Satires began to change during this second generation, with respect to both the poet’s
persona and his target. The few extant poems in leonine hexameters by Serlo of Bayeux,
for instance, announce a new direction with their combination of specific personal
content and broad institutional critique. Writing from ca. 1095 to ca. 1115 while
archdeacon of Saint-Étienne, Serlo profited under the patronage and suffered under the
power of Anglo-Norman rule. In his poems, he details his position outside the ecclesiastic
hierarchy, which he bitterly satirizes for gluttony, greed, and debauchery, thus exploiting
the Reformist agenda for his own purposes. Serlo’s satirical voice (adapted in part from
Roman models), which speaks without authority as it speaks against authority, finds a
parallel in the more successful works of Peter the Painter, a canon at the monastery of
Saint-Omer in Flanders during the first decades of the 12th century. Though he emulates
at times cathedral-school satirists in England and France, Peter differs in the subject and
object of his satire. He is more conscious than Serlo of his role as an artist and
“grammarian man” (vir grammaticus) seeking fame and fortune, and he aims at a wider
secular target, which includes bad poets (ioculatores) on the one hand, ladies and their
lovers on the other.
A new satirical form blossomed during the third generation of secular poets in the
hands of Hugh (Primas) of Orléans, who stands above the rest in terms of quantity,
quality, and influence. Born ca. 1093 and first educated in Orléans, Hugh wrote from the
early 1130s to the early 1160s while teaching at schools and serving ecclesiastic
magnates at Amiens, Sens, Beauvais, Orléans, Reims, and Paris. Twenty-four poems can
be ascribed to him with reasonable assurance, some of which were transmitted, altered,
expanded, and imitated by a large number of subsequent poets. The first of the great
“Goliardic” poets, Hugh wrote of “wine, women, and song,” as well as of dice games,
patrons, and books; with biting humor and clever wit, he satirized arrogant ecclesiastics,
parodied authoritative texts, and mocked himself. Such topics and tones created the
persona—often equated with the person of a learned and irreverent “wandering student”
(clericus vagans)—that has had enormous appeal for medieval and modern readers. If we
look at the texts instead of through them, though, we see a clerical author well established
within the French cathedral culture, who completely mastered the demands of both
metrical and rhythmic verse, and who displayed great talent and pleasure in the art of
rhyming. Contemporary appreciation of the achievements of speaker and writer can be
measured by the nickname “Primas” (i.e., ecclesiastic dignitary), which his fellow
schoolmen allegedly gave him and which both he and the manuscripts use.
Love lyric continued to be written in this period, in learned and popular forms. Many
of the latter remained anonymous and appear scattered throughout anthologies of the 13th
century, if they were recorded at all. But we do know well a famous poet of the period
whose poems of love and friendship follow the learned forms used by Marbode. Serlo of
Wilton, born in England ca. 1110, came to France for schooling, and wrote poetry ca.
1130–60 while teaching in Paris, until he abandoned the schools to spend the remainder
of his life as a monk. Using hexameters and distichs, often and variously linked with
rhyme and ornamented with rhetorical figures, Serlo wrote almost fifty poetic letters,
epigraphs, praise poems, complaints, and epigrams. In many, the speaker addresses or
discusses friends and lovers, male and female, and establishes a forceful textual presence
with his witty manipulation of language. The confession and display of sexuality seems at
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