A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance 9781350023987, 1350023981

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT VOLUME 3

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A Cultural History of Sport General Editors: Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson Volume 1 A Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity Edited by Paul Christesen and Charles Stocking Volume 2 A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age Edited by Noel Fallows Volume 3 A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance Edited by Alessandro Arcangeli Volume 4 A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Enlightenment Edited by Rebekka von Mallinckrodt Volume 5 A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry Edited by Mike Huggins Volume 6 A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age Edited by Steven Riess

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT

IN THE RENAISSANCE Edited by Alessandro Arcangeli

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 Alessandro Arcangeli has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Series design by Raven Design Cover image: A Game of Real Tennis, c.1600 © Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-2398-7 Set: 978-1-3500-2410-6 Series: The Cultural Histories Series Typeset by Refinecatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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SERIES PREFACE

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Introduction: Cultures of Sport in the Renaissance Alessandro Arcangeli

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1 The Purpose of Sport Alessandro Arcangeli

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2 Sporting Time and Sporting Space Angela Schattner

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3 Products, Training, and Technology Élisabeth Belmas

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4 Rules and Order Christian Jaser

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5 Conflict and Accommodation Diane Roussel

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6 Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation Matteo Casini

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7 Minds, Bodies, and Identities Laurent Turcot

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CONTENTS

8 Representation Antonella Fenech Kroke

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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INDEX

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ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION 0.1

0.2 0.3 0.4

Johannes Stradanus (van der Straet, 1523–1605), Horse Joust at the Piazza Santa Croce (1561–2). Fresco. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio. Getty. Woodcut from Everard Digby, De arte natandi (London 1587). Arcangelo Tuccaro, Trois Dialogues de l’art de sauter et voltiger (Paris 1599), fol. between 142 and 143. Henry II of France mortally wounded. France, sixteenth century. Getty.

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CHAPTER 1 1.1

1.2

Copperplate engraving from Camillo Agrippa, Trattato di scientia d’arme (Rome 1553), f. 50. Private Collection. Digitalized by the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance of the University of Tours within the “Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes.” Jousting tournament in the Belvedere Palace. Detail. Italy, sixteenth century. Rome, Museo di Roma, Gabinetto Comunale delle Stampe, Nr 2810. Getty.

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CHAPTER 2 2.1

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fair of Saint George’s Day (c. 1559). Etching and engraving. Houston, Museum of Fine Arts.

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2.2

ILLUSTRATIONS

Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85), Tavern games (1677). Drawing. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1886-A-621.

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CHAPTER 3 3.1

3.2 3.3 3.4

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (d. 1569), The Census at Betlehem (1566). Oil on panel. Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Girolamo Mercuriale, De Arte Gymnastica (1573), Book II, fols 112–13. Illustration from Album of Tournaments and Parades in Nuremberg. Late sixteenth–seventeenth century. Alamy. Crispijn de Passe the Younger (1597/98–1670), Louis XIII of France during tournament practice in the riding school, in Antoine de Pluvinel, Le manège royal (Paris 1623). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. AKG.

74 76 79

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CHAPTER 4 4.1 4.2

4.3

Frontispiece of Antonio Scaino, Trattato del giuoco della palla (Venice 1555). Pallone Equipment (Alpine regions, sixteenth–seventeenth century; Northern Italy, fifteenth century). Munich, Bavarian National Museum. Cassone with a Tournament Scene. Italian, Florentine, c. 1455. © The National Gallery, London, NG4906. Bequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937.

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CHAPTER 5 5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

Races and competitions at the shooting competition camps of Augsburg, 1509. Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen, Cod. B 213, 175v–176r. Crispijn de Passe the Elder (d. 1637), Tennis players and their public (1608). Engraving. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie. Johannes Stradanus (van der Straet, 1523–1605), Calcio in Santa Maria Novella. Fresco. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Gualdrada. Getty. Guerra dei Pugni a San Barnaba. Venice, Museo Correr, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, inv. L.V.1123.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

5.5

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Frontispiece of Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, 1583. London, The British Library.

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CHAPTER 6 6.1

6.2

6.3

6.4 6.5

Nobility Hunting Fowl in the Venetian Lagoon in Winter. From Giacomo Franco, Habiti d’huomeni et donne venetiane (Venice 1610–11). Getty. Start of Football Game in Santa Croce. From Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino, del sig. Giovanni de Bardi de’ Conti di Vernio (Florence 1673). Venice, Biblioteca nazionale Marciana. By permission of the Italian Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo. Reproduction prohibited. Tennis Court of the Louvre. From Antonio Scaino, Trattato del giuoco della palla (Venice 1555), 164–5. Venice, Museo Correr. By permission of the Fondazione musei civici di Venezia. Francesco del Cossa, Palio race (1469–70). Detail of frescos at Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. Getty. Women Regatta. Detail of Gio. Matteo Alberti, Giuochi festiui, e militari . . . (Venice 1686). Venice, Biblioteca nazionale Marciana. By permission of the Italian Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo. Reproduction prohibited.

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CHAPTER 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

7.5

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Vetruvian Man (c. 1480–90). Getty. Frontispiece of Baldassarre Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano (Venice 1528). Alamy. Engraving (1628) from Thibault d’Anvers, Académie de l’Espée (Leiden 1630). Jacques Callot, Soldier hitting a large drum; in the background, crowd attending a game set on Piazza Santa Croce, in Florence. Etching (c. 1621). British Museum 1861,0713.1169. Alamy. Frontispiece of Pietro Bini, Memorie del calcio fiorentino (Florence 1688). From http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/10A13E0B. Digitalized by Google.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER 8 8.1

