiousness) of the Goliardi (14), because the poetry of the vagantes itself does not in the least support this hypothesis.

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why their poetry was devoid of conspicuous subversive elements. The poetry written by the

Irish monks who are assumed to be direct predecessors of the vagantes may serve as an example.

According to Raby, the Irish monks were “tempted to cross the sea to find a career on the Continent” (Christian 193). To this „economic‟ explanation, Gasparov adds a „political‟ one by saying that those monks were forced to move to the Continent due to the instability of

Ireland, which was the result of continuous wars with various invaders (Poezia Vagantov).

Whatever their motives might have been, one thing is definitely clear: a substantial number of educated Irishmen disembarked on the Continent during the ninth century, bringing with them some pieces of the classical Greek culture (especially the language) they had managed to preserve. They gave Europe “their feeling for classical literature: their handling, sensitive and fearless, of paganism” (Waddell, Wandering Scholars 39). But what brings them very close to the vagantes was their ethos: their “desire to create a favourable impression by a parade of learning, which was tempered by an easy-going attitude on non-essentials and a willingness to take whatever their patrons could be induced to provide” (Raby, Secular 1: 236).

The most prominent of those monks, “a precursor of the wandering scholars”

(Whicher 7), was Sedulius Scotus1 or Sedulius of Liége, also referred to as Sedulius the

Irishman (flourished 848-874). We cannot consider him to be one of the vagantes but there is an unmistakable resemblance between Sedulius and a vagans poet, “wie sie zwischen dem

Kinde und dem reifen Menschen besteht”2 (Jarcho 525). He was a teacher, grammarian, and a

Scriptural commentator who wrote on both religious and secular subjects and is even

1 Some scholars spell Scottus, others use only one „t.‟ I have used Scotus except in cases when the scholar I quote uses the other spelling. 2 “as it exists between a child and a mature man” (my translation).

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considered to be “one of the founders of the political literature of the Middle Ages” (Raby,

Christian 196), but what is pertinent to our subject is the fact that in his poems, most of which are based on his personal experience, we find various descriptions of monks wandering around Europe begging for food and shelter, and complaining if what they were given was not good enough (Raby, Christian 194).

He was, perhaps, the brightest and most talented representative of the Irish school. His poetry covered various aspects of human activity; “… he sought his subjects in experience and in life, and conveyed into his verses the impression of a lively personality” (Raby,

Christian 196). He also continued Martial‟s tradition of begging-poems, which will later become the “trademark” of the vagantes.

From what is known to us, the doctos grammaticos presbiterosque pios, as Sedulius calls himself and his companions (qtd. in Raby, Secular 1: 242) leave Ireland and arrive in

Liége circa 848, “tempest-tossed and sodden in a scurry of sleet” (Waddell, Wandering

Scholars 65). Here we find Sedulius‟ first petitionary poems addressed to Bishop Hartgar:

florida Thespiadum soror ac praenobilis Eglae Glorious, swanlike Aegle, the muses’ fair sister,

cignea, mellifluous nunc cane, posco, tropos; I implore you to sing your mellifluous songs.

obsecro: Pegaseo flavum caput erige fonte, O eloquent maiden and musical grace,

femina doctiloquax organicumque decus; raise your golden head from the font of Pegasus;

syrmate purpureo glaucisque venusta capilis, so elegant in purple array and radiant hair,

oscula da labiis Sedulio roseis: grant a kiss to Sedulius with your rose-red lips.

musigenum plectro cytharizans texito Carmen Aegle, as you play upon the muses’ lyre, compose 1 permulcens aures nobilis Hartgarii. a song to delight the ears of noble Hartgar.

1 The Latin text is cited by Raby (Secular 1: 243), and the translation is Doyle‟s (Sedulius Scottus 99).

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When Hartgar dies in 854, the Irishmen manage to secure the patronage of the next bishop, Bishop Franco, whom Sedulius welcomes with equal reverence, “splendide pastor, ave, Franco, lux aurea cosmic” (qtd. in Raby, Secular 1: 246). Raby mentions that Sedulius had “the gift of making himself known and remembered by the great,” thus we find Sedulius‟ poems addressed to Margrave Eberhard of Friuli, to Emperors Lothar and Charles the Bald and to Louis, king of Germany (Secular 1: 246).

Sedulius has all the characteristics of a vagans poet with the exception of the fact that in his poems he uses only classical metres and the Christian element is present in all his works. Even in the eclogue in which Sedulius describes the contest between the Rose and the

Lily we find an allegorical reference to the blood of the martyrs and the sacred virginity:

tu, rosa, martyribus rutilam das stemmate palmam, O rose, crown the martyrs in wreaths of purple; 1 lilia, virgineas turbas decorate stolatas. lilies, grace the virgin’s retinue arrayed in stoles.

Although we do not possess much information about Sedulius‟ life, his poems help us build the image of a scholar who lived on the generosity of his patrons and showed his gratefulness in charming poems addressed to them.

Two centuries separate Sedulius and Hugh Primas (or Hugh/Hugo of Orléans), during which rhythmical verse reached new heights2 and brought fresh forms of expression into Latin versification. Those two hundred years, however, did not produce any major

1 The Latin text is cited by Raby (Christian 195), and the translation is Doyle‟s (Sedulius Scottus 172). 2 It is already widely accepted that rhythmical poetry existed even in antiquity, though it was much less popular than the classical quantitative verse.

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vagans poet who would distinguish himself among his contemporaries.1 In that turbulent era, as Waddell laconically remarks, “[m]anuscripts perished everywhere” (Wandering Scholars

68), and there is very little information available concerning the secular poetry. There is no doubt, however, that Sedulius‟ tradition had continuity and the poetry we observe in the twelfth century is the apogee of that tradition.

In the beginning it was Léopold Delisle2 who pursued Primas through chronicles, anecdotes and rubrics of manuscripts (Rigg 67). Then, in 1907 it was Wilhelm Meyer, who, after studying the Rawlinson MS GI09 kept in Oxford, came to the conclusion that twenty- three poems which begin the manuscript belong to the same person. According to Fleur

Adcock, “Eight of them (poems 1, 2, 11, 15, 16, 18, 21 and 23) were „internally signed‟ by the name of Primas, and there was evidence from other sources that four more might well be his” (ix). Finally, Lehmann in 1920 and Langosch in 1954 added some other poems to

Meyer‟s list (Rigg 67).3

Raby and Gasparov consider Primas the most original of all the Medieval Latin poets since he deviated from the conventional subjects and forms of expression. As Raby writes,

1 The names of two wandering scholars, that of Gerbert and Nicholas Breakspear (Waddell, Wandering Scholars 73), are known to us but their poetry lacked originality and creative use of various metres. 2 Rigg (67) mentions the following works:

Léopold Delisle, « Notes sur quelques manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Tours », in Bibliothèque de l’école

des Chartes, 29 (1868), pp. 596-611 ; « Les écoles d’Orléans au deuxième et au troisième siècle », in

Annuaire Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de la France, Paris, 1869, pp. 139-154 ; « Le Poète Primat » in

Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes, 31 (1870), pp. 302-311.

3 Lehmann, P. Mittellateinische Verse, in «Distinctiones monasticae et morales», in Münchener Sitzungsberichte,

Münich, 1922, 2e Abh.

Langosch, Karl. Hymnen und Vagantenlieder, Basel/Stuttgart, 1954, pp. 293-294. (Rigg 67)

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“he was not concerned to imitate ancient models, and he took his subjects according to his fancy” (Secular 2: 180). Philip S. Allen underlines another unique aspect of his poetry:

… Hugo does not attain the latter’s [the Archpoet’s] profundity of thought

and emotion. A certain splendour and richness of imagery which invariably

attend the Archpoet’s efforts are lacking in our equivocal Frenchman. But

on the other hand there is no trace in Hugo of the learned professor and

poet as in Walter of Châtillon – he is simple and human as no other of his

time. (242)

Hugh of Orléans was a famous scholar, a teacher of grammar and rhetoric and, perhaps, this is where his nickname comes from. Throughout his vagabond life he did not manage to find a patron who would constantly support him: on the contrary, he had to subsist on the scarce alms he was able to secure. Deprivation left an indelible trace on his poetry and harsh social criticism became a recurring motive in his works.

As far as factual information is concerned, Dronke mentions that “[f]or the career of

Hugh Primas, we have a range of anecdotal evidence outside his poems” (Hugh Primas xvii): references to him are found in various sources in one of which he is even elevated to Ovid‟s fame (Raby, Secular 2: 171). Even in the fourteenth century in Boccaccio‟s The Decameron we find a story about Primas and the Abbot of Cluny: Bergamino, who tells the story, portrays

Hugo as “a very great grammarian” who “had no equal as a quick and gifted versifier,” and who lived “in Paris in a state of poverty” (56).

Primas writes about earthly things ab imo pectore; for example, he does not describe his lover as a conventional bella donna but as a prostitute in Idibus his Mai. Satire is his main

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weapon and as Charles Witke observes, it has a social function since he “attacks the vices of intellectual impiety and hypocrisy and lack of charity” (230). Through his poems we can follow his wanderings: his traces are found in Orléans, Paris1, Rheims, Amiens where he gambled all his money (Ambianis, urbs predives2), and in Beauvais where he was left dissatisfied by the newly-elected bishop (Iniuriis contumeliisque concitatus). In the final years of his life he suffered immensely from poverty and lived solely by begging which is depicted with great bitterness in his last poems.

Hugh‟s rhetorical tricks are studied and very ostentatious (Zeydel 31), but he is not fond of the Vagantenstrophe, which is not yet popular in his lifetime. He prefers the two- syllable leonine hexameter, in which the caesura rhymes with the end of the line (Zeydel 35), and he uses it with such a great skill that none of his contemporaries manages to rival him

(Raby, Secular 2: 179). Yet, the mood of his poems “has been described as darker or more sombre and more vindictive than that of the Archpoet, and his style as cruder” (Adcock xi).

