_Ioculator_ and _ministrallus_ are in their technical sense post-classical. But it is to be noted that the classical _histrio_ and _mimus_, widened in connotation to an exact equivalent with these, remain in full use throughout the Middle Ages. They are indeed the more literary and learned words, as may be seen from the fact that they did not give rise to Romance or English forms; but they are not differentiated as to meaning. In particular, I do not find that _mimus_ is used, as I have occasionally for convenience used it, to denote the lower minstrel of classical origin, as against the higher minstrel or _scôp_. Here are a few of many passages which go to establish this complete fourfold equivalence of _ioculator_, _ministrallus_, _mimus_ and _histrio_; _Gloss._ in _B.N. MS._ 4883ᵃ, f. 67ᵇ (Du Méril, _Or. Lat._ 23) ‘istriones sunt ioculatores’; _Constit. regis Minorcae_ (1337, Mabillon, _Acta SS. Bened. Ian._ iii. 27) ‘In domibus principum, ut tradit antiquitas, mimi seu ioculatores licite possunt esse’; _Conc. Lateran._ (1215), c. 16 ‘mimis, ioculatoribus et histrionibus non intendant.’ This triple formula, often repeated by ecclesiastics, is of course conjunctive, like ‘rogues and vagabonds.’ Guy of Amiens (†1068) calls Taillefer both _histrio_ and _mimus_ (vol. i. p. 43). At the beginning of the sixteenth century the royal minstrels are _histriones_ in the accounts of Shrewsbury, _ministralli_ in those of Winchester College (_App. E._ (_iv_)), _mimi_ in those of Beverley (Leach, _Beverley MSS._ 171). The _ioculator regis_, as already said, is by this time distinct. The Scottish royal minstrels appear in the Exchequer Rolls for 1433-50 as _mimi_, _histriones_, _ioculatores_ (_L. H. T. Accounts_, i, cxcix). The town musicians of Beverley, besides their specific names of _waits_ and _spiculatores_, have indifferently those of _histriones_, _ministralli_, _mimi_ (Leach, _Beverley MSS._ _passim_). It is largely a matter of the personal taste of the scribe. Thus the Shrewsbury accounts have both _histriones_ and _menstralles_ in 1401, _histriones_ in 1442, _ministralli_ regularly from 1457 to 1479, and _histriones_ regularly from 1483 onwards.