Goliards

The goliards were a group of generally young clergy in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries of the Middle Ages.

They were chiefly clerics who served at or had studied at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, who protested against the growing contradictions within the church through song, poetry and performance.

Disaffected and not called to the religious life, they often presented such protests within a structured setting associated with carnival, such as the Feast of Fools, or church liturgy.

[2] It may also originate from a mythical "Bishop Golias",[3] a medieval Latin form of the name Goliath, the giant who fought King David in the Bible—thus suggestive of the monstrous nature of the goliard or, notes historian Christopher de Hamel, as "those people beyond the edge of society".

[6] Their satirical poems directed at the church were inspired by their daily worlds, including mounting corruption in monasteries and escalating tensions among religious leaders.

In some districts, goliards staged a celebration of the ass, in which a donkey dressed in a silly costume was led to the chancel rail where a cantor chanted a song of praise.

Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby carriages and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and with scurrilous and unchaste words.

The jargon of scholastic philosophy also is frequently featured in their poems, either for satirical purposes, or because these concepts were familiar parts of the writers' working vocabulary.

It was absorbed into the French and English literature of the 14th century, generally meaning jongleur or wandering minstrel, and no longer related to the original clerical association.