The German Archpoet (or Archipoeta), who belongs to the next generation of vagantes after Primas, is another colossus of the Vagantendichtung, who was thoroughly studied for the first time by Max Manitius in his Die Gedichte des Archipoeta in 1913.

Waddell calls him “the greatest” of all the vagantes, but “nameless: … a ghost, but a ghost with a cough” (Wandering Scholars 166). It is known that he was of knightly birth but the pursuit of arms was the last thing he was interested in (Raby, Secular 2: 181). Unfortunately, there is no factual biographical evidence, however, ten poems signed by this pseudonym have

1 Mentioned in Vir pietatis inops. 2 In the same poem we find a panegyric dedicated to Rheims.

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been found and they shed some light on the facts1 of his life between 1161 and 1165. If we follow the poems, we observe a depiction of a life full of ups and downs: at one point we find him under the protection of Rainald of Dassel, the Archbishop of Cologne to whom he dedicates some poems, but on the other hand he writes about the experience of wanderings and poverty. The poems indicate that he “struggled with poverty, loved good wine, and had to flatter the great to earn his living” (Raby, Secular 2: 181).

The most famous of all the poems attributed to him is Æstuans intrinsecus (c. 1160)

(CB 191)2 in translation known as The Confession of Golias or The Archpoet‟s Confession3, which praises and promotes a highly humoristic approach to life. Its structure suggests a subversion-containment model: in the beginning, the voice speaks of his sins but he seems to enjoy the experience. In the end, however, he asks for forgiveness and support from the representative of the authority who surely condemns the voice‟s experience. It is one of the earliest poems known to us that is written in the Vagantenstrophe.

According to the Archpoet, a vagabond cleric cannot live without women:

1 In Chapter Two I have already mentioned that some scholars do not completely trust these „facts‟ that are found in the poems, and unless new information is available, it will be impossible to take sides. 2 Raby mentions that different variations of this poem are found in other manuscripts (Secular 2: 183), which shows that the poem was very popular and was transmitted probably orally since the texts are not entirely identical. Wright (71) gives us the following sources: MSS. Harl. 978, fol. 99, r0 (H. 1.); Harl. 2851, fol. 14. (H. 2.);

Harl. 3724, fol. 45, r0 (H. 3.); Cotton. Vespas. A. xix. fol. 55, (C. 1.); Vespas. B. xiii. fol. 132, v0 (C. 2.). MS. Cantab.

Corp. Chrl. Coll. No. 450. Parlett, however, writes that the versions of the poem “are recorded in over thirty other manuscripts” (25) in addition to the Carmina Burana. 3 In the poem there is no direct reference to Golias, but as Wright mentions in the notes, “In H. 2. this poem has the rubric Item Guleardus de Vitæ suæ mutacione. In H. 1. it follows the Apocalypsis Goliæ, with the rubric Explicit Apocalypsis, Incipit Confessio ejusdem. In C. 1. it has the simple title Cofessio Goliæ” (71). Wright himself publishes the poem in Class I. Poems bearing the name of Golias (1); David Parlett on the other hand has used the title The Archpoet‟s Confession (151).

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(Stanza 6)1

Præsul discretissime, veniam te precor: Give, O reverend my Lord, ear to my confession:

morte bona morior, dulci nece necor; it’s a goodly death I die, sweet is my secession –

meum pectus sauciat puellarum decor, dying, as I am, for girls oozing with temptation:

et quas tactu nequeo, saltem corde mœchor. those I can’t possess, I’ll take in my imagination.

The second domain in which he excels is gambling which is followed by the final trait of a Goliath‟s descendant – his love of fine food and wine.

(Stanza 10-11)2

Secundo redarguor etiam de ludo, Secondly, I stand accused of dicey entertainment. sed cum ludus corpore me dimittit nudo, Well, suppose a cast or two did rob me of my raiment? frigidus exterius mentis æstu sudo; Outside, I could feel the cold – inside, I was sweating tunc versus et carmina meliora cudo. at the anvil of my art: better verse begetting.

Tertio capitulo memoro tabernam: Item Three against me reads ‘TAVERN’. I won’t skirt it. illam nullo temore sprevi neque spernam, Since I never pass one by, now I shan’t desert it – donec sanctos angelos venientes cernam not, at least till I’m assured the heavenly choir has started cantantes pro mortuis “requiem eternam.” droning ‘Requiem aeternam’ for this dear departed.3

1 The actual text of the poem is taken from Carmina Burana: Lieder der Vaganten (26-44), but I have connected the line with seven syllables with the line that follows with six to illustrate the Vagantenstrophe. The translations of the poem that follow are Parlett‟s (151-58). 2 See note 1. 3 Concerning this poem, Vaios Lazos (187-8) makes the interesting comment that it is obviously written by two authors – the first wrote the main part and the second just completed it and quite possibly made some changes to the original text. The reason for this suggestion lies in the fact that from the first stanzas and especially in the seventh we perceive a youth‟s voice while in the twenty-fourth the poet addresses Electe Colonie, his patron Rainald of Dassel, but from the information available we know that the Archpoet received this patronage when

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Gasparov describes the Archpoet‟s poetry as light and musical (Poezia Vagantov). It lacks Primas‟s gloominess, and the stylistic devices that he basically uses are satire and irony, especially when he wants to attack his opponents. For Waddell, “[h]e has the diabolic rhyming of Don Juan, the Ariel lightness of Iolanthe, and he made his own tunes: Gilbert and

Sullivan in one” (Wandering Scholars 168). The poems of the Archpoet reveal a man of great intellect; a man who calls himself vates vatum (qtd. in Raby, Secular 2: 180) and who dares excuse himself from praising the deeds of the Emperor. He can be considered as a model of a vagans poet since he embodies all the characteristics that I have attached to the vagantes in

Chapter Two.

Chronologically, the next leading name of the Vagantendichtung is Walter of

Châtillon, about whose life we have more information. He was originally studied by Karl

Strecker in Die Lieder Walters von Chatillon in der Handschrift 351 von St. Omer (1925), and is considered to be the author of four satirical and moralizing poems found in the CB – Nos. 3,

8, 41, 123 (Walsh, Love Lyrics xvii). From Glynn Meter‟s description of Châtillon‟s youth we envisage a true wandering scholar who travelled a lot around Europe in search of a better education:

He was born in or near Lille […] probably in the third decade of the twelfth

century. He studied under Steven of Beauvais, was head of the school at

Laon and that of Châtillon. […] He might have been involved in the service

he was already rather old. Although Lazos‟ supposition is not groundless, we should not forget that the Archpoet had a great talent in using a wide range of literary conventions, and as Dronke warns us “his leitmotif of the wayward, wretched vagabond-poet who is compelled to beg from his patron and his audience contains far less autobiography than literary craft” (Medieval Lyric 21).

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of Henry II of England. Although Walter became well-known for his lyric

verse in Châtillon, he was dissatisfied with teaching the liberal arts and

went to Bologna to study law. He might have been in Rome at this time.

Back in France he became notarius et orator in Rheims for Archbishop

William. (28)

This extract reveals the basic characteristic facts about the lifestyle of the majority of educated vagantes of the High Middle Ages. Yet, Walter himself did not suffer from poverty and his poems are devoid of lines begging for food or patronage in contrast to Primas and the

Archpoet.

Walter had extensive knowledge of Latin and this made him a versatile writer who wrote many wonderful pieces of love lyrics and satirical poems – quedam ludicra or “light verses” as David Townsend calls them (xii) – as well as one epic work – Alexandreis (first printed in Rouen in 1487), which was quite popular during the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance. Raby mentions that “Walter used all the conventional material for his songs, but often enough in reading him we are conscious of the quality which marks him out as a poet of original gifts” (Secular 2: 192). As an example, he quotes poem No. 18 from Handschrift 351 von St. Omer in which Walter “sings, in the usual way, of the approach of winter which cools the ardour of love in the beasts, but not in the poet‟s breast” (Secular 2: 192):

Importuna Veneri Now wintry blasts have come again

redit brume glacies, The toils of love impending,

redit equo celeri From swollen skies come sleet and rain

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Iovis intemperies. Post haste to earthward speeding;

Cicatrici veteri In token of the old campaign

squalet mea facies: My cheeks are scarred and bleeding:

amor est in pectore Such love is in my breast that I,

nullo frigens frigore. When winter is most frigid, fry.1

The bulk of his work, however, consists of moral and satirical pieces in which, among other things, he dares criticise the rulers of the Church. This is apparently the reason why young rebellious scholars indulged themselves in reading, imitating and spreading Walter‟s poems. As a consequence, according to Walsh, “Walter‟s eminence as a lyric poet attracted imitators dignified with the label of his “school”2 (Love Lyrics xvii). In various manuscripts of the time there are many poems which bear the traces of Walter‟s style and it is quite difficult to surely attribute them to him.

From what is available to us we can infer that Walter was in favour of the

Vagantenstrophe; he preferred especially the combination of three lines in the

Vagantenstrophe with a line in hexameter from a classical verse by a famous author (Curtius

152). It became known as “Vagantenstrophe mit Auctoritas” in German and “Goliardic stanza with auctoritas” (or “with authority”) in English. In general, it is most likely that autoritas was used to make the poem appeal to an educated reader (Pepin 98). Raby, referring to

Strecker, does not exclude the possibility that Walter himself was the inventor of this verse- form since there is no trace of it before his time (Secular 2: 196).

1 George F. Whicher‟s translation (128-9). 2 In Secular Latin Poetry (Volume 2) there is a part called “Poems of the School of Walter of Châtillon” (204- 214), in which Raby elaborates more on Walter‟s influences.

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Thus, in one of Walter‟s poems we read:

Cum mundum intuear sordis fluxu mersum When I observe the world sunk in filthy stream et nature penitus ordinem perversum and Nature’s order utterly overthrown, et hunc a principibus in vulgus dispersum and this from princes to paupers spread, si Natura negat, facit indignatio versum. if Nature refuses, indignation makes my verse.1

The first three lines of this stanza delineate Walter‟s social criticism, which shows striking similarity to Hugh‟s poetry, while the last line borrowed from Juvenile‟s first satire

(line seventy-nine) is probably used to give added weight to his judgement.

