Jugglers

Jugglers a word brought into English from the mediaeval Latin joculator (in Provencal joglar, joglador; in old French jonglere or jonglier), through the modern French jongleur, and originally used to designate the professional musicians who attended the Troubadors and Trouveres of Provence and the north of France, either singing their poems, or, if they sung them themselves, accompanying them with an instrument, which was reckoned beneath the dignity of the poet himself. This profession was in the Middle Ages (from the 11th to the 15th century) an honorable one, but it gradually died out, or at least lost its respectability, and jugglers became a term for rope dancers, and all that class of persons who sought to gratify the populace by sleight of hand or feats of agility, until in our own day, finally, it has come to be used as a synonym of conjurer, and is applied to persons who perform tricks of legerdemain (q.v.). SEE EXORCISM; SEE SORCERY.

⇒See also the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.