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 - 2 - 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 - 3 - 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, - 4 - 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.