I Giullari. Musica e mestieri nel Medio Evo (secoli XI-XIV). Cenni storici

The jongleur tradition invested the entire European continent in the Middle Ages. Its written and oral texts testify to the production of numerous lyrical-musical works, theatrical performances, dances, epic and hagiographical songs, found in rare musical codes, most frequently in literary manuscripts archive documents, synods and several iconographic specimens. This study investigates jongleurs’ historiography from a multidisciplinary perspective, with special attention to the historico-musical approach to emblematic figures such as the fool-jongleur, the knight-jongleur, the doctor-jongleur. Beginning with Edmond Faral (1910), Ramón Menendez Pidal (1924), Higinio Anglés (1958), this study explores multiple meanings of ‘jongleur’ and their functions. This is an unprecedented analysis of the “Suplicatio” written in the Provençal language by Guiraut Riquier for Alfonso X el Sabio in 1274, which calls for a careful distinction between professional jongleurs, poets and musicians and strummers, buffoons, acrobats and monkey trainers. The text ends with the XIV century when unions for the minstrels were created, as it is documented in a parisian Statute of 1321. This is an expanded version of a study presented in the Spanish language at the “Curso sobre Arte y vida cotidiana en la época medieval, Zaragoza, 24-28 April 2007, Cátedra Goya, Institució Fernando el Católico, C.S.I.C.