8.2

8.3

8.4

8.5

8.6

8.7

8.8 8.9

8.10 8.11

8.12 8.13

Leonardo Brescia, The Pancrazio, a merging of Wrestling and boxing (1572–4), detail of the ceiling of the Hall of Games. Fresco. Ferrara, Castello Estense. Bridgeman. The Sun. From Sphaerae coelestis et planetarum descriptio—De Sphaera (c. 1450). Modena, Biblioteca Estense universitaria, ms. lat. 209. Johann Sadeler (after Hans van Aachen), Italia (c. 1594). Engraving, 227x262 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, cat. RP-P-OB-7442. Guillaume Le Bé or Nicolas Prévost (ascribed to), La balle et autres ieux (The ball and other games). From Les Trente-six figures contenant tous les jeux qui ne se peuvent jamais inventer et représenter par les enfants (Paris 1587), fol. 61. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, cat. Ea 79 Rés. Francesco Beccaruzzi (ascribed to), Portrait of player of palla da scanno with a page (c. 1520). Oil on canvas. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. n° 158. Courtesy of Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Unknown French artist, Gentleman playing the paume (1586). Watercolor and gouache. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Abraham Bosse (after Jean de Saint-Igny), The pall mall player. From Le jardin de la noblesse françoise dans lequel ce peut ceuillir leur manierre de Vettements (Paris 1629). Engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-42.109. Noël Jallier (attributed to), Soule game (mid-sixteenth century). Frescoes, Château d’Oiron. Adriaen van de Venne, Pall mall players. Watercolors, black chalk, silver on paper, from his Album (1620–6). London, The British Museum, cat. 1978,0624.42.30. Nicolas de Son, Games in a park (c. 1625–37). Engravings. London, The British Museum. Adriaen van de Venne, A ball game in a Palace’s park (c. 1614). Oil on panel. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, cat. 83.PB.364.2. Crispijn de Passe the Elder (school of), Playing a ball game (c. 1600–37). Engraving. Getty. Christoph Weiditz, Amerindian ball game (1529). Watercolor and black chalk. From Der Trachtenbuch. Germanisches

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Hs. 22474, Digital Bibliothek, http://dlib.gnm.de/item/Hs22474/1. 8.14 Giovanni de’ Bardi, Discorso sopra ’l giuoco del calcio (Florence [1580] 1615). 8.15 Stefano Buonsignori (after), Wrestling match in Florence (1627–36). Engraving. London, The British Museum, cat. 1888,0612.67. 8.16 Michael Sweerts, Roman Wrestlers (c. 1648–50). Oil on canvas. Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, cat. 2496.

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SERIES PREFACE

A Cultural History of Sport is a six-volume series reviewing the evolution of both the internal practices of sport from remote Antiquity to the present and the ways and degrees to which sport has reflected—and been integrated into— contemporary cultural criteria. All of the volumes are constructed in the same pattern, with an initial chapter outlining the purposes of sport during the time frame to which the volume is devoted. Seven chapters, each written by a specialist of the period, then deal in turn with time and space, equipment and technology, rules and order, conflict and accommodation, inclusion and segregation, athletes and identities, and representation. The reader therefore has the choice between synchronic and diachronic approaches, between concentrating on the diverse facets of sport in a single historical period, and exploring one or more of those facets as they evolved over time and became concretized in the practices and relations of the twenty-first century. The six volumes cover the topic as follows: Volume 1: A Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity (600 BCE –500 CE ) Volume 2: A Cultural History of Sport in the Middle Ages (500–1450) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Sport in the Early Modern Period (1450–1650) Volume 4: A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800) Volume 5: A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry (1800–1920) Volume 6: A Cultural History of Sport in the Modern Age (1920–present) General Editors: Wray Vamplew, Emeritus Professor of Sports History, University of Stirling, UK, and Global Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK John McClelland, Professor Emeritus of French Literature and Sport History, University of Toronto, Canada. Mark Dyreson, Professor of Kinesiology, Affiliate Professor of History, and Director of Research and Educational Programs for the Center for the Study of Sports and Society, Pennsylvania State University, USA xii

Introduction: Cultures of Sport in the Renaissance ALESSANDRO ARCANGELI

The first illustration that accompanies the present volume introduces the reader to a past experience that is set in a very specific and poignant place and time (Figure 0.1). Dating from the mid-sixteenth century, it represents a joust taking place in Piazza Santa Croce, Florence. The Basilica di Santa Croce was consecrated in January 1444. Its current façade, however, was added only in the nineteenth century. For hundreds of years, therefore, the prominent church, the main house of Florentine Franciscan friars, was left with a limestone surface—the unfinished look it presents in this painting. Even an incomplete church, however, can reveal significant aspects of its special cultural context. A few years before the consecration, Friar Bernardino of Siena—arguably the most successful Italian preacher and prominent Franciscan of his century—had a stone representing a sun with rays and the monogram for Christ (IHS) put on the bare façade. Two key Renaissance artists also contributed the few decorative elements that embellish it: Lorenzo Ghiberti designed the large stained-glass window, while Donatello made a gilded bronze statue of St Louis of Toulouse which was placed above the central portal. To the Italian national memory, Santa Croce is chiefly the place where a significant number of great poets, artists, and other heroes of a shared identity (or imagined community) are buried. Although this development has predominantly occurred during the nineteenth century, the Renaissance church 1

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF SPORT IN THE RENAISSANCE

FIGURE 0.1: Johannes Stradanus (van der Straet, 1523–1605), Horse Joust at the Piazza Santa Croce (1561–2). Fresco. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio. Getty.

had already started to host not only the private chapels of some of the outstanding patrician families of the city (the Bardi, the Peruzzi), but also the burial monuments of prominent public figures, such as the one devised by Bernardo Rossellino for Leonardo Bruni, the distinguished humanist from Arezzo who earlier in the fifteenth century had been the Chancellor of the Florentine Republic; in the 1560s—that is, a few years after this image was painted—the tomb of Michelangelo was added, and the legend began. All this is to say that even the setting of the event we can see in the picture is not generic or neutral: it is heavily loaded with values and meanings the contemporary viewer would have attached to it. The square in front of the church, Piazza Santa Croce, in the city’s historical center, had been created to host the crowds that turned up to listen to sermons, and was the theater of many civic celebrations, assemblies, festivals, and forms of public display in the Renaissance period, including the well-known calcio, which is described and commented on in various chapters within this volume. The game is to such an extent literally built into the identity of the place that a marble disc dating from 1565 (that is, soon after our picture) still marks the midfield on the façade of the Palazzo dell’Antella. What goes on in the scene, however, is a joust, and several of such spectacular tournaments were held in