A contemporary of Walter of Châtillon, yet probably a bit younger than him, was another bright representative of the Vagantendichtung, Peter of Blois, who enriched Carmina

Burana with some love lyrics and six moralizing poems “with distinctive techniques of metrical composition” (Walsh, Love Lyrics xvii). At a younger age he wandered around

European centres of education: he studied law in Bologna, and theology in Paris, where he later taught the liberal arts. In 1167 Count Stephen du Perche brought him to Sicily (1167).

Here he became preceptor of the king, guardian of the royal seal, and one of the queen's principal counsellors. However, he left Sicily in 1169 and after several years in France, moved to England, where he became one of Henry II's diplomatic agents undertaking negotiations with the Pope and the King of France. In 1176 he became chancellor of the

Archbishop of Canterbury and Archdeacon of Bath.2

We can see that he belonged to the highly educated and successful stratum of the vagantes. In his youth he composed a number of love songs with an excellent use of

1 Pepin‟s translation (98). 2 The information about his life is taken from the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

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rhythmical forms and was highly praised by Walter of Châtillon (Raby, Secular 2: 324).

These works which were preserved in various manuscripts should definitely be considered to be a part of the Vagantendichtung. Nevertheless, the majority of his later works were on more serious subjects of moralizing character which were greatly influenced by contemporary philosophical writing.1 A characteristic example of those opposite views may be observed between his early poem Dum Prius Inculta (CB 84) and a comment made by him in one of his later letters. In the poem he explicitly describes a scene of rape:

Tantalus admotum I was a Tantalus who did not lose

non amitto potum. the drink placed before him. But

sed, ne tamen totum so that she should not deny me my frustret illa votum, full longing, I put my arm again suo denuo around her neck, brought her iungens collo brachium, down, and forced apart her ruo, diruo interlocking thighs. I thrust all of tricaturas crurium.

ut virginem devirginem, me all the way in to deflower her

me toti totum insero; virgin flower; I loosed the hinge

cardinem, determinem to bring this duel to a close. This duellum istud, resero. is my manner of campaigning in sic in castis milito. warfare.2

1 Walsh mentions the influences of Bernard Silvestris‟ Cosmographia (c. 1140s) and Gerald of Wales‟ De Mundi Creatione in connection to poem 67 from the Codex starting with “A globo veteri” (Love Lyrics 26). 2 Walsh‟ translation (Love Lyrics 89-91).

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This is one of the many similar poems which Peter denounced later as unrestrained songs – lasciviores cantilenae (Walsh, Love Lyrics 91).1 The reason for this denunciation is probably found in the fact that after acquiring a high social status he became a part of the dominant discourse. So the subversive poetry of his youth was successfully contained.

From the few biographical facts and literary works of the most famous authors of the

Vagantendichtung we can conclude that although the vagantes belonged to the ecclesiastic system, they wrote secular poems and songs which praised sensual delights and criticised the established social conditions. The clerici vagantes propagated ideas which opposed the dominant ideology of the Church and that of the ruling class, and which were orientated towards “improv[ing] their society, and accordingly the ethos of their satire was one of practicality and usefulness, with varying degrees of anger supplying ostensible motives”

(Witke 206). Nevertheless, we should not forget that by writing unconventional (for their contemporaries) and highly entertaining poems and songs they sought to attract the attention of wealthy patrons, which means that the vagantes also pursued the goal of gaining material benefits from the very system that they criticised.

1 Walsh uses Peter‟s letter to a friend in which he writes, “Omissis ergo lascivioribus cantilenis, pauca quae maturiore stylo cecini tibi mitto.” This extract is also quoted in Raby (Secular 2: 263), where the author explains that the poems of moralizing character were the ones “he [Peter] wished to preserve for posterity.”

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Chapter Four

The Cambridge Songs

The collection of songs that this Chapter describes was compiled in the ninth to eleventh centuries, when the influence of the antique authors was still quite strong and they were ardently studied and imitated in monastic and cathedral schools. Yet, with the

Carolingian Renaissance a certain shift took place: the old forms of expression were being improved and gradually ingenious literary elements started to appear in Latin literature. The number of patrons that supported the development of educational institutions also multiplied, since, as it has already been mentioned, there was an increasing need for educated clerks who would be able to run the newly-emerging offices in the royal or Episcopal courts, or at least keep some records for the property owners. These social and cultural developments in the history of medieval Europe contributed to the formation of a new class in the ecclesiastic hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the class of the vagantes.

The Carmina Cantabrigiensia (c. 1050) or Cambridger Lieder or the Cambridge

Songs1 is the earliest survived collection of poems and songs that contains the works of the early vagantes. Nowadays it occupies folios 432r1-443v2 of MS. Gg. 05. 35, a 446-folio manuscript kept in the Cambridge University Library. The rest of the manuscript, Raby informs us, is “a collection of Christian poetry, consisting of Aldhelm‟s Aenigmata and De

Virginitate, and verses of Boniface, Milo, and Smaragdus” (Secular 1: 291). Ziolkowski also

1 Ziolkowski writes that “[n]one of these designations appears in the manuscript itself; rather all three are nineteenth- and twentieth-century coinages” (xvii). The first two, for example, are in the title of Karl Strecker‟s Die Cambridger Lieder (Carmina Cantabrigiensia), Berlin 1926, while the third one is in the title of Karl Breul‟s The Cambridge Songs: A Goliard‟s Book of the XIth Century, Cambridge, 1915.

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mentions poems from late antiquity such as the Distichs of Cato, Bede‟s poem on the Day of

Judgment, and the riddles of Eusebius, Tatwine, Boniface, Symphosius, Hrabanus Maurus‟s

De laudibus sanctae crucis and Hucbald of Saint Amand‟s poem in praise of baldness (xxvii).

It is noteworthy that there is a folio at the beginning of the manuscript on which a medieval scribe has written down the content of the volume, but unfortunately only one page has survived: there is a gap between this folio and the initial folio 1 of the poems, which makes us believe that some other folios with the content are missing.

Although Karl Breul identifies the Carmina Cantabrigiensia as a “song book of a clericus vagabundus” (23), it is still early to speak of the poetry of the vagantes in the sense I suggested in Chapter Two, since the vagantes did not constitute a separate class yet, and the carmina of the manuscript lack the originality and rhythmic forms of expression that distinguish the vagantes of the twelfth century. Naturally, the Vagantendichtung had its predecessors, and the Cambridge Songs should be considered as such owing to the fact that as

“the earliest medieval collection to include an appreciable number of secular lyrics”

(Ziolkowski xxx), it contains six love poems with content very explicit for the morality of the time, as well as satirical poems that were to become very popular among the vagantes in the oncoming centuries.

The original supposition that the poems of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia are of

German origin and were probably put together in Rhineland (Raby, Secular 1: 293) is nowadays partly rejected by new studies. Ziolkowski (xxx-xxxix) brings evidence from various sources that allows us to claim that although the heart of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia is German, it includes poems that reveal French, Italian and Spanish elements. In addition, the actual manuscript which is now kept in Cambridge was compiled in Saint Augustine‟s Abbey

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in Canterbury by five scribes and is definitely of English origin, because the script reveals distinctive Anglo-Saxon features (Ziolkowski xxxi).

Since the first complete edition of the carmina by Breul it has been widely accepted that the Carmina Cantabrigiensia consists of 49 poems which are exclusively written in Latin with only some macaronic poems having lines in German. This restriction in the number was made on the basis of the fact that the forty-nine poems are written by the same scribe, conventionally known as “scribe A,” while the final two folios are the work of another scribe.

Two of the poems (No. 28 and 49) are wholly indecipherable because they were deliberately erased by an unknown censor,1 and this is why some books refer to 47 poems only.

In 1982, however, a detached list from the manuscript was found in Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitäts Bibliothek in Germany (Ringrose 1); it is now put in a plastic membrane and kept in the same box with the manuscript in Cambridge. It is the leaf whose original place was between folios 441 and 442 and it includes “twenty-seven passages of opening lines from the metra in Boethius‟s Consolation of Philosophy” (Ziolkowski xxvii).2 To these poems

Ziolkowski suggests adding seven others from folios 442r1-443r2 which follow the 49 poems of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia (xxvii). Thus, in the light of this new evidence, Ziolkowski proposes expanding the Carmina Cantabrigiensia to at least 83 poems (xxvii).

1 To illustrate how a censor carried out his duties and eliminated inappropriate poems, Ziolkowski provides his translation of a passage about the life of Majolus, an abbot of Cluny from 964 to 994, from Vita Maioli 2. 4, PL 137. 755D, with an allusion to Deuteronomy 21. 10-14: “Those which were unnecessary – that is to say, which were about love and concern for secular matters – he erased as if they were poisoned and lethal; he reduced them to smooth baldness and scratched them away with a very sharp metal tool, in the manner of finger nails” (xxix). 2 Actually, the first two poems are given in complete form. Ziolkowski also mention that Boethius‟s work has twelve other meters, which allows us to suppose that there are probably other missing leaves as well. It means that the actual number of poems in the collection was greater (xxvii).

