As early as the fifth and sixth centuries, measures were taken against them, such as when the
Council of Chalcedon forbade ordination without appointment to a specific church, or when the
Council of Valencia (524?) threatened the
vagantes with
excommunication, a penalty extended in the same year by the
Synod of Arles to those who gave them shelter. Nevertheless, the
vagantes still flourished, and frequently aided
bishops and other clergy in the discharge of their duties or became
chaplains in the castles of the knights, thus making their profession a trade and interfering with the orderly conditions and ministrations of the
regular clergy. In 789
Charlemagne renewed the
Chalcedon injunctions, and also forbade the entertainment of any clergy who could not produce letters from their bishops. But even these measures failed, and in the ninth century several synods (such as those of
Mainz in 847 and
Pavia in 845–850) sought to check the
vagantes and their efforts to take possession of benefices already conferred on others, and such prelates as
Agobard of Lyon, in his
De privilegio et jure sacerdotii, also opposed them. In the twelfth century
Gerhoh of Reichersberg again complained about them in his
Liber de simonia, but matters became far worse in the following century, when the Synods of
Mainz (1261),
Aschaffenburg (1292),
Sankt Pölten (1284) and
Treves (1310) declared against the
vagantes. In
Bavaria they were expressly excluded from the
king's peaces (
Landfrieden) of 1244, 1281, and 1300. The pressure against goliards ended in 1231 when, after the
University of Paris strike of 1229,
pope Gregory IX (himself an
alumnus of the
University of Paris) issued the
papal bull Parens scientiarum, by which, among other exemptions, he confirmed a decision of
Philip Augustus to grant students immunity from lay jurisdiction.
Goliards A peculiar type of
vagantes arose in
France in the twelfth century, later spreading to
England and
Germany. These were the
roving minstrels: mostly dissolute students or wandering clergy, first called
clerici vagantes or
ribaldi ("rascals"), later (after the early 13th century) chiefly known as
goliardi or
goliardenses, terms apparently meaning "sons of
Goliath". They were masters of poetic form, but many councils of the 13th and 14th centuries sought to restrict the goliards and their excesses. These measures seem to have practically suppressed the goliards in France by the end of the 13th century, but in Germany they survived under various names until the late 15th century.
Hugo von Trimberg devoted a special chapter of his
Der Renner ("The Runner") to the
ribaldi and other
vagantes, and in England
Geoffrey Chaucer alluded to them in uncomplimentary terms. The goliards were believed to play an important role in the
literary atmosphere of the so-called
Renaissance of the 12th century, with fresh
medieval Latin poetry, from poems in the
Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 5.35 to the well known
Carmina Burana of the 13th century (the
Codex Buranum). Although they were part of the clergy, their poetry was believed to be "one of the earliest disintegrating forces in the
mediaeval church". Wandering scholars and poets include
Walter Map (c. 1140–1208),
Hugh Primas (12th century), and the anonymous
Archpoet (c. 1130 – c. 1165), "the greatest" of them all. However, historical and philological research recently questioned that assumption and at times strictly distinguished between "goliardic poets" on the one hand and "goliards" on the other hand. So far, not a single contact between both groups has been traced in the source material. The poets often worked as teachers in the
secular clergy. ==See also==