INTRODUCTION

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the square from the fourteenth century onwards, and increasingly during the fifteenth: in 1469 one was held to celebrate the betrothal of Lorenzo the Magnificent with Clarice Orsini, in the year of his father’s death and of his assumption of the de facto rule of the state; another notable one followed six years later on the initiative of his brother, Giuliano de’ Medici (Ricciardi 1993).1 To put this image in its context we need to also mention its creator, medium, and location. It is a fresco—with a trompe l’oeil frame that makes it look like a painting on canvas or wood—painted by the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) to decorate, next to other representations of Florentine festivals, one of the rooms in the apartment of Eleanor of Toledo, consort of the then Duke of Florence (and later first Grand Duke of Tuscany) Cosimo I de’ Medici.2 The section of the Palazzo Vecchio that was thus the object of a new destination and redecoration, completed in 1562, was part of the original nucleus of the building, built between the late thirteenth and mid-fourteenth century, and had played a highly symbolic role in the subsequent history of the Republic: it worked as the private residence of the highest members of the government, who spent there their two-months term in isolation. With its iconographic reference to the city’s identity and its cultural tradition, the reuse of the space must have somehow aimed at smoothing the political transition to dukedom (on the characteristics and evolution of the visual representation of sport see Kühnst 1996: 12–59 and passim; and Chapter 8, this volume).

SETTING THE SCENE We have thus entered triumphantly, as it were, into the period and culture we know and recognize as the Renaissance. The term chosen here is a symbolically charged one (to the extent that, inevitably, it does not satisfy everyone’s taste). It is knowingly Eurocentric, and the point that many other Renaissances have flourished at other times and in different places has been already authoritatively argued (Goody 2010). There is also the question whether it should more appropriately be used to refer to a specific cultural movement—a group of artists and men of letters who shared interests, orientations, social practices, and aesthetic values—rather than a historical period as a whole, with the result, in the second case, of mixing people ideologically distant from one another, as well as the arts with politics, the economy and all the rest (Gombrich 1974). Nevertheless, it offers a conventional and fairly practical nickname for an age in which those cultural developments, the value systems and foci of interest they promoted, played a significant role on an influential portion of European society, thus also contributing to shape what happened elsewhere, at different levels.3 The Western historiographical tradition in question, which developed from the influential writing of some nineteenth-century historians, and above all from the work of the Swiss Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97), has chosen to name

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and identify the epoch by privileging an artistic and intellectual tradition, primarily developed in late medieval Italy. Burckhardt’s periodization of the Renaissance is in fact quite early, setting the final curtain for the period after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. His subject coverage was vast, including warfare and statecraft, religion and magic, as well as the more predictable cultural developments. Among the aspects of the book that have been most criticized by subsequent research we could list its Italocentrism and the emphasis on a rupture between Middle Ages and Renaissance, with particular focus on the emergence of the Western individual from collective identities and social bonds and from a subordination to concerns for the afterlife. If the human activities which will be at the center of our attention here were not his priorities, the Swiss historian’s wide net on society and daily life included elements that are relevant here, such as military prowess or the rich festive life of the time (Burckhardt [1860] 1960). The time span covered by the present volume accompanies the reader from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth: from the final siege and fall of Constantinople (1453), under the attack of an Ottoman army that put an end to the millennial history of the Byzantine Empire; from the relocation of the papal residence back to Rome from Avignon; from the Portuguese explorations of West Africa; and from Johannes Gutenberg’s development in Mainz of a printing method with mobile type that was going to transform the forms of production, circulation, and reception of texts; to, at the other pole, Europe’s exit from thirty years of war that terminated a century of religiously motivated conflicts and devastated the German lands (war still keeping in good company with the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, namely plague, famine, and death); to Britain’s civil war and the Cromwellian Interregnum; to the beginning of the Golden Age of the Netherlands and the end of the Golden Age of Spain; and in France to Louis XIV’s coming of age and drafting the blueprint for absolute monarchy. In between, the European rediscovery of America, the outburst of the Reformation and scientific innovation that profoundly transformed the world of knowledge, among other developments, had reshaped much of the medieval cosmos. What can we expect from an investigation of the cultural history of sport in this period? In what terms can we imagine it relates with what precedes and what follows? What aspects of this dimension of human activity are likely to have shown long-term continuities, where else can some distinctive signs of change be identified? None of these questions can be properly addressed until some working definition of the field is introduced. This volume belongs to a set, and a reader may (or may not) pick it up (if they are still consulting it in the materialized form of a printed book) after having seen others. Whatever the case, the point of a cultural history is that the subject can only be approached in terms that take into account the perceptions and interpretive frames through which men and women from the past experienced and understood a given set

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of actions and events—in which they participated in various forms, or which they witnessed more or less directly—as “sport.” This is not the only possible approach, however, and it is perfectly legitimate—in fact, to some extent inevitable—that a twenty-first-century scholar may be curious to reconstruct, say, the history of fencing through millennia, despite the fact—or rather, let us hope, well aware—that its meaning may have varied significantly over time; that there could well be, for instance, some continuity in a series of body techniques, but this does not imply that exercising such skills in a battlefield, or in a competitive contest, or else as a recognized legal form of setting a dispute, are all the same thing. A history of the techniques of the body is very interesting in itself, and it immediately acquires a cultural status if we adopt—as we must—the anthropological, wide notion of culture as including all that in a given social context can be learned. However, the reason why it is learned and put into practice and the varieties of human experience with which it gets entangled cannot be ignored either. The languages in which the idea of sport could be expressed were, of course, many, and each was equipped with a cluster of terms, none of which, understandably, could possibly coincide precisely with what we tend to associate with the term today; nevertheless, by considering them together and comparatively, we can feel that to some extent at least we are approaching sensitivities from the past in understanding and evaluating human behavior. In Chapter 1, and throughout the volume, the reader will find a discussion of the multiplicity of purposes that may have encouraged early modern people to engage in (or abstain from) sportive activities, or participate into them in a variety of functions, such as organizing them or attending them as spectators. It is appropriate to preliminarily offer in these introductory pages, however, some reflections on the rationale of the inclusion of some human activities in this survey, or of the exclusion of others. It is always problematic, if not actually anachronistic, to juggle with past and present conceptual frameworks; and if we are interested in knowing what men and women from the past did during their days and nights, it may be tempting to aim at a pure description. However, what makes a way of rendering the story a cultural history—rather than, say, a political, social, or economic one—is precisely the attention paid to categories or mental maps; the fact that we are not only curious about the things those people were doing, but also, and particularly, why they did them, and what they thought they were doing while engaged in them. From this respect, the historical contexts and cultural coordinates that helped contemporaries to develop an interest in some games and physical exercises, the cluster of meanings they conferred upon them and their grounds for an aesthetic and ethical evaluation will all prove extremely relevant to the analyses that follow. A specific aspect of this story (and that too will be explored in Chapter 1, as a way of introducing a topic that will run through the volume) is

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the vocabulary Renaissance people used to refer to these range of activities, and what we can learn today from past recorded linguistic use, considered as a historical source.

