GOLIARD, a name applied to those wandering students (vagantes) and clerks in England, France and Germany, during the 12th and 13th centuries, who were better known for their rioting, gambling and intemperance than for their scholarship. The derivation of the word is uncertain, but it was connected by them with a mythical "Bishop Golias," also called "archiboeta" and "primas"—especially in Germany—in whose name their satirical poems were mostly written. The jocular references to the rules of the "gild" of goliards should not be taken too seriously, though their aping of the "orders" of the Church, especially their contrasting them with the mendicants, was denounced by Church synods. Their satires were almost uni formly directed against the Church, attacking even the pope. In 1227 the Council of Treves forbade priests to permit the goliards to take part in chanting the service. In 1229' they played a conspicuous part in the disturbances at the University of Paris, in connection with the intrigues of the papal legate. During the century which followed they formed a subject for the delibera tions of several Church councils, notably in 1289, when it was ordered that "no clerks shall be jongleurs, goliards or buffoons," and in 1300 (at Cologne) when they were forbidden to preach or engage in the indulgence traffic. This legislation only became effective when the "privileges of clergy" were withdrawn from the goliards.
Along with their satires went many poems in praise of wine and riotous living. A remarkable collection of them, now at Munich, from the monastery at Benedictbeuren in Bavaria, was published by Schmeller (3rd ed., 1895) under the title Carmina Burana. Many of these, which form the main part of song-books of German students today, have been delicately translated by John Addington Symonds in a small volume, Wine, Women and Song (1884).
The word "goliard" itself outlived these turbulent bands which had given it birth, and passed over into French and English literature of the 14th century in the general meaning of jongleur or minstrel, quite apart from any clerical association. It is thus used in Piers Plowman, where, however, the goliard still rhymes in Latin, and in Chaucer.
See 0. Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder des Mittelalters (Gorlitz, 1870) ; B. Spiegel, Die Vaganten and ihr Orden (Spires, 1892) ; M. Haezner, Goliardendichtung and die Satire im 13ten Jahrhundert in England (Leipzig, 1905) ; the article in La grande Encyclopedie; Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (1927) ; also K. Breul, The Cambridge Songs (1915).