Minstrels were originally traveling professional entertainers of late medieval Europe in the tradition of
the earlier SCOP or JONGLEUR. While some minstrels
were clearly attached at least semipermanently to
noble houses, most typically they were itinerant
musicians, singers, storytellers, magicians, or jugglers who wandered from court to court and from
town to town, performing wherever they were likely
to find patronage. They do seem to have performed
for all classes of society, from kings and nobles to
priests, burgers, and laborers. As singers and storytellers, minstrels were likely to circulate love lyrics,
folk BALLADS, old legends like the CHANSONS DE
GESTE, and newer tales in the form of ROMANCES.
Some of the popular MIDDLE ENGLISH romances,
such as HAVELOK THE DANE, seem to have been the
kind of tales popularized by minstrels. Rather than
writing their songs or tales down, however, most
minstrels seem to have relied on memory and improvisation as central to their art.
Minstrels flourished from the later 13th century
through the early 15th. As time went on, more and
more minstrels became associated with music
rather than poetry and more often were attached
permanently to noble houses or settled in towns,
and during the 14th and 15th centuries, minstrel
guilds began to develop throughout Europe. These
guilds required that minstrels be trained by other
members of the guild, ensured that there was work
in the town for guild members, and protected
guild members from competition by wandering
musicians—the group from whom minstrels
sprang to begin with. With the development of
printing in the late 15th century, the art of minstrelsy, particularly as the wandering storyteller,
declined significantly throughout Europe.
Bibliography
Southworth, John. The English Medieval Minstrel.
Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell, 1989.