HISTORIES OF RENAISSANCE SPORT There is a scholarly tradition that has dealt with the topic here under examination even if, for the period, it does not fill many library shelves. The problem is manifold: to some extent this sphere of human activities has not always constituted a serious part of the historian’s agenda. More specifically, there has been a bias over the periods of time during which something worth attracting the historian’s (or at least the sports historian’s) attention occurred, and this prejudice needs briefly addressing here. The scholar who has done it most thoroughly and systematically is John McClelland. In his ambitious and seminal Body and Mind: Sport in Europe from the Roman Empire to the Renaissance (2007: 11–18), he tackled the conceptual challenge by constructing a semiotic square in which Sport occupies one of the corners. The other three are taken by Work, Play, and War. In the Aristotelian tradition, the relationships between elements that share (or do not) one side of the geometric figure are complex. Work and Sport are both productive, while Play and War are wasteful. On the other hand, Work shares with Play the fact of being cooperative, whereas Sport and War are competitive. On the whole—somehow unexpectedly, considering how often they are considered in symbiosis—Play and Sport have none of these traits in common, lying as they are at two opposite corners (as do Work and War). Naturally, this is a static representation of concepts that needs mediation with the historical evolution of practice (nor does it specifically apply to or insist on the vocabulary). On the basis of this categorization, McClelland was able to offer a survey of what he could confidently label as sport from Roman times to the sixteenth century (with special attention to describing the variety of available sources), thus challenging narratives of dark ages and interim decline. Subsequently, the same author returned to the topic in his introduction to a collective volume, in which he played with the problem by provocatively ending its title with a question mark: “ ‘Sport’ in Early Modern Europe?” (McClelland 2009). There the rightfulness of the choice of the term was more specifically in question, and as we can expect, the—non-rhetorical—question found a positive answer. The main point McClelland makes is that if you define sport strictly in the terms of the modern phenomenon, as it emerged around 1800, it is logical that you do not find it documented before its time. What you have thus defined, though, is modern sport, whereas a whole range of historical sportive experiences had preceded it. This is certainly convincing and well put, though one could argue that it is not the only justifiable position. A historian more interested in working on (if not quite with) the natives’ vocabulary and mental maps, that is,

INTRODUCTION

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in proposing a historical anthropology of what early modern people were thinking they were doing when they exercised, competed, and did all the rest, could hesitate in adopting the term sport as the most appropriate descriptive and interpretive tool.4 What matters, and what ultimately we are proposing here, is a perspective that tries to combine both the fact that we are modern people that look at the past on the basis of our own experience, words, and categories, and that we are extremely interested in trying to recover the way the world was understood in the past. Modern sport was chiefly defined by an influential study penned by Allen Guttmann (2004), an author who has subsequently (1986) also investigated, in the longue durée, the characteristics and implications of sports spectatorship. Guttmann began by defining sport through a series of connected dichotomies: There are two forms of PLAY, spontaneous vs organized (the latter are GAMES); games, in turn, can be noncompetitive or competitive (that is, CONTESTS); there are intellectual and physical contests, and the second sort constitutes SPORTS. In his historical survey of how we would have moved “from ritual to record,” Guttmann identified seven features of modern sports: 1. secularism, abandoning the connection that earlier games and festivals had with the sacred; 2. equality, allowing theoretically everyone to compete, and at the same conditions; 3. specialization of roles and skills, also connected with professionalization; 4. rationalization, with the definition and universalization of rules; 5. bureaucracy overseeing their implementation; 6. quantification, or the numeration of achievement; 7. records that “combine the impulse to quantification with the desire to win.” (Guttmann 2004: 51) In a table summarizing the characteristics of sports in various ages (Guttmann 2004: 54), he suggested that some of the above had been present, separately, in previous periods (primitive, Greek, Roman, or medieval); only in modernity, however, did they appear all together. Subsequent research on earlier periods has questioned the alleged absence of all this before 1800; nevertheless, Guttmann has offered, to say the least, an authoritative paradigm against which scholars can measure their data and interpretation.5

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RENAISSANCE WRITING ON SPORT Contemporaries had a clear perception of the revolutionary implications of a series of key technological innovations. In one of the last aphorisms of Book I of his Novum Organum (1620), Francis Bacon—summing up a debate that had gone on for a century, and had seen contributions by Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakespeare, among others—put it in well-known terms: we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world: first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries. He did not know they all came from China (Needham 2008: 204–5). All three of these inventions had their impact on the contemporary development of sporting pursuits, and contributed to qualify the particular way they were practiced and represented during the early modern period, in comparison with the epochs that preceded and followed it. Some of these connections will emerge from specific analyses. However, to state them synthetically: the printing press provided a platform for more effective communication, both for leisure and instruction, and the resulting variety of printed objects, from single sheets to books of all sizes, offered the opportunity for several physical activities to become the subject of specific discourse and representation, sometimes for the first time (see also Chapters 3 and 4, and Chapter 8 for the illustrations accompanying those texts); firearms were introduced with varying accuracy (initially rather limited) to assist men in various tasks, some of which could be intended as sporting events; and although technical progress in navigation may have had limited effect on the field of aquatic sports, the intensification of travels it allowed in the age of geographical discoveries facilitated cultural encounters. These came at severe human cost but nevertheless exposed in any visited community the whole spectrum of human activities, including those one could interpret as leisure and sport, thus encouraging comparative reflection as well as cultural transmission (Chapter 8 also includes case studies and reflections on the implications of such encounters). The development of a variety of texts in a multiplicity of disciplines can be read as the complex result of a general trend of the period. Recent scholarship has recovered an expression by which it was known at the time: the French réduire en art, from the Latin in artem redigere. It is question of collecting

