Identity and nickname edit

His existence has been elaborated upon the authorial superscription "Archipoeta" appearing with the poems now ascribed to him in a small number of manuscripts.^[5] While some recent—and so far inconclusive—attempts have been made to identify the Archpoet as either one of two Rodulfuses from the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa's entourage,^[14] his real identity has never been found and is most likely lost for good.

It has been suggested by W. H. T. Jackson^[15] and others^[16] that his nickname could be a play on his patron Rainald of Dassel's title of Archchancellor (Archicancellarius in Latin), even if its exact origins are ultimately left open to speculation.^[17] Moreover, it is not known how he came to earn the nickname or who bestowed it to him: whether as a mark of esteem from the audiences, other poets, Rainald himself; as a satirical jest on his patron's title; or as an ironical mock self-attribution.^{[citation needed]} There has been report of at least two other "clericus vagus", itinerant clerics, bearing the "Archipoeta" pseudonym or title around that time: one Nicholas who briefly resided with the Cistercians at their abbey,^[18] and Henry of Avranches (around 1250);^[19] yet both are distinct from the "Archipoeta" of Barbarossa's reigning period (1155–1190).

Conjectured life edit

The Archpoet's living circumstances have been surmised from the indicative content of his poems but mostly from the life of Rainald of Dassel.^[11] Because he designates Rainald as Archbishop of Cologne,^{[nb 2]} it shows that he must have been alive and active for at least some time between 1159 (when Rainald became archbishop) and 1167 (when he died); furthermore, all of his datable poems fall within 1162 and 1164.^[20] With the passing of his patron in 1167, no more is heard from the Archpoet.^[21] Also, in poem X, Peter Dronke writes, "he counts himself among the iuvenes: while technically a iuvenis can be any age between twenty-one and fifty, it would seem plausible to imagine the Archpoet as thirty or thirty-five at the time of this composition, and to set his birth not too far from 1130."^[22]

Several indications concur as to establish that the Archpoet came from a place north of the Alps,^{[nb 3]} although no solid claim can be made as to which country,^[7] even though Germany has repeatedly and traditionally being taken as his birthplace.^[8] He refers to himself as "ortus a militibus",^[6] of knightly birth, and, coming from such a high class, was most certainly well-educated in the liberal arts,^[9] theology^[2] and the classics.^[10] In poem IV, he states that he chose the pursuit of poetry (as symbolized by the Roman poet Virgil) over a career in the military (as symbolized by the Trojan warrior Paris) as his birth permitted and disposed him to.^[23] It has been deduced from the same poem that he first traveled to Salerno in order to pursue medical studies but that due to ill health, he had to abandon this project.^[24]

It was probably then that he began working—possibly as a "dictamen", a "master of the art of writing letters"^[16]—at the court of Rainald of Dassel, the bishop elector of Cologne and Archchancellor to Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor,^[24] about which he wrote, according to Ernst Robert Curtius, "[t]he most brilliant stanzas"^[25] among the many written about and/or for him during the 35 years of his reign. His references to Salerno, Vienna, and Cologne in his poems, as well as several details gleaned from the Archchancellor's court displacements, suggest that he did travel around northern Italy, Provence, Burgundy, Austria and Germany during his life.^[26] It is known that the Archpoet lived for some time—possibly the last years of his life—at the monastery of St. Martin in Cologne.^[27] As is the case with many medieval and/or anonymous authors, very little else can be said with certainty about his life.

Modern critical reassessment edit

While it is still commonly assumed that the Archpoet was a follower of the Goliard tradition—writing student drinking songs, parodies critical of the Church and satires on the life of itinerant clergy in the Middle Ages—, the noted scholar Peter Dronke proposed a very different portrait in his 1968 book The Medieval Lyric:

[H]e was in fact a court poet, perhaps also a civil servant or minor diplomat, in the service of the Imperial Chancellor, and so almost certainly a member of the circle around Frederick Barbarossa himself. I am convinced that his leitmotif of the wayward, wretched vagabond-poet who is compelled to beg from his patron and his audience contains far less autobiography than literary craft... The Archpoet's picture of the vagabond-poet (whatever element of literal truth it may have contained) has been drawn for the sophisticated entertainment of that international set of diplomats and legislators, high-born scholars and prelates who surrounded the Emperor, whose lingua franca was Latin, and among whom the Archpoet probably, by his birth and position, moved as an equal.^[13]

