goliard, any of the wandering students and clerics in medieval England, France, and Germany, remembered for their satirical verses and poems in praise of drinking and debauchery. The goliards described themselves as followers of the legendary Bishop Golias: renegade clerics of no fixed abode who had more interest in rioting and gambling than in the life of a responsible citizen. It is difficult to be sure how many of them were in fact social rebels or whether this was merely a guise adopted for literary purposes. Of the identifiable poets, Huoh Primas of Orleans, Pierre de Blois, Gautier de Châtillon, and Phillipe the Chancellor all became important establishment figures and to some extent outgrew their student high spirits. Only the one known as the Archpoet seems to have lived what he preached to the end of his life.
The goliards were noted more as rioters, gamblers, and tipplers than as poets and scholars. Their satires were almost uniformly directed against the church, attacking even the pope. In 1227 the Council of Trier forbade priests to permit goliards to take part in chanting the service. In 1229 they played a conspicuous part in disturbances at the University of Paris in connection with the intrigues of the papal legate; in 1289 it was ordered that no cleric should be a goliard, and in 1300 (at Cologne) they were forbidden to preach or to grant indulgences. Finally the privileges of clergy were withdrawn from the goliards.
The word goliard lost its clerical association, passing into French and English literature of the 14th century in the general meaning of jongleur, or minstrel (its meaning in Piers Plowman and in Chaucer).
A remarkable collection of their Latin poems and songs in praise of wine and riotous living was published in the late 19th century under the title Carmina Burana, taken from the manuscript of that title at Munich which was written in Bavaria in the 13th century. Many of these were translated by John Addington Symonds as Wine, Women, and Song (1884). The collection also includes the only known two surviving complete texts of medieval passion dramas—one with and one without music. In 1937 the German composer Carl Orff based his scenic oratorio Carmina Burana on these poems and songs. Many of them are also to be found in the important Cambridge Songbook written in England some 200 years earlier.
The subject matter of the Goliard poems and songs varies: political and religious satire; love songs of an unusual directness; and songs of drinking and riotous life. The last category involves the most characteristically goliardic elements: the plaints of unfrocked clergy, a homeless scholar’s learned cries of self-pity, the unashamed panegyrics of hedonism, and the dauntless denials of Christian ethics.
It is this last category for which the least trace of written music survives. Present knowledge of medieval poetry and music suggests that all the poems were intended for singing, even though only a few are provided with music in the manuscripts. The music is normally notated in diastematic neumes—a kind of musical shorthand that can be read only by comparison with another version of the tune, fully written out. In musical style the amorous songs are similar to those of the trouvères; in several cases the same melody appears in both repertories. The more goliardic songs have a simpler metrical form, more syllabic melodies, and an unsophisticated repetitive style.