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fragments of know-how previously scattered and often not written, and order them by resorting to mathematics, rhetoric, and illustration. The scope of such an operation of formalization in writing and figures is to allow a much wider public to share information that had been the privilege of professionals. The practice had a long tradition, with its roots in Roman Antiquity; it was therefore once more, to some extent, as an outcome of the humanist admiration for the classical world that the models were reappreciated and acted as inspiration for a significant range of forms of practical knowledge. The idea had its origins in Cicero’s writing on the art of rhetoric, which included a project of systematization of knowledge—which he intended to apply to the study of civil law but regarded as extendable to other fields—that required the application of an external discipline (in his case, dialectics) as the ordering principle: one had to set a scope, define the vocabulary, establish the matter by its types and further subdivisions, thus providing the tools to position and assess any specific element. From Cicero’s own times onwards a similar method was applied repeatedly: by Frontinus and Vegetius in the art of war, by Vitruvius in architecture, as well as Varro and Columella in agriculture. The fields in which it found a reprise in the Renaissance were again architecture—but also painting, the teaching of drawing, and engraving; fencing as well as the art of conducting a siege; but also as varying pursuits as dance, grammar, mathematics, mining, or the legislation concerning masonry (Dubourg Glatigny and Vérin 2008). Some of the above fields have already offered us examples that are relevant to an enquiry on sport. The treatises identified and collected forty years ago by Carlo Bascetta (1978), originating from fifteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy, testify to the variety and richness of this writing tradition, which, at the time of its production, had not always reached the printing workshop; however, some of these texts most certainly circulated in manuscript. For an idea of the disciplines that this literature covered and the chronology of the texts, let us briefly survey those that fall in our period. An anonymous author has left, in a fifteenth-century manuscript, a practical treatise on wrestling, De la Palestra, which, in its technical vocabulary, testifies to contacts with the Spanish masters (Bascetta 1978: I, 303–40). Fencing provides the most substantial and probably best-known example. For long the art of skillfully handling different weapons of varying lengths developed in close relationship with wrestling. A tradition of Italian masters flourished from the middle of the thirteenth century; however, it is from 1410 that we have it attested in the writing of a manual, the Flos duellatorum of Fiore dei Liberi, written in Ferrara, influenced by the German writings of the previous generation and centered on techniques of defense. In the second half of the century it was followed closely by a master from Pisa, Filippo Vadi. The subsequent encounter of the fencing literature with the art of printing was so

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successful that it can be said that the former helped refining the latter. As a result, the sixteenth century saw the publication of the works of several authors: Antonio Manciolino, Achille Marozzo, Camillo Agrippa, and many others. Among these, Giacomo Di Grassi and Giovanni Dell’Agocchie—both publishing in the early 1570s—stand out for their originality, while others provided effective divulgation. The trend continues well into the seventeenth century, and coincides with a Europe-wide predominance of the Italian fencing master, prior to a shift to the rule of the French school. Among particular techniques, one treated by Fiore and reprised in the early seventeenth century is fencing while mounted on horseback (Bascetta 1978: II, 113ff). The fencing master Francesco Ferdinando Alfieri also published in Padua in 1638 a treatise on the art of flag twirling, which he followed a few years later by another illustrated book on the handling of the pike. With the help of pictures these manuals showed how to execute all sorts of feats, including passing the flag under one’s leg (Bascetta 1978: I, 41–7). At a similar point in time, around 1630, Giocondo Baluda composed a detailed treatise on vaulting and jumping over the wooden horse; if in this case the fact that it remained manuscript may not have helped a wide circulation, it is remarkable as the author’s skill inserts him in a long tradition of masters of gymnastics, who were active at the time in northern and central Italy (Bascetta 1978: I, 49–106). Ball games are represented by texts on a variety of kinds of play, from Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della palla, to which reference is made in several chapters in this volume, to texts on the pallamaglio (a ball-and-club game played over both long and short distances) and calcio fiorentino.6 In other disciplines—among them swimming, ice skating, and skiing—the documented Italian writing of texts only begins from the second half of the seventeenth century. Naturally the Italian Peninsula was not the only environment where this cultural fashion was growing. One has just to think of the late medieval German tradition detailing instructions for wrestling and fighting with swords and various other weapons. This was the inspiration for Fiore dei Liberi, mentioned above, who came from Friuli, in the north-eastern corner of Italy; this tradition is best exemplified by the Fechtbücher of Hans Talhoffer which exist on three different manuscripts: 1444, 1459, and 1467, the last of which has been reproduced in a modern edition (Talhoffer [1467] 2000). However, the combination of humanism, of the development of the courts, of the physical culture characteristic of the military companies, and of other potentially relevant social transformations of the urban landscape seems to have turned that particular area into one that was especially promising and productive. Chapter 4 explores another dimension of the Renaissance textualization of sport, namely the production of written norms regulating the proper implementation of specific sportive activities. Another dimension is illustration,

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as sport related material needed to show in clear visual form, and not simply verbally describe, positions and actions of the bodies, their environment and equipment. A special case on this front was offered by fencing manuals, known to have explored ways of representing the moving body earlier, and more effectively, than other disciplines (Anglo 2000, 2011; Castagnaro 2009–10). A particular development that has been recognized in the sportive culture of the time is a significant level of interplay between physical culture and mathematics, with the application of quantitative, scientific thinking and measuring instruments and techniques (McClelland 1990; 2014), a process that included geometricizing the perception and representation of space and of the moving body in it (Eichberg 1977; Zur Lippe 1988). An extraordinary case is represented by the hypergeometric fencing treatise of Agrippa (Figure 1.1), whose emphasis on a mathematization of space, body, and movement has encountered the skepticism of scholars of the sport itself, while fascinating the reader more interested in the cultural developments of the period. A reasonable compromise between the two extremes of under vs overestimation is struck by Bascetta (1978: II, 116), who felt that Agrippa’s exaggerated tendency to geometricize, so to speak, the movements of fencing, a discovery that later found many passive and abstruse imitators . . . has not only the obvious meaning of a search for order and rationality, in harmony with the civilization and culture of the time, but above all that of having set for the first time a dialectical relationship of rule and freedom, with the attempt to reduce as much as possible under the domain of intelligence what a theorist will later define as “points of indeterminacy” in the game, that sort of contingency during which the possibility of improvisation takes place, even if subordinated to the rules.7

