[139] Conc. of Tours (Mansi, xiv. 84), c. 7 ‘histrionum quoque turpium et obscoenorum insolentiis iocorum et ipsi [sacerdotes] animo effugere caeterisque sacerdotibus effugienda praedicare debent.’
[140] Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, c. 29 ‘barbara et antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur, scripsit memoriaeque mandavit.’
[141] Alcuin, Ep. cxlix (798), to Charlemagne, ‘ut puerorum saevitia vestrorum cuiuslibet carminis dulcedine mitigaretur, voluistis’; Alcuin, who doubtless had to ménager Charlemagne a little, is apparently to write the poem himself.
[142] Kögel, i. 2. 222. The Chronicon Novaliciense, iii. 10, describes how after crossing Mt. Cenis in 773, Charlemagne was guided by a Lombard ioculator who sung a ‘cantiunculam a se compositam de eadem re rotando in conspectu suorum.’ As a reward the ioculator had all the land over which his tuba sounded on a hill could be heard. The Monachus S. Galli (Jaffé, Bibl. rer. Germ. iv), i. 13, tells how (†783) a scurra brought about a reconciliation between Charlemagne and his brother-in-law Uodalrich. The same writer (i. 33) mentions an ‘incomparabilis clericus’ of the ‘gloriosissimus Karolus,’ who ‘scientia ... cantilenae ecclesiasticae vel iocularis novaque carminum compositione sive modulatione ... cunctos praecelleret.’
[143] Philippe Mouskes, de Poetis Provincialibus (quoted Ducange, s. v. leccator):
‘Quar quant li buens Rois Karlemaigne
Ot toute mise à son demaine
Provence, qui mult iert plentive
De vins, de bois, d’aigue, de rive,
As lecours, as menestreus,