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Strecker suggested the hypothesis of the existence of an original collection of sequences or Ursequenzensammlung (Vorrede xiii), from which the sequences of the

Cambridge Songs were copied. His supposition has been supported by the fact that the same sequences (CC 5, 11, 14, 15) are found in another manuscript of the eleventh century, MS

3610, codex Augustanus 8° 56. 16, Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek (Ziolkowski xxxiv). Strecker‟s observation seems to be quite valid and it partially explains why the collection of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, the content of which has no connection with

England, is preserved in Canterbury: the poems have great musical value, and this fact may have prompted the monks of Saint Augustine‟s Abbey to copy them from the original manuscript which probably got into their hands by chance.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century scholars have been speculating over the origins and functions of the manuscript that includes the Carmina Cantabrigiensia. As

Ziolkowski mentions there are five theories concerning it: a) Breul‟s theory according to which the Cambridge Songs should be studied separately from the rest of the manuscript and be perceived as a songbook of a wandering minstrel or goliard, which he carried with him and used to entertain different types of audience (xx-xxii); b) Traube‟s and Brinkmann‟s theory suggests that the carmina form a manual of instruction for a wandering clerk (xxii); c)

Strecker supported that the poems were collected by a poetry lover for their literary value

(xxii-xxiii); d) Spanke, on the other hand, appreciated the musical value of the poems and sees them as “ein lateinisches Liederbuch des 11. Jahrhundrets” (qtd. in Ziolkowski xxiii); e) Rigg and Wieland have assumed that “the songs were copied so that they could form the most advanced section in a manuscript designed for the classroom use1 and containing texts

1 The glosses of the manuscript indicate that it was somehow used in teaching (Ziolkowski xxiv).

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arranged in order of increasing difficulty and educational value” (xxiii). The same authors also suggest that it could have been used as “a reference-book intended for consultation by students and scholars in the monastery library” (xxiv).

All the theories suggested appear plausible if we consider different perspectives. For instance, what Breul proposed may be the answer to the question of who originally sang those pieces before they became part of the collection. Hence, we may accept the supposition that the songs were part of the repertoire of a wandering actor, minstrel or scholar. Rigg‟s and

Wieland‟s theory, on the other hand, seems to explain the function of the collection as it appears in the Cambridge manuscript, because its careful selection and categorisation of the material, which was made in the process of compilation of the manuscript, suggests that it was used as an anthology for educational reasons.

Virtually all the poems were written to be sung (there are even some primitive musical notes inscribed in the margins), that is why they are sometimes referred to as „songs‟.

Ziolkowski points out that there are some poems which have very little literary value but they were probably included in the collection for their musical value1 (xl). The poems include a wide variety of themes; the historical events which are described here cover the period between 948 and 1039 (Gasparov, Poezia Vagantov) – the first date referring to the earliest event (probably the year when the Emperor Otto I and his brother Duke Henry I of Bavaria were reconciled with each other (Ziolkowski 230)) and the second to the latest event alluded to in the poems (the death of the German Emperor Conrad II. A careful study of the songs reveals the fact that the compiler of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, probably wanting to

1 The musicality is perhaps the reason why some poems are preserved in an incomplete form: as Ziolkowski writes, “in some cases only enough text was included to enable the reader to recollect the melody or to allow notation of the melody” (xliii).

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emphasise the musical nature of the collection, placed musical-technical songs that describe the music of nature and the music devised by men at the beginning, then he put comic ballads or fabliaux in the middle, and ended the collection with songs in praise of King David and the

Virgin Mary (Ziolkowski xlviii).

On the basis of seven modi that contain praise for German Emperors (CC 3, 9, 11, 16,

17, 19, 33), Ziolkowski assumes that it was probably the Emperor Henry III who encouraged the collection (xxxii), since, as Paul G. Schmidt mentions, it is well-known that Henry had a great zeal for Christian ideals, learning and art (qtd. in Ziolkowski xxxii). This once again supports Strecker‟s point of the Ursequenzensammlung: the modi were part of another manuscript from which they were copied into the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, because it is hardly logical that the emperor would accept the presence of satirical poems next to the ones that sang the glory of the Ottonian dynasty.

The most important innovation of the anthology was the presentation of secular poetry and, in particular, love lyrics, which were absent from the previous centuries of monastic literature. In all cases these poems were written on the basis of religious forms of versification, and we may especially find many poems which were greatly influenced by the

Sequence (Sequentia), which appeared in the Mass in that period. Raby explains that this new form of composition which was inseparably linked with music gained the admiration of literate monks who started to use the Sequence to write lyrics to already-existing melodies; as a consequence, “the popular Latin poetry of lyrics and folk-songs was to follow closely the development of the Sequence, until, in the twelfth century, it reached its full and perfect structure” (Christian 223).

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Some poems of the manuscript are imitations of more famous pieces which were probably written by students as a kind of exercise of grammatical forms during their education. This process later developed into a self-conscious creation of poetry which by itself formed the poetry of the vagantes in the coming centuries. The influence of Isidore‟s

Etymologiae, for instance, is present in the opening strophes of the story, popular in the

Middle Ages, of Lantfrid and Cobbo (CC 6) (Raby, Secular 1: 295); the Song of Songs had influenced the author of Iam, dulcis amica, venito (CC 27) (Raby, Secular 1: 303).

Other pieces in the manuscript are extracts from classical authors: 31 and 32 from

Statius, 34 from Vigil, 46 from Horace (Raby, Secular 1: 293). Yet, it is essential to mention that all the songs of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, even the profane ones, are learned, which means that they were not quite understood by lay people although they had some similarity in subject with vernacular songs (Raby, Secular 1: 301).

Several factors help us trace a connection between the Cambridge Songs and the vagantes of the twelfth century. One is mentioned by Raby: he considers Iam, dulcis amica, venito to be “a link between the faltering tenth-century poets and the accomplished lyrists of the twelfth” (Secular 1: 303). As compared to a twelfth-century vagans poet, the author of the

CC 27 “had precisely what his successors lacked, the freshness and the trepidation of his uncertain mastery” (303). In stanzas 1-9 it speaks of someone, probably a young man, who invites a maiden to visit his beautiful house; then the song continues in a kind of dialogue in which it is not quite clear which words are pronounced by the man and which by the maiden.

It is not quite unusual for the time that the author gives a woman voice to speak, since the

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medieval patriarchy did not impose any official restrictions or prohibitions on women concerning their freedom of speech and right of writing poems.1

The content of this song is very ambiguous: on the one hand, Waddell writes that “the good [Guido Maria] Dreves included it in his Analecta Hymnica [Medii Aevi, 1908], believing it, as Mr. Gaselee notes with very kindly malice, „in the innocence of his heart, to be a hymn to the Blessed Virgin‟” (Medieval 324); on the other hand, Brinkmann suggests that we have here a story of a bishop who woos a nun (qtd. in Raby, Secular 1: 303); Raby himself believes that “[w]hat we have here is, no doubt, merely a song, one among many similar pieces, now lost, to be sung in some distinguished and discriminating company” (Secular 1: 303-4). This discrepancy in opinion is caused by the last two stanzas that are almost indecipherable in the

Cambridge manuscript because they, too, were considered unacceptable by the above- mentioned unknown censor who simply erased them. These two stanzas, however, have survived in MS. Vienna, Cod. Vindob. 116 (tenth century) and are quoted by Raby (Secular 1:

304):

karissima, noli tardare; Dearest, delay not,

studeamus nos nunc amare: Our love to learn,

sine te non potero vivere; I live not without thee,

iam decet amorem perficere. Love's hour is come.

quid iuvat diferre, electa, What boots delay, Love,

que sunt tamen post facienda ? Since love must be?

1 Extensive material on the subject can be found in Dronke‟s “Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (†203) to Marguerite Porete (†1310),” Cambridge: CUP, 1984.

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fac cito quod eris factura, Make no more stay, Love,

in me non est aliqua mora. I wait for thee.1

This poem is in Waddell‟s words the “first anticipation of Marlowe‟s Come live with me and be my love” (Medieval 323). It is a “graceful delivery of the tempting invitation to a dinner à deux by a wealthy youth to his beloved mistress” (Breul 41), a kind of invitation to lovemaking, if we take into account the last two stanzas, too. This sort of content was already quite subversive for the age when the strict monastic rule had already been established, but since it found its way into a monastic manuscript, initially in its full version, we may suppose that it was either misread by the scribe as G. M. Dreves did, or it was considered a very important and high-quality song which had to be included in the anthology.

Poems with such content were written by monks and students of monastic schools either for entertainment or as a school exercise. It was probably the result of the pressure that the strict rules imposed on the young clergy who were struggling with the temptations of the secular world. In the course of centuries this pressure grew owing to the establishment of a more centralised and bureaucratised ecclesiastic hierarchy and it resulted in the increase of the number of profane songs and poems which found their place in the Carmina Burana.

If we observe the practical use of the songs from the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, another link connecting the collection to the Vagantendichtung will be revealed. From the material available we can infer that the songs from the anthology were known around Western

Europe. Since they were learned pieces, it seems reasonable to assume that they were performed predominantly in front of educated audiences. Although Latin was still

1 Waddell‟s translation (Medieval 147).

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comprehensible to common people, a large number of classical and biblical allusions in the songs rendered it extremely difficult for lay people to understand the lyrics. People who composed and performed those songs were usually educated clerics who either worked for a certain lord or had to travel in search of food and shelter. According to Dronke,

the medieval poet-musician was essentially a traveller. This is true not only

of the less reputable strolling-players and variety-artists, and of the singers

and musicians who performed the songs of others, but also of the early

Germanic scop and of the many later troubadours, trouvères and

Minnesingers who composed as well as performed their songs. (Medieval Lyric 18)

The authors of the songs in the Carmina Cantabrigiensia were this kind of poet- musicians – the predecessors of the vagantes. About one of them we have some information that was preserved at the end of the first book of Sermones (c. 1050) written by Sextus

Amarcius Gallus Piosistratus, a monk about whose life we only know that he “resided in

Speyer – in the Rhineland – during the reign of Henry III (1039-56)” (Ziolkowski xliv).

Amarcius describes how a rich man1 arrives at an inn and asks for a liricus or chitarista to entertain him while he is dining. Then an iocator2 appears, and, after the payment is arranged, he starts playing his chelyn (lyre, harp) and singing

1 There are different suppositions concerning the social status of the man: Strecker (Vorrede xiv) and Gasparov in “Poezia Vagantov” support the idea that the man was a distinguished lord (“ein vornehmer Herr”); Winterfeld, on the other hand, “envisaged him as being a knight,” while Brinkmann as “an ecclesiastic” (Ziolkowski xlix). 2 This term, as Ziolkowski informs us, “could be applied to entertainers of various sorts, from jugglers and jesters to singers and storytellers” (l).