This view of the Archpoet and his milieu, severely contrasting with that of the previous generations of researchers and writers such as J. A. Symonds and Helen Waddell, created a break in modern High Middle Ages scholarship about the Goliards and, in spite of not creating consensus within the academic community, has since been embraced by many scholars.^[28] Summarizing Dronke's view by using English writer Geoffrey Chaucer as an example of differentiation between actual (historical) self and poetic (fictional) persona, Jan Ziolkowski wrote that the Archpoet's shenanigans "may be little more than a stance struck by the poet to entertain his audience; the persona could be as far from the reality as that of Chaucer the character was from Chaucer the poet or man."^[29] Dronke further argued that the Archpoet could well have been Hugh Primas's student in Orléans,^{[nb 1]} getting acquainted through him with various rare Classical poets and also with his personal style (themes and techniques).^[30]

Overview edit

The Archpoet is known to us today through ten Latin poems or carmina (plural form of carmen, Latin equivalent of "song" or "chant") found in various manuscripts dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries. Listed here are the poems, identified, as is customary, by their incipit:

The works of the Archpoet have been found and preserved in the following manuscripts, among others:

• Univ. Bibl. Göttingen Codex philol. 170^[31] (12th century): I-VII; first stanza of VIII.
• Brussels Bibliothèque Royale 2071^{[citation needed]} (13th century): IX and X; stanzas 1–5 of VII.
• Codex Buranus: München Bayer. Staatsbibl. Clm 4660/4660a^[32] (13th century): X; 4 stanzas of IV.

The Carmina Burana thus contains the 25-stanza "Estuans intrinsecus" (X) under the reference number CB 191^{[nb 5]} as well as 4 stanzas from "Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis" (IV) under CB 220,^{[nb 6]} starting with "Sepe de miseria" in the collection.

Presentation edit

Despite being quite dissimilar from one another in terms of tone and intent, the ten poems are all "occasional"^[12] in the sense that they have been written for a specific purpose under precise circumstances, whether to celebrate an event or respond to a request; in the Archpoet's case, concerning the court of his patron: eight of them are directed to Rainald of Dassel, while the two others are addressed to Frederick Barbarossa himself.^[4] For example, the fourth poem, "Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis", was most probably written as a plaintive answer to what he felt was the unreasonable demand from Rainald that he write within one week an epic recounting the Emperor's campaign in Italy.^[33]

The Archpoet's poems are known for appearing "intensely personal":^[15] he features in almost all of them, and deals in an outspoken manner with intimate subjects such as his material (e.g. poverty, wandering) and spiritual (e.g. distress, anger, love) condition, his flawed and sinful nature, his wishes and aspirations. Many of his poems, whether panegyric or not, amount to very elaborate pleas to obtain food, drink, clothing, and money from his powerful patron.^[34] Yet far from falling into mere lyricism or honest confidence, they are often undermined by subtle sarcasm and disguised mockery, fitting with the persona the Archpoet seems to have created for himself as a free-spirited, vagabond hedonist, unrepentant in his propensity to overindulge and unblushing in the judgment of his self-worth.^[35] Aside from their recognized technical merits,^[36] the poems are imbued with a strong and pervading sense of humor manifested in the consummate use and manipulation of classical and biblical sources for parodic, sarcastic and ironic purposes.^[37]

"Confession" edit

Described as "the prototype of the goliardic songs"^[38] as well as "the masterpiece of the [Goliardic] school",^[16] the best known poem of the Archpoet is his tenth, "Estuans intrinsecus", commonly called the Goliardic "Confession" (sometimes "Confessio", "Confessio Goliae" or "Confession of Golias"),^[39] a metrical composition of ironical tone wherein he confesses his love of women, gambling, and drinking. It is purported to have been written in Pavia around the year 1163 for his patron as a confession and defense of his sins after a rival of the Archpoet witnessed and subsequently reported his reprobate behavior.^[40] For example, the oft-cited twelfth stanza^{[nb 7]} goes:

The parodic and satirical effect is mainly produced by the replacement of peccatori ("sinner") by potatori ("drunkard"), a reference to the Scripture: "Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori."^{(Luke 18:13)[42]} The poem relies heavily on ambiguity for its overall effect: on one hand, the narrator poses as a penitent dissolute, while on the other he is not being apologetic at all.^{[citation needed]}

The "Confession" was very famous in the Archpoet's time: compared to his other poems, which are mostly found in only one manuscript, "Estuans intrinsecus" has been copied in more than thirty,^[12] and it almost single-handedly accounts for his enduring appeal as the writer of one of the most popular medieval Latin poems.^[43]

