in
Literature
and Art.
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practice of goliardy or {tage performance during a year,"9t which {hows
that they exercifed more of the functions of the jougleur than the mere
{inging of fongs.
Thefe vagabond clerks made for themfelves an imaginary chieftain, or
prefident of their order, to whom they gave the name of Golias, probably
as a pun on the name of the giant who combated againft David, and, to
{how further their defiance of the exifling church government, they made
him a bifhop-Golias epifcopus. Bifhop Golias was the burlefque repre-
fentative of the clerical order, the general fatirift, the reformer of
eclefiaflical and all other corruptions. If he was not a d06tor of divinity,
he was a matter of arts, for he is fpoken of as Magifier Golias. But
above all he was the father of the Goliards, the "ribald clerks," as they
are called, who all belonged to his houfehold,1' and they are fpoken of as
his children.
Summa falus onmium, jilius Maria,
Pafcat, patat, mfiat pueras Gwfym ' I
" May the Saviour of all, the Son of Mary, give food, drink, and clothes
to the children of Goliasl" Still the name was clothed in f'o much
myflery, that Giraldus Cambreniis, who flourifhed towards the latter end
of the twelfth century, believed Golias to be a real perfonage, and his
contemporary. It may be added that Golias not only boafts of the
dignity of bifhop, but he appears fometimes under the title of archipoela,
the archpoet or poet-in-chief.
Caefarius of Heifierbach, who completed his book of the miracles of
his time in the year 12.22, tells us a curious anecdote of the character of
the wandering clerk. In the year before he wrote, he tells us, "It
happened at Bonn, in the diocefe of Cologne, that a certain wandering
clerk,
" Clerici si in goliardiavel histrionatu per annum fuerint."-Ib. col. 7:9.
In one of the editions of this statute it is added, "after they have been warned three
times."
T " Clerici ribaldi, maxime qui vulgo dicuntur defamila Sen. ap.
C0nci1., tom. ix. p. 578.
I See my " Poems of Walter Mapes," p. 70.
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