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loudly of how the sling of a shepherd laid low great Goliath, how a sly little

Swabian deceived his wife with a trick similar to her own, how perceptive

Pythagoras laid bare the eight tones of song, and how pure the voice of the

nightingale is. (Ziolkowski‟s translation, xlvi)

Three out of four songs that Amarcius mentions are found in the forty-nine songs of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, as it was perceived by Breul and Strecker: CC 10 tells us the story of the nightingale, CC 12 of Pythagoras, and CC 14 of the Swabian husband. But if we accept Ziolkowski‟s suggestion of eighty-three poems, then we will find the story of David and Goliath,1 too: it is either CC 82 Dauid, uates dei, or CC 82. 1b. 3 Goliam strauit on folio

443 (Ziolkowski xlvii).

Thus, Amarcius‟s account, once again, supports Breul‟s opinion that the Cambridge

Songs could be sung by wandering entertainers. Indeed, the collection has songs for every taste: Breul dedicates a whole page to proposing different songs for different occasions, sung

“each at a proper time and in the proper place” (41). Nevertheless, we should not forget that the Carmina Cantabrigiensia consist of learned poems, that is why I would agree with

Brinkmann (qtd. in Ziolkowski l), who suggests that the iocator of Amarcius‟s poem could easily be a cleric.

As far as the form and the style of the poems is concerned, besides the Sequence there are “[p]oems written in dactylic hexameters” as well as “[p]oems composed in popular meters, mostly rimed, counterparts of which are of frequent occurrence in the later German

1 Ziolkowski (xlvii) points out that this hypothesis was first suggested by P. Dronke, M. Lapidge and P. Stotz, in “Die unveröffentlichten Gedichte der Cambridger Liederhandschrift (CUL Gg. 5. 35)”, Mittellateiniches Jahrbuch 17, 1982.

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lyrics written either in Latin or in the vernacular” (Breul 29). We speak of a period in history when a gradual transition from quantitative versification to rhythmical measures was observed; consequently, the early vagantes were still in the process of experimenting with various poetic forms at the time when many of the poems of the anthology were written. But it was this experimentation that two centuries later resulted in the creation of a distinct form of expression that became known as the Vagantenstrophe. So, it is not difficult to agree with

Breul that the songs of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, especially the love lyrics, are in style and spirit “the forerunners of those which about 200 years later are met with in the Carmina

Burana, and to some extent also in the German songs of Minnesang Frühling” (40).

It becomes obvious that the Carmina Cantabrigiensia in the format proposed by

Ziolkowski should be regarded as a collection of songs that once formed the repertoire of the early vagantes and later became a part of a major manuscript due to its high musical value and was apparently used by the monks of St. Augustine‟s abbey as a book of reference in their studies. The anthology allows us to examine one of the stages in the development of secular

Latin poetry which reaches its ultimate peak in the works of wandering scholars at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries. Side by side with the poems by well- known authors of the Early Middle Ages we find anonymous songs that are distinguished by the erudition and ingenuity of their authors. Although the literary value of many poems is not high, the anthology is a real gem in the thesaurus of Medieval Latin literature and musicology due to its uniqueness: it is one of the earliest surviving collections of songs from the Christian era and the earliest one that includes love lyrics.

Using Raby‟s words, we can sum up as follows: “The nature- and love-poems in the

Cambridge collection are hardly as good, from a technical point of view, as the contemporary

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religious verse, but here again the note is one of freshness and of promise” (Secular 2: 326), a promise that was kept and brought to life in the poems of the „later‟ vagantes found in large numbers in the Carmina Burana two centuries later.

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Chapter Five

Carmina Burana

The poetry of the vagantes was rediscovered and introduced to the European public by the romantics, just at the time when Germany had rediscovered its folkloric heritage

(Gasparov, Poezia Vagantov). Everything started when Johann Christoph, Baron von Aretin, who was travelling around the German provinces in search for that heritage, found a decrepit manuscript kept in “an uncatalogued book-hoard” (Parlett 22) in the Bavarian monastery of

Benediktbeuern in 1803. It was in fact the Carmina Burana,1 or “the tsarina of the vagantes‟ manuscripts,” as Gasparov eloquently named it. However, the romantics were not quick to understand the real value of the manuscript, since “the romantics of the time simply had trouble in finding the place of the vagantes in their conception of the Middle Ages”

(Gasparov, Poezia Vagantov). The problem was that they were acquainted with certain Latin and Romano-Germanic elements of medieval poetry: the former was written by monks and priests on predominantly religious topics, while the latter belonged to the quills of the minnesingers, troubadours and trouvères, who basically sang about love. The content of the

Carmina Burana, however, was so diverse and touched upon so many subjects that some time was necessary to realise the magnitude of the discovery and to begin the exploration of a completely new world that was hidden in the manuscript.

1 Carmina Burana means “songs from Beuern”. The manuscript was given this name by its first editor Johann Andreas Schmeller of the Munich Central Library in 1847 (Raby, Secular 2: 256). Since then it has become known to a wider audience under that name. In 1937 Carl Orff (1895-1982) composed magnificent pieces of music for chorus and orchestra based on 24 poems from the manuscript.

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The Codex Buranus is the largest and best preserved collection of secular medieval

Latin poetry (Duggan 1). It was compiled in the first half of the thirteenth century (c. 1230) and it consists of “a hundred and twelve leaves, but there are seven further leaves, the so- called Fragmenta Burana which were recognized by Wilhelm Meyer as having originally formed part of it”; there are 106 folios “written by two main scribes, designated by Schumann h1 and h2, with possible minimal interventions by a third, h1a” (Sayce 3). It also contains

“eight pen-and-ink drawings in spaces provided by the scribes in the text column” which shows “the value placed on this collection of texts by the patron for whom it was made, since miniatures or any kind of figural images in manuscripts of lyrical poetry are highly unusual”

(Walwarth 71). Although found in a monastery, the manuscript is “not a monastic product: script and content point to a clerical-scholarly milieu” (Duggan 2).

The first complete study of the manuscript, which lasted for more than twenty years, was undertaken by Meyer at the end of the nineteenth century (Parlett 24). He discovered that the original binding of the manuscript and the order of the poems were different from the ones that the manuscript had at the time it was found by Baron von Aretin. This fact prompted him to look for lost folios1 but only seven of them were eventually found and published separately in 1901 under the title Fragmenta Burana. Nowadays the twenty-six poems from these folios are conventionally marked with an asterisk (*) and are given numbers beginning with one.

Following Meyer‟s new order of the folios, Hilka and Schumann, and later Bischoff attempted to create an authoritative edition of the Carmina Burana. They divided the material roughly into three parts: 1-55, moralising and satirical poems; 56-186, love lyrics; 187-228, a collection of drinking and gaming songs, and some other miscellany. In the period between

1 Meyer even supposed that whole sections of the original manuscript were missing (Parlett 24).

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1930 and 1970 four volumes of the edition with Latin texts and comments in German were published:

Volume I contains the text itself, together with textual notes. Part 1, Moral

and Satirical Poems, was edited by Alfons Hilka and Otto Schumann and

appeared in 1930. Part 2, Love Songs, edited chiefly by Schumann following

the death of Hilka, appeared in 1941. Part 3, Drinking and Gaming Songs:

Religious Plays: Supplements, appeared in 1970 under the editorship of

Bernhard Bischoff, Schumann having died in 1950. (Parlett 24-5)

As Parlett further writes, parts 2 and 3 of the second volume “are still eagerly awaited”

(25). It should also be mentioned that the Supplements in Part 3 refer to the pieces that were added later by over thirty different hands, the last – the beginning of St. John‟s Gospel in

German and a prayer to St. Erasmus – dating from the fourteenth century (Parlett 22).

The overwhelming majority of the poems are written in rhythmical measures which increased the musicality of the pieces and “could sometimes reproduce the direct pathos of the common speech” (Raby, Secular 2: 269). The Vagantenstrophe, the invention of the vagantes, appears in the manuscript as a natural tool for an accomplished poet. It is applied in poems of different genres by various poets, which shows how popular it was at the time. A number of songs are in the Sequence form, yet the classical metres are also present in the codex.

As far as the authorship of the poems is concerned, scholars have managed to identify some of them while the majority of pieces remain anonymous. According to Parlett, a certain generalisation is possible:

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That the writers form an educated elite is apparent from the very fact of

composition rather than from the choice of Latin as their medium. But their

fluent Latinity, academic tastes and generally reflective tone place them

close to the roots of their education: they are still students, recent graduates,

or men whose position keeps them in contact with scholastic circles. (41-2)

In other words, the majority of poems in the Carmina Burana are written by the vagantes: the names of the Archpoet (CB 191), Walter of Châtillon (CB 3, 8, 41, 123), Peter of Blois (CB 29-31, 63, 67, 69, 72, 83, 84, 108)1 which have been identified support this assumption. The names of some German authors, whose vernacular poems are found in the manuscript, are also known.2 In the meantime a very controversial debate has risen in connection with eight love poems: Schuyler P. Allen attributed the poems Dum Dianae vitrea

(CB 62), Olim sudor Herculis (CB 63), Axe Phoebus aureo (CB 71), Clasus Chronos et serato

(CB 73), Si linguis angelicis (CB 77), Saevit aurae spiritus (CB 83), Rumor letalis (CB 120) and Hebet sidus (CB 169) to Abelard himself. He based his suggestion on the observation that

“these eight songs are so unlike anything else” written at the time that only Abelard or “some great poet among the outstanding schoolmen of his day” could be their author (244), but since from Héloïse‟s testimony we know that he is the author of eight love poems which are nowadays thought to be lost, the best candidate for the authorship should be considered to be

Abelard. The majority of scholars, however, believe that these ascriptions are unsubstantiated

1 Walsh asserts that out of the names mentioned (he also includes Philip the Chancellor as the possible author of CB 21, 26 (?), 27, 34, 131, 189) “[t]he single candidate who can confidently be proposed as author of some love lyrics is Peter of Blois, whose correspondence contains six moralizing poems with distinctive techniques of metrical composition” (Love Lyrics xvii). 2 Parlett provides a list with these names and mentions Olive Sayce‟s study in which the author claims that some of the verses were written by one or another of the scribes (45).