• In her influential study The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages, Helen Waddell laudingly writes of the poem, stating that "Confessio Goliae is something more than the arch-type of a generation of vagabond scholars, or the greatest drinking song in the world: it is the first defiance by the artist of that society which it is his thankless business to amuse: the first cry from the House of the Potter, "Why hast thou made me thus?"."^[44]
• Reading the medieval "Confession" with the perspective of a modern cultural critic, philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote of the Archpoet's artistic posture and keen sense of his particular situation: "Archipoeta is perhaps the first artist with the artist's genuine awareness of himself, who comprehended and openly emphasized that his vagabond life and his opposition to the surrounding world were an artistic necessity... The splendid strophes of his vagabond's confession resonate with the elevated consciousness of the authentic lifestyle of the freelance artist".^[45]

• A section of the "Confession" supplies the text for the aria Estuans interius ira vehementi ("Burning with inner rage") that was set to music by Carl Orff in his 1935–1936 Carmina Burana cantata.
• John Myers Myers's 1949 novel Silverlock features Golias, the mythical patron saint of the Goliardic ordo vagorum, as one of the main characters, drawing heavily on the Archpoet's "Confession" for his portrayal.
• An old commercium song titled "Meum est propositum" (Video on YouTube) is composed from stanzas 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 18 of the "Confession".^{[nb 9]}
• The Archpoet is a character in Italian writer Umberto Eco's 2000 novel Baudolino.
• Mystics, Spirit, Voices, the 2000 debut album of the German musical project Lesiëm, features a song titled "In Taberna Mori" (Video on YouTube) which contains a fragment of the "Confession".
• The German darkwave band Helium Vola recorded versions of "Fama tuba" (II) on their 2001 studio album Helium Vola (track 7, "Fama Tuba" on YouTube), and of "Estuans intrinsecus" (X) on their 2004 studio album Liod (track 10, "Vagantenbeichte" on YouTube).^[46]

• Adcock, Fleur, ed. (1994). Hugh Primas and the Archpoet. Cambridge Medieval Classics. Vol. 2 (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39546-1.
• Jeep, John M., ed. (January 2001). "Archpoet". Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages (1st ed.). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 21–22. ISBN 0-8240-7644-3.
• Harrington, Karl Pomeroy, ed. (November 1997) [1925]. "The Archpoet: Confession". Medieval Latin. Revised by Joseph Pucci (2nd ed.). Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 566–571. ISBN 0-226-31713-7.
• Sidwell, Keith, ed. (2002) [1995]. "Section 20.4: The Archpoet (fl. 1160)". Reading Medieval Latin (Reprint of the 1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 347–352. ISBN 0-521-44747-X.

Texts and translations edit

• Symonds, J. A. (2002) [1884]. "Chapter V: The Confession of Golias". Wine, Women, and Song. Students' Songs of the Middle Ages (Reprint of the 1907 ed.). Mineola: Dover Publications. pp. 53–62. ISBN 0-486-41913-4. Archived from the original on 2010-12-10. Retrieved August 8, 2010. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Watenphul, Heinrich; Krefeld, Heinrich, eds. (1958). Die Gedichte des Archipoeta [The Poetry of the Archpoet] (in German) (1st ed.). Heidelberg: Carl Winter / Universitätsverlag.
• Whicher, George Frisbie (1949). The Goliard Poets: Medieval Latin Songs and Satires. New York: New Directions.
• Wolff, Étienne, ed. (1995). Carmina Burana (in French) (1st ed.). Paris: Imprimerie nationale Éditions, coll. La Salamandre. ISBN 2-7433-0000-0.

