ABSTRACT
The satirists of ancient Rome continued to be read in the Middle Ages, to the extent that a modern critic can describe Juvenal, for example, as “a favourite author” for twelfth-century poets (Walsh, 1997: 130). Nevertheless, mediaeval satire was wide ranging, extremely diverse and far from exclusively dependent on classical models. Twelfth-century epics like Joseph of Exeter’s poem on the Trojan War and Walter of Châtillon’s on Alexander the Great might have been written in Latin hexameters in conscious imitation of the grand style associated primarily with Virgil, but satirical poetry in Latin and the vernacular languages of Western Europe showed that it had other resources to draw on. Propter Sion non tacebo (“I will not be silent on account of Zion”; Walsh, 1997, 54–56, 125–131), one of several poems by Walter of Châtillon satirising the corruption and venality of the Papal Curia, contains the lines
tunc securus fit viator,
quia nudus, et cantator
it coram latronibus.50
[Then the traveller will be safe, because he is naked, and he will go as a singer before thieves.]