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for there is no actual evidence supporting this: Walsh, for instance, calls Allen‟s suggestion

“no more than attractive speculation” (Love Lyrics xvii).

At this stage it is necessary to establish the historical background which directly affected the authors of the codex. Unlike the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, in the Bavarian manuscript we find mainly professional poets whose poetry is not a result of mere imitation of the classics but a conscious product of their craft which in many cases reflects various aspects of their lives, whereas some pieces are distinguished by a vivid poetic imagination and a rich use of allegory. The bulk of the poems found in the manuscript were primarily written in the twelfth century, the time of the so-called twelfth-century renaissance. The socio-political stability that Europe witnessed at the time created all the necessary preconditions for the cultural boom of the Romano-Germanic nations, and it resulted in the proliferation of schools and the emergence of universities. Thus, in the twelfth century the number of educated clerks dramatically increased and the formation of a new class of vagantes was a logical consequence.

It was an age of “remarkable intellectual, political, and social developments in

Western Europe,” which “was marked by the growing power of centralized government in

England, France, and Sicily,” while in Germany “Henry the Lion and Albert the Bear were carrying Teutonic civilization, and with it ecclesiastic organization, into the Slav lands across the Elbe,” and in Italy “the Lombard towns were already developing an active corporate life, and before the end of the century they were well on the way to independence” (Raby,

Christian 288). The Catholic Church was another centre of power that exercised influence on all western European countries.

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In the educational system we observe “a rediscovery of the Latin classics and a new discovery of Greek and Arab philosophical writings” which unavoidably resulted in “a conflict between faith and reason” (Parlett 13). The main protagonists in this battle became

Peter Abelard – “the prince of dialecticians, the master intellect of his age” (Raby, Christian

290) – who supported that God gave people reason to better understand the divine will, and

Bernard of Clairvaux, who considered Abelard‟s teachings a blasphemy. As Raby writes,

“Between these two extremes stood humanists like John of Salisbury, who leaned if anything to the side of Abelard, and philosophical mystics like Hugh of S. Victor, who had more spiritual affinity with Bernard of Clairvaux” (Christian 289). The theoretical conflicts among these schools of thought could not help but raise the level of education which was provided in major European centres, and Abelard‟s rationalism based basically on the newly-discovered works of Aristotle became the most influential teaching among the scholars since it provided a reasonable alternative to the mystic dogmas propagated by the Church.

In the Carmina Burana we will not find poems that directly reflect the conflict between faith and reason because for a vagans poet it would be very unwise to enter into an open confrontation with ecclesiastic authorities on which he depended for patronage. Yet, the majority of poems show a great change in the mentality of a medieval clerk who started to critically judge the existing system and power relations. Satire became his main weapon with which many deplorable practices of the Church authorities were revealed and criticised, but it was “rather constructive than destructive” (Parlett 29), because, on the one hand, it subverted the existing order by fiercely attacking the corrupt clergy, and, on the other hand, it aimed at its consolidation by accepting the absolute power of the Christian Church which was

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compromised by the misdoings of its servants. An example of this is the CB 10, Ecce sonat in aperto:

omnes quidem sumus rei, every one a sinner, traitor

nullus imitator Dei, to the plans of our creator:

nullus vult portare crucem, none will bear his cross nor heed a

nullus Christum sequi ducem. call to follow Christ as leader.

quis est verax, quis est bonus, Who is good? Who trust-inspiring?

vel quis Dei portat onus? Who complies with God's requiring?

ut in uno claudam plura: Ιn a word, in brief opinion:

mors extendit sua iura. Death extends his dark dominion –

iam mors regnat in prelatis: stalking those in priestly raiment

nolunt sanctum dare gratis, who extort unpriestly payment –

quod promittunt sub ingressu, who, enrobed at ordination,

sancte mentis in excessu; offer vows of dedication

postquam sedent iam securi, which from well-lined benefices

contradicunt sancto iuri. they forswear as artifices:

rose fiunt saliunca, in God's house their vice reposes

domus Dei fit spelunca. stinking weeds instead of roses.

sunt latrones, non latores, Holy they are not, but wholly

legis Dei destructores. crooks who grind God's law down slowly.1

1 Parlett‟s translation (59-60).

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In this excerpt from the poem we see that the poet perceives God as the creator of everything on Earth, who provided certain laws which must be obeyed and protected, yet all people, and in particular “those in priestly raiment,” seem to betray him, as a result vice reposes in God‟s house.

In general, a vagans poet directed his satire towards the “[w]orldly excesses among the spiritual leaders of the Church, especially avarice, sloth, gluttony and lust,” but he did not spare the average monks either (Pepin 5-6) for they did not fall much behind their superiors.

In particular, there is criticism of the monastic orders the number of which increased in the tenth and eleventh centuries and which were based on very strict rules.1 As a response to that phenomenon, the poem CB 219, the famous Cum „In orbem universum‟ written in the

Vagantenstrophe, announces the creation of a new order, Ordo Vagorum (Order of

Vagrants2). It, however, propagates different beliefs and rules which in the poem are presented in comparison to the ones of the existing orders. For instance, someone who belongs to the Ordo Vagorum should, with pleasure, eat “a juicy steak” and not “the mouldy grain that monks provide in measly measure”; and one should know that matins, which form an inseparable part of the rules in other orders, “are explicitly forbidden” for “that‟s when phantoms roam abroad.”3

1 For example, Cluniac in 909, Carthusian in 1084, Cistercian in 1098 (Parlett 240), the latter being the order of Bernard of Clairvaux and after Abelard‟s conviction very often the target of satirical attacks. 2 This poem along with a few others gave some scholars the idea that the vagantes were an organised group of clerics, but there is absolutely no evidence proving this hypothesis except for these poems. 3 This and the following translations from the poem are by Parlett (173-77); the Latin text is taken from Bulst‟s edition (8-18).

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The poem is full of Biblical allusions and it begins with reference to Christ‟s words when he tells his Apostles, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature”

(Mark 16. 15):

Cum “in orbem universum” ‘Go ye into all the world…’

de cantatur “ite!” hear the text – it’s stunning!

The head of the order, the voice that introduces readers to the essence of his secta, likewise sends his pupils out into the world and only in the last stanza we understand their real mission:

Ad quos perverenitis, Everyone you come across

dicatis his, quare must understand your mission:

singulorum cupitis say your function is to test

mores exprobrare: their moral disposition:

“reprobare reprobos say ‘I’m sent to segregate

et probos probare the pure from the improper –

et haedos ab ovibus to reprimand the reprobate

veni segregare.” and approbate the proper.’

The poem is by no means one-dimensional and there are a number of explanations possible: on the one hand, it seems to promote worldly pleasures, while on the other it propagates Christian ideals of equality among people and compassion towards others. The

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irony is observed in the fact that the clergy, who so ardently support the strictness of monastic rules, actually live according to the rules of the Ordo Vagorum.

In the Carmina Burana the vagantes appear not only with poems that criticise the social conditions and relationships among different groups within the ecclesiastic hierarchy but, in fact, the unknown compiler chose to include a large number of love lyrics both in Latin and in the vernacular. Thus, the tradition set by some clerics in the Carmina Cantabrigiensia was greatly enriched by the gorgeous love songs of the vagantes.

Walsh mentions that “[t]hese poems were written by and for clerics” since

“[r]epeatedly this social milieu is emphasized, and its sophistication flaunted.” In addition he asserts that “there is a tendency in these lyrics to advocate amor purus, the relationship which falls short of consummation, and to condemn amor mixtus, which embraces intercourse”

(Love Lyrics xix). To a large degree Walsh is right in his assessment, yet it is important to mention that the concepts of amor purus and amor mixtus became widely known after the publication of De Amore (The Art of Courtly Love) by Andreas Capellanus in circa 1186, and many love songs of the manuscript seem to be composed earlier, like Peter of Blois‟s Sevit aure spiritus (CB 83), which is, by the way, a song that advocates amor mixtus and will be discussed below.

Gasparov, in Poezia Vagantov, mentions that the influence of the classics, especially of Ovid, is traceable in a number of pieces. Poems belonging to several genres, like pastourelle, alba, debate, courtly love lyric and others, are found in this section of the codex

(Parlett 33). Yet, even in these genres the vagantes managed to show an ingenious approach: for example, the use of the Vagantenstrophe in Anni parte florida, celo puriore, the famous debate between Phyllis and Flora (CB 92), adds an exquisite melodious rhythm to it; or side

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by side with conventional imagery connecting spring with budding romantic love we come across many beautiful, though melancholic, descriptions of winter disposition like in Iam dudum estivalia (CB 3*); or in CB 76 Dum caupona verterem we read about the bodily desire of a youth which he was unable to resist and which eventually destroyed his life by turning him into a pauper.

From what has been said so far we can infer that the love lyrics of the vagantes introduced a new perspective in the portrayal of love, distinguished by its original form of expression, great sensuality and, in some cases, conspicuous eroticism. That a cleric wrote about chaste love is nothing surprising because it was an ideal that the Church did not reject.

Moreover, as Walsh reminds us, it was quite acceptable for a cleric to get married and keep his status, though it would mean that he had to forget about ordination and advancement in the hierarchy of the Church (Love Lyrics xix). What is really astonishing is that the cleric would overtly sing about his fleshly desires which sometimes were satisfied. We should probably attribute it to the carelessness and rebellious nature of youth for only a young student would desire to write and boast about his indecent experiences.