A TALE OF TWO SPORTS A thick layer of cultural meanings and significant historical developments can be retrieved by analyzing documentation concerning specific physical activities. Swimming and acrobatics present two cases which do not rate among the bestknown and may offer us extraordinary insights. Swimming is an exemplar case study on this front. Its history is characterized by a marked diversity and major shifts in diffusion and cultural evaluation alike. While its practice had been held in high esteem in Ancient Greece, it had already fallen out of use by the late antique Roman world, when the swimming skills observed among German people could cause surprise. The late medieval Church’s assumption that an innocent suspect, if thrown into deep water, would drown, while a witch would only float due to diabolical help, testifies to

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the disrepute that the skill had acquired at that time. Although the renewal of educational models implemented by leading humanists included swimming among the valuable physical exercises, there is no evidence that the practice significantly recovered throughout Europe during the centuries here under consideration. In fact, Renaissance Europeans were sufficiently aware of their lack of expertise in the field to employ on both sides of the Atlantic, in diving for pearls and salvage operations alike, Western Africans, whose skills were well known (Kaufmann 2017: 42–6). However, a few publications show signs of new attitudes that may be indicative of a cultural reorientation and suggestive of developments to come. Classical Antiquity had not transmitted practical literature concerning the discipline. The two earliest and most significant texts the European tradition acquired in the sixteenth century are both Latin dialogues on the art of swimming. The first was published in 1538 by Nicolaus Wynman, a Swiss professor of rhetoric at the University of Ingolstadt. The second, five decades later (1587), was the work of the Cambridge philosopher Everard Digby; by the end of the century it had already been translated into English, and other languages followed afterwards (Orme 1983). The authors’ descriptions and arguments add flesh to a cultural turn that in many respects was taking the form of an exploration of new territories and needed to build its own respectability. Thus, printing in this example played a role in offering an opportunity—even if it did not work in this case in the short or medium term—as a vehicle of mass circulation and cultural revolution. The role played in this story by the image is significant, to the extent that it has suggested to Krüger to label it an “iconic turn.” Digby includes forty-three pictures, mainly of naked men shown as adopting different styles of swimming. They swim across a river, so that the practice “is represented as a natural exercise in the countryside,” and the author “shows the modern spirit of the natural sciences”: the environment has to be rationally understood (Krüger 2009: 420–1). Despite technical difficulties in displaying movement under water, and movement in general via a series of still pictures, the unknown artist (Figure 0.2) experiments with some solutions (as the inclusion of waves to indicate the direction of movement) and on the whole precisely the presence of the illustrations is likely to have significantly contributed to the relative success of the book compared with others. By comparison, acrobatics may appear to occupy a much narrower niche within the spectrum of athletic activities. This is certainly true; and at the same time opens windows on partly different social developments, as the case of the most systematic source on the subject demonstrates. In the year 1599 a treatise “on the exercise of jumping and vaulting in the air,” what technically can be referred as cubistics, was published in Paris, with a dedication to King Henry IV, by Arcangelo Tuccaro, an acrobat who came from Abruzzo in southern Italy

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FIGURE 0.2: Woodcut from Everard Digby, De arte natandi (London 1587).

and was employed as a dancing master first at the imperial Hapsburg court, then by the French royal family. The acrobatic dexterity displayed by the engravings illustrating the book, and described in dialogue form by the author, are certainly impressive. No less significant is the effort employed in encasing even this niche body technique in a geometric framework and rational argument, which can be the subject of earned conversation as well as practical training (Tuccaro 1599; for an example of the book’s illustrations: Figure 0.3). It would appear that a world that is evoked in this case is the experience of the professional street entertainers, opening a window onto the elusiveness of popular culture. While from the perspective of its purpose we face here an obvious differentiation between the practitioner’s work and the audience’s leisure, it is undoubtedly a physical activity that meets the criteria of our selection. The point is to try to assess what was its nature and diffusion at the time, and which transformations, if any, it may have incurred. Surely something the author was trying to do was to réduire en art his professional expertise: meaningfully, he actually uses the verb to express the purpose of his work (Schmidt 2009, 2010).8

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FIGURE 0.3: Arcangelo Tuccaro, Trois Dialogues de l’art de sauter et voltiger (Paris 1599), fol. between 142 and 143.

CULTURES, CIVILIZATION What primarily distinguishes a cultural history of sport, as opposed to other ways of retrieving and narrating that portion of past experience, is the attention paid to the concepts and attitudes that accompanied the actual practice by all people involved—participants as well as organizers and spectators. A meaningful example may be offered by the consistency between rules of the games and communal values, as particularly exemplified by the equalization or fairness, the need that everyone had the same chance (which could only be occasionally tempered by reasons of social privilege and hierarchy—see Chapter 4). Also revealing and reinforcing communal values was the fact (which is mentioned in Chapter 2) that in late medieval Flanders archery and crossbow guilds “built communities around saints, around socializing and around spiritual aid.” They “built on existing ideals of brotherhood and commensality, on evolving and often ardent devotions and, fundamentally, on the variations of the meaning of membership, to create strong communities” (Crombie 2016: 221). Although they were military groups serving in war, they were valued even more as agents of peace, particularly encouraging eating and drinking together. As late as 1618 the Infanta Isabella participated in, and won, a crossbow competition in Ghent, as “the best way for the new governor of the Low Countries . . . to show herself