Primary critical sources edit

• Cairns, Francis (1975). "The Archpoet's Confession". Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch. 10: 100–105.
• Cairns, Francis (1980). "The Archpoet's Confession: Sources, Interpretation and Historical Context". Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch. 15: 87–103.
• Cairns, Francis (1983). "The Archpoet's 'Jonah-Confession' (Poem II): Literary, Exegetical, and Historical Aspects". Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch. 18: 168–193.
• Dronke, Peter (1968). The Medieval Lyric (1st ed.). London: Hutchinson University Library.
  • Re-edition: ——— (2002). The Medieval Lyric (Reprint of 1996's 3rd ed.). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. ISBN 0-85991-484-4. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Dronke, Peter (1980). "The Art of the Archpoet: A Reading of "Lingua Balbus"". In Jackson, W. T. H. (ed.). The Interpretation of Medieval Lyric Poetry (in Latin) (1st ed.). New York & London: Columbia University Press & Macmillan. pp. 22–43. ISBN 0-333-24816-3.
  • S. Westphal-Wihl (January 1982). "Reviewed Work: The Interpretation of Medieval Lyric Poetry". The German Quarterly. 55 (1): 108–110. doi:10.2307/405599. JSTOR 405599.
• Dronke, Peter (1984). The Medieval Poet and His World. Raccolta di Studi e Testi (in English and French). Vol. 164 (1st ed.). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Dronke, Peter (1990). "The Archpoet and the Classics". In Godman, Peter; Murray, Oswyn (eds.). Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition. Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 57–72. ISBN 0-19-920174-9.
  • Re-edition: ——— (1997). "The Archpoet and the Classics". Sources of Inspiration: Studies in Literary Transformations, 400–1500. Raccolta di Studi e Testi. Vol. 196 (1st ed.). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. pp. 83–100. (Preview available on Google Books)
  • Paul Pascal (1991). "Peter Godman, Oswyn Murray, Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Archived from the original on 2010-05-05.
• Godman, Peter (2000). "Chapter VI: Archness". The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages (1st ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 191–227. ISBN 0-691-00977-5. Retrieved August 6, 2010. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Godman, Peter (2009). Paradoxes of Conscience in the High Middle Ages: Abelard, Heloise and the Archpoet. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Vol. 75 (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51911-3. Retrieved August 6, 2010.
• Godman, Peter (2014). The Archpoet and Medieval Culture (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-871922-9. Retrieved November 23, 2015. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Hardin, James; Will, Hasty, eds. (December 1994). "The Archpoet". Dictionary of Literary Biography: German Writers and Works of the Early Middle Ages: 800–1170. Vol. 148 (1st ed.). Gale. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-0-8103-5709-9. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
• Haskins, Charles Homer (1971) [1927]. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-76075-1. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Heller, J. L. (April 1933). "A Note on the So-Called Confession of Golias". Speculum. 8 (2). Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America: 257–258. doi:10.2307/2846758. JSTOR 2846758. S2CID 163206890.
• Jackson, William Thomas Hobdell (1976). "The Politics of a Poet: the Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery". In Mahoney, Edward P. (ed.). Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (in Latin) (1st ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 320–338. ISBN 90-04-04378-0. (Preview available on Google Books)
  • Denys Hay (Spring 1978). "Reviewed Work: Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller". Renaissance Quarterly. 31 (1): 50–53. JSTOR 2860330.
• Jackson, William Thomas Hobdell (1980). "Introduction". In Jackson, W. T. H. (ed.). The Interpretation of Medieval Lyric Poetry (1st ed.). New York & London: Columbia University Press & Macmillan. pp. 1–21. ISBN 0-333-24816-3.
• Miner, Priscilla Ann (1960). Tradition and originality in the extant poems of the Archpoet. Berkeley: University of California.
• Pucci, Joseph (1989). "Job and Ovid in the Archpoet's Confession". Classica et Mediaevalia. 40. Copenhagen S: Museum Tusculanum Press: 235–250. ISSN 0106-5815.
• Sammel, Rebecca E. (1997). "Carnival Confession: The Archpoet and Chaucer's Pardoner". In Müller, Beate (ed.). Parody: Dimensions and Perspectives. Rodopi Perspectives on Modern Literature (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 169–190. ISBN 90-420-0181-X. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Shcheglov, Yu (IUrii Konstantinovich); Zholkovsky (Zholkovskiī), A. (Aleksandr Konstantinovich) (1987). "II. The Archpoet of Cologne's arch poetics: Deep and surface structures of his "Confession" in service of an ambivalent theme". Poetics of Expressiveness: A Theory and Application. Linguistic and Literary Studies in Eastern Europe. Vol. 18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 255–304. doi:10.1075/llsee.18. ISBN 90-272-1522-7. ISSN 0165-7712. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Shurtleff, Steven (September 22, 1994). "The Archpoet as Poet, Persona, and Self: The Problem of Individuality in the Confession". Philological Quarterly. 73 (4). Iowa City: The University of Iowa, Department of English: 373–384. ISSN 0031-7977. OCLC 1762267. Retrieved August 6, 2010.
• Skinner, Marilyn B. (January 1973). "The Archpoet's use of the Jonah-figure". Neophilologus. 57 (1): 1–5. doi:10.1007/BF01515779. ISSN 0028-2677. S2CID 162262306.
• Waddell, Helen (1992) [1927]. The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages. Ann Arbor Paperbacks. Vol. 199 (Third reprint of 1989's ed.). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06412-0. Retrieved August 8, 2010. (Preview available on Google Books)
  • Re-edition: ——— (2000) [1927]. "Chapter VII: The Archpoet". The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages (Reprint of 1936's 6th ed.). Mineola: Dover Publications. pp. 161–176. ISBN 0-486-41436-1.

