goliard

This legislation was only effective when the “privileges of clergy” were withdrawn from the goliards.

Many may have been the work of goliards or wandering scholars, and a common feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.

Those historians who regard the middle ages as completely dominated by ascetic ideals, regard the goliard movement as a protest against the spirit of the time.

The goliard poems are as truly “medieval” as the monastic life which they despised; they merely voice another section of humanity.

It is thus used in Piers Plowman, where, however, the goliard still rhymes in Latin, and in Chaucer.