Vagabonds

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Traveling students in the imagination of the 19th century.

As Vaganten ( Latin vagare , 'roaming around', 'aimlessly on the move', hence clericus vagans "wandering clergyman", plural clerici vagantes ) or also Goliards (from French, etymology unclear, see below), German "traveling pupils" or "Wandering scholars ", wandering clerics in search of a clerical or secular office, students and generally learned bohemians of the 12th and 13th centuries are called.

For a long time, research assumed that the so-called vagante poetry (also called goliard poetry) originated from the milieu of this wandering scholarly people , Latin secular poetry and saying poetry, which is distinguished from the contemporary courtly poetry by folk-related themes and tone. However, this approach is considered obsolete, as the writers of vagante poetry can often be identified as clerics who were firmly integrated into the church hierarchy and often worked as teachers in the secular clergy .

The fact that in some cases no great distinction was made between the vagabond and the traveling people may be due to the fact that there is actually poverty and certainly also some indecentiveness in the fringes of the medieval world of scholars, but also because the term clerici vagantes refers to a grievance in the church of the 5th and 6th centuries, against which the ordinances of the Council of Chalcedon were already directed: At that time, anyone who wanted could in principle call themselves a monk and as such had the right to at least temporary hospitality from a monastery. The result was that the number of self-appointed monks who moved from monastery to monastery, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire, became a real problem.

The origin of the name Goliard (Latin Goliardus ) is unclear. A derivation of gula (Latin “gluttony”), from the French gaillard (“happy man”) or from Golias , the Latin form of the name of the biblical giant Goliath, was proposed . In the Middle Ages, the figure of Goliath was initially an embodiment of evil - as such it was also used by Bernhard von Clairvaux , who compared the scholar Peter Abelard with Goliath in a letter . Since close connections between the circle around Abelard and some well-known vagante poets are documented, the derivation of the name was based on this comparison.

An Ordo Vagorum ("Vagant Order ") modeled on the monk order , as it is mentioned in the Carmina Burana , which might have been presided over by a Bishop Golias , probably only existed in literary form.

In the Wandervogel movement at the beginning of the 20th century, the hiking and group guides were called Bachanten or, in southern Germany, mostly Pachanten . The name goes back to Karl Fischer , who repeatedly pointed out to the newcomers that this had nothing to do with Bacchus and Bacchantes , but was derived from the medieval vagantes.

In Italy and Italian-speaking Switzerland there have been student festival and carnival societies known as Goliardic Orders since the 19th century .

The Goliathhaus in Regensburg was probably named after the Goliards.

Well-known vagabonds

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marian Weiß: The Middle Latin goliard poetry and its historical context: comedy in the cosmos of the cathedral schools of northern France. 2018, pp. 197–215 , accessed on July 16, 2018 .
  2. ^ Carmina Burana 219
  3. ↑ Werner Helwig: The blue flower of the wandering bird. Heidenheim an der Brenz 1980, p. 32f.