Secondary critical sources edit

• Curtius, Ernst Robert (1990) [1948]. European Literature and the Middle Ages. Bolligen Series. Vol. 36. Translated from the German by William R. Trask. With a New Afterword by Peter Godman. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01899-5. Archived from the original on July 24, 2010. Retrieved August 6, 2010.
• Dronke, Peter (July 2007). "Le antologie liriche del Medioevo latino". Forms and Imaginings: From Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century. Raccolta di Studi e Testi (in Italian). Vol. 243 (1st ed.). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. pp. 129–144. ISBN 978-88-8498-371-8. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Emmerson, Richard K., ed. (2006). "Archpoet". Key Figures in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia. Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages. Sandra Clayton-Emmerson, Associate Editor (1st ed.). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. p. 44. ISBN 0-415-97385-6. Retrieved August 6, 2010. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Fuhrmann, Horst (2001) [1986]. Germany in the high Middle Ages c.1050–1200. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Reprint of 1995's 3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31980-3. (Preview available on Google Books)
• Godman, Peter (2014). The Archpoet and Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198719229.
• Godman, Peter (2009). "The World of the Archpoet". Mediaeval Studies. Vol. 71. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. pp. 113–156.
• Hardin, James; Hasty, Will, eds. (December 1994). "The Archpoet". German Writers and Works of the Early Middle Ages 800–1170. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 148. Gale. pp. 8–9. ISBN 0-8103-5709-7. Retrieved August 8, 2010. (Summary of the article at BookRags.com)
• Henshaw, Millett (November 1937). "Review: [untitled]". Modern Philology. 35 (2). University of Chicago Press: 195–197. doi:10.1086/388299. JSTOR 434431.
• Lejay, Paul (1910). "Classical Latin Literature in the Church" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Marcuse, Herbert (2007). "The German Artist Novel: Introduction". Art and Liberation (1st ed.). Abingdon / New York: Routledge. pp. 71–81. ISBN 978-0-415-13783-6. LCCN 97154404. (Preview available on Google Books)
• McDonald, William C.; Goebel, Ulrich (1973). German Medieval Literary Patronage from Charlemagne to Maximilian I. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
• Morris, Colin (2004) [1972]. The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200. Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (Fourth reprint of 1987's ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6665-8.
• Sayce, Olive (February 2008). "Latin Poets from Antiquity to the Middle Ages". Exemplary Comparison from Homer to Petrarch (1st ed.). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer / Boydell Press. pp. 84–140 (esp. section 113–115). ISBN 978-1-84384-099-2. Retrieved 9 February 2012. (Preview available on Internet Archive)
• Scheid, Nikolaus (1910). "Latin Literature in Christianity (Sixth to Twentieth Century)" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

• Transcription of the article "The Archpoet" from the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
• J. A. Symonds' English translation of "The Confession of Golias" at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
• Helen Waddell's English translation of "His Confession" at TheHyperTexts.
• F. J. E. Raby's English translation of "Aestuans intrinsecus" posted on the FETUSVENERIS blog.
• Works by Archpoet at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
• (in Latin) The ten known poems of the Archpoet at IntraText.
• (in Latin) The ten known poems of the Archpoet at The Latin Library.
• (in Latin) The Archpoet's page at the Bibliotheca Augustana.
• (in Latin) The Archpoet's "Estuans intrinsecus" (CB 191) in the Carmina Burana at the Bibliotheca Augustana.
• (in Latin) The Archpoet's "Sepe de miseria" (CB 220) in the Carmina Burana at the Bibliotheca Augustana.
• (in Latin) The Archpoet's "Aestuans intrinsecus" with some notes at Western Michigan University by Professor Rand Johnson.
• (in Latin) The complete Carmina Burana collection at (retired) University of Hawaii at Manoa Associate Professor David Stampe's website.
• (in Latin) Recitation of Archipoetae Confessio Vagantis on YouTube by Claudia Sperlich.