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to be part of urban culture, as integrated into civic communities and as upholding civic values” (Crombie 2016: 223). Still speaking of communal values, Christian Jaser has recently shown how much palio-like races were far from being the monopoly of Siena, and represented instead a lively and polycentric festive culture centered on sportive contests that required the spatial arrangement of urban race courses, involved adequate street maintenance regulation and promised symbolic profits for racing patrons (Jaser 2017a). Although, as we mentioned above, the Renaissance as portrayed by Burckhardt would have us believe that individuals at this point freed themselves of such interpersonal ties, this is arguably one of the traits of the nineteenthcentury picture of the epoch from which subsequent research has moved away more sharply. An awareness of the richness and significance of a variety of social networks and bonds is now an intrinsic ingredient in our historical representation of that past. Our focus on a set of practices does not impede the parallel and intertwined consideration of all contextual elements that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the meaning this aspect of daily life had for men and women of the examined period. Social and institutional circumstances are sometimes stunning: take the security measures Christian Jaser (again in Chapter 4) finds in place in the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Holy Roman Empire to ensure the orderly performance of tournaments and horse races; particularly when high-ranking authorities were present and involved, hundreds of armed men could be deployed—an investment in organization that may surprise and require us to adjust and re-evaluate concepts of historical state building, by taking into account what were the contemporary priorities and the public occasions deemed as the most meaningful. Security and order may well have been at stake, but the symbolic importance of the event could hardly be missed by contemporary observers. Cultural history reconstructs discourses while also paying attention to their medium. Renaissance physical culture was first of all the object of practical and oral transmission (the techniques of the body that could be properly learned only by direct teaching and observation); it also resorted to the production of a variety of manuscript material, and of course ultimately to the novelty of print. However, our familiarity and comparatively easier access to printed sources should not obscure the fact that they represent only part of the scene—even if this is a very characteristic development of the period. On matter of sources, moreover, prescriptive literature can only give a partial account of reality: rich insights can be obtained from the perspective allowed by diaries, letters and account books (see Chapter 2). One dimension of past experience such egodocuments are known to allow us to retrieve, to some extent, is emotional life—the subject of much ongoing historical research. And sport and play show clear connections with affectivity, as repeatedly observed in Chapter 5: the

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competitive side of games, the anxiety about their outcome, particularly (though not uniquely) if some gain or loss of money may depend on it—all conjured to challenge the emotional balance of our ancestors. The contributions to this volume (and particularly Chapter 6) will also suggest the extent to which gender, social, and age groups defined access and modes of participation to sport in Renaissance Europe.9 A case which may deserve mentioning for its centrality in a notion of sport as a human activity that requires the expenditure of some physical energy, as well as skills, and therefore is not suitable in the same form to all ages, is posed by what we could not entirely anachronistically call “youth culture.” While the members of that group may have distinguished themselves also for delinquency, unruly sexual behavior, or patterns of sociability and leisure preferences that did not necessarily take a noticeable physical form, one should consider the opportunities offered by such venues as bowling alleys annexed to alehouses, among others. Conflict with adults, rules and institutions featured permanently on the menu, as did however rituals of accommodation (Griffiths 1995, 1996). Youth groups were the protagonists of activities such as fist fights, and their entertainment could be organized by dedicated confraternities (see Chapters 5 and 6). Several of the following chapters engage with a key historiographical question: the relation between sport and civilization. In an academic landscape that in general regarded sport as a phenomenon deserving little attention, a significant exception was represented by the team that developed, at the University of Leicester, a distinctive sociological study of sport. One needs to look at the context to understand the rise of academic interest on a subject, and the contemporary problem that attracted specialist observation in this case was football hooliganism.10 The two scholars who most contributed to set the scene were Eric Dunning and German expatriate Norbert Elias. To understand their contribution to the study of sport, however, it is necessary to recall the theoretical background Elias had brought across the North Sea. Published in German in 1939 by an author unknown at the time and internationally ignored before being rediscovered some forty years later, translated into most European languages and turning into one of the century’s most influential history books, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (The Civilizing Process) (Elias [1939] 1994) posited a complex itinerary by which modern state building relied on a monopoly of violence that had been achieved by sanitizing social relationships, as was particularly evident in the increasingly demanding mores imposed by manuals of good manners from the sixteenth century onwards. Although Elias’s hypothesis was that a “sportization of pastimes” had first occurred in England in the eighteenth century, correlatively with the “parliamentarization of political conflict” and the evolution of fox hunting, the narrative in which this historical revisitation was set traced the roots of this

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process further back in time. More than one chapter recalls the case of soule, the popular northern French ball game dating from the Middle Ages—with parallels in other European countries, such as various versions of English hurling—which offered the opportunities for festive entertainment and was the occasion of frequent outbursts of violence. It is within a process of increasing disciplining from political structures of power that this genre of games were progressively controlled, repressed or sterilized into tamer, more regulated activities. Another characteristic of Elias and Dunning’s approach to the historical study of sport and leisure was the interpretation they proposed of leisure activities, as distinguished from a more generic spare time, as a range of human occupations that are not meant to purely relax, but rather produce a distinctive, though controlled, type of excitement, which is at the core of their attractiveness (Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008). Eric Dunning had the opportunity to return to this research path on the occasion of an international conference on play, civilization, and social change, which was held in Bonn in 1994. Before offering a comparative analysis of state building in various nineteenth-century European countries, he reinforced Elias’s thesis by distancing it from both “the ‘evolutionary’ theories of the nineteenth century and the evaluative connotations of the popular concept of ‘civilization’ ” (Dunning 1995: 70).11

DEVELOPMENTS AND TIMELINE Some of the distinctive characteristics of the Renaissance experience of sport have begun to emerge over the previous pages: the reference to the sociological approach of Elias and Dunning may offer the opportunity here to suggest elements of an overview of the period, with an eye for a timeline and developments, both in practices and representations. This is not the place for a close examination of variations such as the regional ones across the examined area; nevertheless, some orientation should be provided. From a point of departure in which, at the dawn of modernity, “physical vigor and its manifestation constituted a sign of power” (Vigarello 2005: 248), the moving away from military training has been identified as one of the key tendencies and defining aspects of the epoch (Huggins 2017: 113). The “martial arts”—as an expert in the field, Anglo (2000) has somewhat playfully called them, exposing his book to the effect of ending up on the wrong bookshop shelves, as he has had the opportunity to observe12—continued to play a significant role among the sportive activities available for men on different levels of the social ladder. However, they witnessed a general taming, and shift from a predominant evaluation of strength to that of dexterity. They also saw an increasing variety of other, potentially competing, physical entertainments

