Pagan songs of the early Christian period were mostly in the hands of wandering minstrels and storytellers who roamed the world in great numbers. These men, like the songs they sang, were direct descendants of the Pagan world. One well accredited theory says that the Italian minstrels were the gladiators of Roman times, and their descendants. The last of the Roman gladiatorial shows was held about the beginning of the fifth century. After that Christian sentiment forbade these bloody entertainments, and the gladiators, the entertainers _par excellence_ of Roman times, found themselves without a means of livelihood. They wandered from town to town, giving exhibitions of strength and agility in the market places, just as the acrobats do to this day in European cities. They became a separate caste, almost a separate race. Inevitably they invented or appropriated songs with which to entertain their admirers between the acts. Some of them became itinerant merchants, selling molasses or some other delicacy and attracting the crowds by their music. Sometimes they had dancing bears, or camels, or trick monkeys. In the more serious northern countries--Germany and England--they were probably the remnants of the old priesthood. Religion has always needed music as a support, and the old priests were themselves bards, or had bards in their service to sing their doctrines. As they fell into disrepute with the advance of Christianity, they had to seek their living as best they might, and they became minstrels, singing the old sagas and stories which people still loved. Often they became attached to the service of the courts. The chronicler Robert Ware says that the battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror subjected the Saxons, was opened by the minstrel or _jongleur_ Taillefer, attached to the Norman army, who advanced singing of the fabulous exploits of some hero of the time and performing feats of agility with his lance and sword, which struck terror into the Saxons, who thought his dexterity must be the effect of witchcraft. But more often the minstrels were popular entertainers, with a collection of tricks--hence the name of _jongleur_, which means player or trickster, and gives us our English word ‘juggler.’ Their music had no very exalted status, since it was only a ‘side-line’ to their merchandise or performance. But to the people of the time it was as important as our orchestral concerts and operas are to us. For it effected the interchange of art and ideas between province and province and between nation and nation. The minstrels were rarely the inventors of the songs they sang. The music of the time was genuine folk-music and the minstrels only learned and disseminated the popular songs. But they represented the whole institution of secular music in the early Christian age.