Notwithstanding this noble instance, not to belie the old proverb, jugglers were never received into the order of knighthood. They were, after a time, as much abused as they had before been extolled. Their licentious lives reflected itself in their obscene language. Their pantomimes, like their songs, showed that they were the votaries of the lowest vices. The lower orders laughed at their coarseness, and were amused at their juggleries; but the nobility were disgusted with them, and they were absolutely excluded from the presence of ladies and girls in the châteaux and houses of the bourgeoisie. We see in the tale of "Le Jugleor" that they acquired ill fame everywhere, inasmuch as they were addicted to every sort of vice. The clergy, and St. Bernard especially, denounced them and held them up to public contempt. St. Bernard spoke thus of them in one of his sermons written in the middle of the twelfth century: "A man fond of jugglers will soon enough possess a wife whose name is Poverty. If it happens that the tricks of jugglers are forced upon your notice, endeavour to avoid them, and think of other things. The tricks of jugglers never please God."

[Fig. 172.]--Equestrian Performances.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in an English Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.

From this remark we may understand their fall as well as the disrepute in which they were held at that time, and we are not surprised to find in an old edition of the "Mémoires du Sire de Joinville" this passage, which is, perhaps, an interpolation from a contemporary document: "St. Louis drove from his kingdom all tumblers and players of sleight of hand, through whom many evil habits and tastes had become engendered in the people." A troubadour's story of this period shows that the jugglers wandered about the country with their trained animals nearly starved; they were half naked, and were often without anything on their heads, without coats, without shoes, and always without money. The lower orders welcomed them, and continued to admire and idolize them for their clever tricks ([Fig. 173]), but the bourgeois class, following the example of the nobility, turned their backs upon them. In 1345 Guillaume de Gourmont, Provost of Paris, forbad their singing or relating obscene stories, under penalty of fine and imprisonment.

[Fig. 173.]--Jugglers performing in public.--From a Miniature of the Manuscript of "Guarin de Loherane" (Thirteenth Century).--Library of the Arsenal, Paris.

Having been associated together as a confraternity since 1331, they lived huddled together in one street of Paris, which took the name of Rue des Jougleurs. It was at this period that the Church and Hospital of St. Julian were founded through the exertions of Jacques Goure, a native of Pistoia, and of Huet le Lorrain, who were both jugglers. The newly formed brotherhood at once undertook to subscribe to this good work, and each member did so according to his means. Their aid to the cost of the two buildings was sixty livres, and they were both erected in the Rue St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Julian the Martyr. The chapel was consecrated on the last Sunday in September, 1335, and on the front of it there were three figures, one representing a troubadour, one a minstrel, and one a juggler, each with his various instruments.

The bad repute into which jugglers had fallen did not prevent the kings of France from attaching buffoons, or fools, as they were generally called, to their households, who were often more or less deformed dwarfs, and who, to all intents and purposes, were jugglers. They were allowed to indulge in every sort of impertinence and waggery in order to excite the risibility of their masters (Figs. [174] and [175]). These buffoons or fools were an institution at court until the time of Louis XIV., and several, such as Caillette, Triboulet, and Brusquet, are better known in history than many of the statesmen and soldiers who were their contemporaries.

[Fig. 174.]--Dance of Fools.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century in the Bodleian Library of Oxford.

At the end of the fourteenth century the brotherhood of jugglers divided itself into two distinct classes, the jugglers proper and the tumblers. The former continued to recite serious or amusing poetry, to sing love-songs, to play comic interludes, either singly or in concert, in the streets or in the houses, accompanying themselves or being accompanied by all sorts of musical instruments. The tumblers, on the other hand, devoted themselves exclusively to feats of agility or of skill, the exhibition of trained animals, the making of comic grimaces, and tight-rope dancing.

[A Court-Fool, of the 15th Century.]

Fac-simile of a miniature from a ms. in the Bibl. de l'Arsenal, Th. lat., no 125.