The poem (or we had better say the song because it has a distinct refrain) that stands out by its erotic explicitness is Sevit aure spiritus (CB 83) attributed to Peter of Blois, and it is one of those carmina which he renounced at an older age. In full the song is preserved in

British Library MS Arundel 384 of the fourteenth century, while in the Carmina Burana only stanzas 1-3, 5 and 7 appear (Walsh, Love Lyrics 87).

The opening stanza of the song is a „nature-introduction‟: according to Raby, this sort of introduction “must have come direct from the vernacular” into the twelfth century love poetry and “was necessary and has been necessary ever since” (Secular 2: 267). Although

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Peter of Blois adopts such a beginning, he introduces a new element into it by reversing the conventional spring and love association: instead, he begins with a portrayal of winter, perhaps, as Walsh comments, “to emphasize that human love transcends the sexual urges of animals, which are in heat with the onset of summer” (Love Lyrics 87):

Sevit aure spiritus, et arborum The wind’s breath is harsh, and the foliage

of the trees is totally disappearing under come fluunt penitus vi frigorum ; the violence of the cold. The songs in the silent cantus nemorum. groves are silent. Now love between cattle

nunc torpescit, vere solo grows sluggish, for it is in heat only in

fervens, amor pecorum ; spring. But I am always in love, and I refuse to follow the new changes of the semper amans sequi nolo seasons as beasts are wont to do.1 novas vices temporum bestiali more.

The refrain that follows tells us that the poet is in love with a maiden whom he conventionally calls Flora for he is reluctant to compromise his lady by pronouncing her real name. The maiden, however, does not torture her beloved with pointless discussions of whether a lady should easily succumb to her admirer or not, as in the courtly love poetry. On the contrary, it seems that for both of them everything is clear: with her eyebrows “that speak volumes”2 she invites him to a chamber where they indulge in passionate lovemaking:

1 Translated by Walsh: the Latin text and the following translations are taken from the same source (Love Lyrics 85-9). 2 As Walsh points out the silent communication and the use of eyebrows is taken from Ovid Am. 1. 4 (Love Lyrics 88).

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nudam fovet Floram lectus The couch hugs my naked Flora.

caro candet tenera; Her youthful flesh gleams white, virginale lucet pectus, her maiden’s bosom is aglow,

parum surgunt ubera her breasts rise slightly

modica tumour. with modest swelling.

She is very young and, perhaps, a virgin because of her pectus virginale, as Walsh suggests (Love Lyrics 88). Our young lover continues the description of her female merits paying attention to very intimate details. In the end, however, he expresses his fears of losing this beauty to someone more powerful: like Jupiter, who used his powers to take possession of

Danaë, Europa and Leda:

O, si forte Iupiter If Jupiter happened

hanc videat, to lay eyes on her, I fear he

would become as timeo ne pariter incaleat passionate as I, and return et ad fraudes redeat ; to his deceits; for he would

si vel Danes pluens aurum either rain down Danaë’s

imbre dulci mulceat, gold and soften her with that sweet shower, or vel Europes intret taurum, masquerade as Europa’s vel Ledeo candeat bull, or turn white once

rursus in olore. more as Leda’s swan.

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From this last stanza we can infer that the lover is a poor man who cannot provide his beloved with luxury and riches, and if one day an affluent and powerful man meets this beauty, then she will be lost for him. It seems that he is not of a high opinion concerning female devotion, probably because of books like Ovid‟s Metamorphoses and Horace‟s

Carmina,1 which he has read as a student.

This poem bears many features that are characteristic of the Vagantendichtung. As a matter of fact, this is a work of an educated man who is well aware of basic literary conventions of the time and possesses extensive knowledge of ancient poets. Nevertheless, he does not merely imitate or follow the titans of the genre; on the contrary, he deliberately deviates from the conventional literary rules and presents his different perspective on how a love lyric should be. The defiant temperament of a youth is discernible in these lines and he attempts to sound original by deploying imagery that no established poet of his time would dare.

Songs and poems with such explicit erotic content, along with pieces that praised and promoted conviviality, drinking and gambling, were written to be consumed within the milieu of students. Being of young age,2 as is characteristic of human societies at all times, they aimed at defying the authority with the means they possessed. Thus, having absorbed the canonical authors, they were tempted to overthrow their authority by creating ingenious works of art which they boastfully advertised in inns, taverns and during various festivities.

However, only very few of them were talented enough to achieve this youthful aspiration,

1 Walsh points out these works (Love Lyrics 89) perhaps having in mind the idea that Peter of Blois acquired the knowledge of the ancient Greek mythology from Latin sources, since even the Roman names, which are used in the song, suggest it. 2 Singman writes that “[a] student arriving in the city to begin his university studies was typically about fourteen years old, although some were younger and others older” (202).

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while the others simply had to be satisfied with skilful imitations. In addition, it is significant to mention that many of those students demonstrated a much more mature understanding and approach to the socio-political problems which they encountered at an older age. As a result a large number of moralistic and satirical poems were written, by which the already- accomplished scholars expressed their resentment and acute criticism of indecent behaviour

(according to the Christian concepts of morality) which many members of the clergy practiced.

There are many original pieces in the Benediktbeuern manuscript, the unique flavour of which “is achieved by the confluence of the Christian vision of the world (absorbed from continual study of the Latin Vulgate and the Fathers) and the effect of concentrated study of the authors of Roman antiquity in the schools” (Walsh, Love Lyrics xxvii). The vagantes experimented with both the content and the form of literary expression; at some points they were merely able to imitate the great masters of the past, but at others they managed to create extraordinary pieces. They wrote about everything which their age was interested in: songs about ever-changing fortune and the heroes of the crusades; about the immorality of certain clergy and freedom from the severe rules of the monastic orders; about pure chaste love and the bodily desires of simple mortals. All those subjects are represented in the Carmina

Burana side by side with the earliest preserved pieces of vernacular, especially German, poetry providing us with unique insights into the mind of medieval intellectuals.

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CONCLUSION

As a consequence of various socio-political and cultural changes in the High Middle

Ages a new class of people was formed within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They were clerics who enjoyed all the privileges of the ecclesiastical class and had received their education in a monastic or cathedral school and/or in a newly-established university. A large number of them wandered from one big European centre to another with a view to continuing their studies or in search of a decent position in the service of a powerful man. In this thesis an attempt was made to understand who those people were and what kind of poetry they wrote.

Because the majority of them were of humble birth, there is scarce evidence at our disposal which could provide us with a complete image of these people.1 Nevertheless, the tremendous literary inheritance they left has aroused the interest of medieval scholars. A very few references in contemporary chronicles and the literary works that have survived have become the source of various speculations and theories about who the authors of those works were. No unanimous conclusion has been reached so far, and this is why in different publications we find names such as “goliards” (from whence the term 'goliardic verse', used in

English), “wandering scholars,” “vagi scholares,” “clerici vagantes” and so forth which are used to denote people that wrote secular poetry in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. In this thesis the preference was given to the Latin “(clerici) vagantes” since this term is occasionally referred to in the contemporary chronicles and to a large degree it describes the lifestyle of those people.

1 In contrast, we know many things about the troubadours who were basically members of the nobility and there are many records that shed light on some aspects of their life.

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The vagantes wrote poetry with a certain purpose and by no means can it be perceived as the Wordsworthian “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” For a vagans poet writing poetry was primarily a means of indicating his originality and good education: it was a way of attracting the attention of a man in power and securing a position in his service. Even the love lyric they wrote was a parade of knowledge which was understandable to educated audiences only. At the same time their poetic skill was also deployed to attack the immorality and injustice that had seriously permeated the ecclesiastical system. The latter aspect of their works allows us to perceive the vagantes as the first representatives of the class that we nowadays call „intelligentsia‟.

The Vagantendichtung is predominantly anonymous but the names of some talented and influential authors, such as Walter of Châtillon, Peter of Blois, Hugh Primas and some others, have been preserved in a number of manuscripts. The poetry they wrote covered a wide range of subjects, from profane and erotic verses to devotional and philosophical ones, but what distinguishes them from their contemporaries is their erudite knowledge of classical and Christian authors. They were great improvisers and creators of new forms of expression, the plain Vagantenstrophe and Vagantenstrophe with an auctoritas being the most original and significant ones.

All in all, the poetry of the vagantes is an important part of European literature, and provides us with unique insights into the medieval society. Different aspects of medieval life are depicted in an intelligent, witty and knowledgeable way. There are poems for various kinds of audiences and occasions, and many of them portray situations which are very familiar to a reader in our sophisticated age of technological advancement.

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APPENDIX

The Vagantenstrophe

In this section a technical description of the Vagantenstrophe and how this metre was adopted by the vernacular literatures are discussed. Surprisingly, this metre still has not received much attention of scholars, and only scant information on it can be found in some scholarly editions on metrical forms. This Appendix examines these pieces of evidence and provides representative examples of the Vagantenstrophe used in other languages.

As it has been mentioned earlier, the vagantes learned to write poetry at schools, and their first steps in creating poetic expressions were done as school exercises. In their youthful attempt to distinguish themselves many of them experimented with various forms: some tried to insert new content into an old mould; others kept the content but changed the form; very few, however, would manage to write poetry that would be different both in form and in content. The twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries were to become the apogee of new poetry written by the vagantes. The simple Vagantenstrophe and the more complex

Vagantenstrophe with auctoritas would be the forms that prevailed and had a specific impact on European versification.

The Vagantenstrophe, 7d + 6f, consists of seven syllables with dactylic ending (two unstressed syllables) followed by a caesura and another six syllables with a feminine ending

(one unstressed syllable). In the first part before the caesura there are usually three stressed syllables, while in the second part only two. Yet, there is no regularity and very often this pattern changes. We sometimes find different variations of the Vagantenstrophe in the same poem: for example, in the Archpoet‟s Confession at the beginning we have two stressed

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syllables in the first part, followed by two in the second part of the first line; in the second line there is two plus three:

Éstuans intrínsecus íra veheménti

ín amaritúdine lóquor méae ménti

The poem continues with another variation:

f{ctus de matérial levis eleménti fólio sum símilis, de quo lúdunt vénti.

