304 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



poems are to be found in several English and French 

 manuscripts of a like date. 1 These poems were the 

 common property of the wandering clerks or strolling 

 scholars men who, in pre-university days, wandered 

 over the face of Europe from teacher to teacher, and 

 from cloister-school to cloister-school, seeking theology 

 in Paris, classical literature in Orleans, law in Bologna, 

 and perhaps magic in Toledo. They were young, poor, 

 merry, and often vagabond. They would create a riot 

 in Paris about the high price of wine, or a disturbance 

 in Orleans on account of the charms of a fair but frail 

 damsel. They were mostly in lower clerical orders or 

 were about to enter them, for their education could only 

 be of service to them in the Church. Adepts in the 

 Latin tongue, they did not hesitate to turn it to both 

 religious and secular purposes ; religious drama, pro- 

 cessional hymn, love-song, and satire were all one to 

 them, and what the Church lost by their license, she did 

 not fail to regain by their Latinity. Some of the finest 

 Church hymns and some of the tenderest mediaeval songs 

 to the Virgin were most probably the creation of these 

 strolling scholars. Such men, with their command of 

 language, their love of amusement, their folk-origin, 

 their semi - clerical and cosmopolitan character, were 

 eminently fitted for developing the scenic ritual into a 

 religious folk-drama. It was they who introduced the 



1 Besides the Carmina Burana (see J), the reader may consult The Latin 

 Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, 1841 ; Die X Gedichte 

 des Walther von Lille, Hannover, 1859 ; Gedichte auf Friederich I. den Staufer, 

 J. Grimm (Kleinere Schriften, Bd. iii. p. 1) ; Poesies populaires latines, ed. Edel- 

 stand du Me"ril, Paris, 1843 and 1847 ; Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems, 

 ed. Wright, 1844. The best account of the strolling scholars is to be found in 

 Giesebrecht, Vagantenoder Goliarden, Allgemeine Monatsschrift, Halle, 1853 ; see 

 also Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder des Mittelalters, Gorlitz, 1870. 



