Clerici vagantes

Clerici vagantes or vagabundi (singular clericus vagans or vagabundus) is a medieval Latin term meaning "wandering clergy" applied in early canon law to those clergy who led a wandering life either because they had no benefice or because they had deserted the church to which they had been attached.

The term refers also to wandering students, ex-students, and even professors, "moving from town to town in search of learning and still more of adventure, nominally clerks but leading often very unclerical lives". Recently, the belief that the clerici vagantes played an important role in the literary atmosphere of the so-called Renaissance of the 12th century, for the kind of fresh poetry in medieval Latin called goliardic poetry, in which famous wandering scholars (scholares vagantes; in German fahrenden Schüler) like Hugh Primas and the anonymous Archpoet (both 12th century) satirically criticised the Medieval Church, has been questioned.