Hence, as far as the number of stressed syllables is concerned, the Vagantenstrophe differs from poem to poem and even from line to line within the same poem. Therefore, the most important characteristic of it is the overall number of syllables in one line in which the first seven syllables should end with two unstressed ones (dactylic ending) and the six consecutive with a stressed followed by an unstressed one (feminine ending). This pattern is typical of syllabic verse and it is obvious that the Vagantenstrophe influenced, to a certain degree, the early French vernacular poetry since the syllabic verse became one of the most common forms of versification in French.

The 7d + 6f pattern, however, is not the creation of the vagantes: their merit lies in the development and enrichment of an already-existent form. The first sample of a thirteen- syllable line is found in the fourth century in Miserere Domine, a religious hymn by Marius

Victorinus. The text itself is composed in the form of literary prose, but its refrain Miserere

Domine, miserere Christe has the 7d + 6f pattern which, as Dag Norberg suggests, “certainly

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made itself felt in the melody and seems to have produced a certain impression” (145). Some centuries later we find the same rhythm in refrains of songs with analogous content; Norberg brings the following examples (145):

From Mozarabic Preces: Supplicanti populo || Christe Miserere

From a song of Merovingian Gaul: Christe resuveniad te || de mi peccatore

Every now and then Abelard uses the Vagantenstrophe: in Planctus Iacob super filios suos we find

Pueriles nenia super cantus omnes

Orbati miserie senis erant dulces;

Informes in facie teneri sermones

Omnem eloquentie favum transcedentes. (qtd. in Norberg 145)

These examples show that the 7d + 6f pattern was used in Christian Latin poetry although not regularly. Thus, it will not be unreasonable to agree with Norberg that “it is probably in religious poetry that one must search for its [the Vagantenstrophe‟s] origin (145) and that it “did not have any direct connection with any quantitative verse” even though “its construction was regulated following the models of the rhythmic poetry which imitated the structure of the quantitative verse” (183).

The thirteen-syllable measure greatly appealed to the vagantes, who gradually developed it to perfection. This was a part of a general movement towards rhythmic poetry during which the rime became an inseparable constituent of poetry. In the twelfth century,

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which is rightly considered to be the acme of the Vagantendichtung, the Vagantenstrophe turned into one of the most popular forms of versification (Gasparov, History 109) but that popularity was not confined to any territory or group of people. Not only did it become one of the most frequently used measures in the secular poetry and “maintained its popularity for several centuries, especially for moral poems and school compositions” (Raby, Secular 2:

214) but its influence could also be observed both on Latin poetry of the High and Late

Middle Ages and on the vernacular poetry of a number of European nations.

One obvious reason why the Vagantenstrophe passed from secular poetry back to religious is that the vagantes belonged to the ecclesiastical hierarchy and it is natural that, as

Raby points out, “the same poets wrote both kinds of verse, and passed from the praise of the

Virgin to the praise of an earthly love” and “Walter of Châtillon is a conspicuous example” of this phenomenon (Secular 2: 248). In addition, we ought not to forget that the

Vagantendichtung easily spread around Europe by means of wandering students, poets, singers, friars and others, which means that the Vagantenstrophe was widely known, reproduced, imitated and recreated.

An excellent example of the adoption of the Vagantenstrophe by religious poetry is a hymn from Horae canonicae salvatoris, which begins with Patris sapientia veritas divina (c.

14th century):

Patris sapientia veritas divina. Jesus Christ, God-man, wisdom of His father

Christus Iesus captus est hora matutina. After the Thursday supper at the time of matins,

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A suis discipulis et notis relictus While He was praying in the garden to God his father,

Iudaeis est venditus, traditus, afflictus. Was betrayed, seized, and handed over to the Jewish mob.1

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries this hymn was translated into a number of languages and in many cases the metrical measure was preserved. In this way precedents of the use of the Vagantenstrophe in vernacular literature were created. Thus, in the first German hymnbook of the Bohemian Brethren (1531) we find the German translation by Michael Weisse (c. 1480-1534) which, as Peter Williams suggests, was “perhaps a translation from Czech” (275):

Christus, der uns selig macht, kein Bös’s hat begangen, ward für uns zur Mittenacht als ein Dieb gefangen

geführt vor gottlose Leut und fälschlich verklaget,

verlacht, verhöhnt und verspeit wie denn die Schrift saget.

The hymn‟s translation into Polish in the sixteenth century by the greatest Polish poet,

Jan Kochanowski should also be mentioned. The original Vagantenstrophe was preserved but slightly modified to fit the accentuation of the Polish language. Mieczysław Giergielewicz mentions that “the Polish version [of Horae canonicae salvatoris] with its 13-syllable line divided by a caesura was universally assimilated, and before long it became the most popular

1 The translation is by G. C. Stone (qtd. in Gasparov History 222). Yet, the Latin text is slightly different in other sources. For instance, in the “Monumenta ritualia ecclesiæ Anglicanæ” (1882) we find: “Patris sapientia veritas divina, / Deus homo captus est hora matutina: / A notis discipulis cito derelictus, / A Judeis venditus, traditus afflictus” (xi-xii).

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genre of national versification” (357). The Latin 7d + 6f pattern turned into 7f + 6f in Polish:

Kochanowski‟s translation of Patris sapientia veritas divina into Polish illustrates this:

Jezus Krystus, bóg człowiek, / mądrość oćca swego,

Po czwartkowej wierczerzy / czasu jutrzennego,

Gdy sie modlił w ogrodzie / oćcu bogu swemu,

Zdradzon, jęt i wydan jest / ludu źydowskiemu. (Gasparov, History 222)

Kochanowski deployed the 13-syllable measure in his other works as well: we find some examples in Psałlterz Dawidów(David‟s Psalter) and Pieśni (Songs):

Czego chcesz od nas, Panie, za Twe hojne dary?1 (Songs, II, 25, line 1) What do you want from us, Lord, for your generous gifts? (my translation)

Chwalcie Boga, który jest Bóg nad insze bogi. (Ps. 136, line 3)

Praise God, who is God over all gods. (my translation)

Having received a classical education and being a prominent intellectual,

Kochanowski used his knowledge of classical traditions to lay the foundations for Polish poetry. He borrowed from Latin versification a number of metrical patterns that were appropriate for the structure of the Polish language, and the Vagantendichtung along with eight- and eleven-syllable lines were the structures that became “unquestionably the fundamental measures of Polish strict syllabic verse” (Gasparov, History 222).

1 This and the following lines in Polish are quoted in Giergielewicz, p. 360.

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In the following centuries the journey of the 13-syllable measure eastwards continues.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, under the influence of Polish culture in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, the Polish model of syllabic versification becomes established there, and in the second half of the seventeenth century this model is introduced into Russian literature by

Simeon Polotskii (1628-1680) (Gasparov, History 223), who is considered to be one of the founders of Russian poetry. He wrote in Church Slavonic and the 13-syllable line is quite common in his works:

Otets nekto izriadno syna vospitashe, A father struggled to rear his son

jene ego sochetav, nasledie dashe. And having him married, inheritance granted.

Po male obnischav sam, nacha prikhoditi But becoming poor he started to come

v dom synoven’, eje by alchbu utoliti. To his son’s house his hunger to satisfy.1

The 13-syllable line became so popular that it was used by almost all Russian poets before Lomonosov, id est till the first half of the eighteenth century (Gasparov, Thirteen- syllable Verse 10). The Polish model, however, underwent certain modifications to fit the

Russian language. The number of syllables, the place of the caesura and the constant stress on the penultimate syllable remained, but the place of the pre-caesura stress and of the stresses within the line were modified according to the natural rhythm of the Russian language

(Gasparov, Thirteen-syllable Verse 26).

It is apparent that the Vagantenstrophe crossed many language boundaries and was assimilated by and became an important constituent part of the vernacular poetry of a number

1 My translation.

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of nations. Its influence, however, is not limited to Slavonic literature, since there are many examples of its adoption by other languages as well. Gasparov points out the case of Skaldic verse, which dies out in the fourteenth century and “the drápur or Skaldic songs are replaced by the vísur and rímur, ballads modelled on the German strict-stress form of this period with

4–3–4–3-ictus” which, in its turn, is created in imitation of the Vagantenstrophe (History 48).

The influence of the Vagantenstrophe on English verse is more obvious. Beginning from the late twelfth century we find plenty of examples of its use, but here again the inner rhythm of the language forced the necessary modifications: thus, “the dactylic ending before the caesura turned into a masculine one, and each hemistich acquired an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning, thereby converting the trochaic rhythm into an iambic one”

(Gasparov, History 179). An example of such modification is found in a thirteenth-century macaronic poem of the Nativity which begins with the following lines:

Holy Mary, Mother mild, Mater salutaris, Mother of salvation

Fairest flower of any field, 1 Vere nuncuparis. you are truly called

The same pattern is found in Lady, Lady, fair and bright, / Velud maris stella, as well as in many medieval folk ballads and songs. Yet, the Vagantenstrophe did not affect English verse as much as it did the Polish one, probably because syllabic verse does not successfully convey the inner rhythm of English, which is iambic.

1 The text and the translation of Latin lines are from Medieval English Verse by Brian Stone, p. 26.

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As we can see, the Vagantenstrophe, ingeniously developed and deployed by the clerici vagantes, did not confine itself only to secular Latin poetry. Being originally used in the refrains of religious hymns, the 13-syllable line attracted the vagantes by its musical structure, and in the twelfth century it became one of the most popular measures used in secular poetry. The Vagantendichtung created by clerics who wrote both religious and secular poetry could not help but influence religious verse, and since music was very important for the

Church in its attempts to spread the word of God through psalms and hymns, the

Vagantendichtung was readily adopted.

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