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that enjoyed popularity and esteem—just think of a range of ball games, and above them all real tennis (Behringer 2016; De Bondt 2006; McClelland 2003): its decline will follow fairly soon, but that is another story. In the background (or up in the loft, if one stuck to the old Marxist imagery that put the economy at the base of society, the whole building resting on it), an intellectual shift occurred that distinguished between blamable pure idleness and active and potentially fruitful leisure (Turcot 2016: 265–70). Other developments, such as those in the direction of professionalization, spectacularization, and the first signs of a commercialization will be mentioned in the rest of the volume (Behringer 2009). Processes that are identifiable throughout the period include the introduction of judges and scoring systems to properly assess the results of sport performances (see Chapter 4); the growing share and refinement of equipment (Chapter 3); increasingly dedicated and specialized spaces and times (Chapter 2). Thus, offering us an example of such spaces, the engraving reproduced on the present volume’s cover illustrates a game of real tennis taking place in the Ballhaus of Tübingen. As any other historical enquiry, a reconstruction of the sport culture of Renaissance Europe relies on the availability of a range of sources (written, figurative, material, and others); and, as in most other cases, these are more abundant for the elites and literate circles than for the rest of the population. Nevertheless, it is also in this divide that developments, with a broadening of the availability of sporting opportunities, can perhaps been envisaged. John McClelland (2007; see also Turcot 2016: 276) chooses Henry II of France’s death as the result of a jousting accident as a symbolic event marking the end of an epoch (Figure 0.4). Henry’s father, Francis I, had been coprotagonist of another, less tragic, event, highly significant of the sportive culture of the early sixteenth century: the meeting with Henry VIII of England at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (Camp du Drap d’Or) near Calais. The event happened in June 1520 and occupied two weeks. It was meant to help form a diplomatic alliance, and in this respect it failed. It saw the two young kings— the 25-year-old Francis and nearly 29 Henry—jousting, tilting with lances while mounting their horses, wrestling and dancing together, while pageants and general festivities were celebrated (Richardson 2013).13 What retrospectively we can legitimately observe—despite the fact that it would be anachronistic to imagine that they were thinking of it in these terms—is that the two sovereigns were displaying and actively reinforcing and promoting ideals of nobility and rulership and models of masculinity. In the last chapter of Body and Mind, John McClelland depicts fade-over effects by which sport as it was known in the Renaissance would be mostly abandoned in the period immediately following. This poses as an interesting counterpoint to the most common narrative that postulates linear evolutions of virtually everything. According to McClelland, the tragic death of the French king

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FIGURE 0.4: Henry II of France mortally wounded. France, sixteenth century. Getty.

effectively brought to an end a sport the European nobility had practiced for six centuries and turned all its future manifestations into mere pomp and pageantry. The elimination of tourneying and jousting from the range of physical activities the upper classes may legitimately practice started an evolution that culminated in golf and lawn tennis. —McClelland 2007: 1 As the same scholar has argued elsewhere (McClelland 1984), elite sports became assimilated to intellectual and artistic pursuits; “competitive running, throwing, and jumping became the province of boys, peasants, and servants, as did all forms of fighting in public,” while the nobility “had neither time nor the inclination for rough sports and games” (McClelland 2007: 139). How does this way of describing the (lack of) future of the Renaissance manat-arms fit with the well-known, all-round set of skills which the bible of the Renaissance elite, Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, set for the European nobility of the following three centuries? On top of all the demanding artistic skills (as a connoisseur, of course, however able to elegantly practice, and not just aesthetically appreciate all sorts of disciplines), the effective member of the nobility was still after all a knight, and supposed to be at the military service of his lord. The fact is that, from this respect as in the utopian political finale, Castiglione’s text is a conscious exercise in anachronism. The book is permeated

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by nostalgia for the good old days gone by, and the dear friends that departed. Influential it will certainly be in setting the standards of an aristocratic way of life (although, in its actual use by publishers who equipped it with editorial apparatus as well as owners of the book who left their notes, sometimes downgraded to serve as a rich manual of good manners: Burke 1995a); however, the role of the European nobleman in the army after the Renaissance military revolutions was undergoing a dramatic shift, and this sets the framework for the sportive transition described by McClelland. Georges Vigarello (1986) has called this transition in upper-rank anthropological clichés one “from strength to noble bearing” (prestance). This European development had regional variations that may attest to the strengthening of national cultural identities while confirming the general trend. Noel Fallows identifies a similar turn from sport to spectacle in Renaissance Iberia, where medieval jousts were replaced by performances of a different kind: By the mid-sixteenth century in Spain cane games and bull-runs would typically take place one immediately after the other in the same arena, usually a town square . . . and they formed part of the same courtly spectacle. In the cane games, team was pitted against team in what was little more than a carefully choreographed, innocuous courtly display with no clearly defined scoring system. Quadrilles of horsemen on each team would ride in synchronization in a semicircle. As each one passed the other, the riders would hurl light-weight, short spears or canes with the intention of striking the opposing team’s adargas [hard leather shields] as that team retreated, the winning team being the one that beat the hastiest and most orderly retreat . . . In bull-running, which stood at the intersection of hunting and jousting, man and horse were pitted against raging bull. The bull-runs were somewhat more dangerous than cane games in that the mounted bullfighter was expected to stand still as he was charged by the bull, and then deliver the coup-de-grâce with his spear . . . as the bull delivered its own attack. This, then, was a new era of pure, unadulterated spectacle . . . Unlike jousting, as the cane games and bull-runs evolved, the scoring became obsolete in favour of the choreography. —Fallows 2010: 284–5 To conclude, let us return briefly to the first image (Figure 0.1). It presents, nowadays, a certain aura of familiarity. Truly, the educated modern public is familiar with the Renaissance visual imagery one comes across while visiting art galleries, or simply leafing through illustrated books and magazines. I am not suggesting a mere two-dimensional viewing experience, though, but rather the

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witnessing of actual performances, historical re-enactments. As it is the case for mock battles, many medieval and Renaissance festivals were reintroduced, in Italy and elsewhere, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Italy in particular, this occurred repeatedly at various points, whenever it could serve to promote the cultivation of memory, or a certain shared identity, down to the most recent developments of cultural tourism. Under Mussolini, for instance, a politicized appropriation of the past, incorporated into the regime’s visual culture, was “an important element of Fascist cultural experimentation” (Lasanski 1999: 26), and the program included the calcio storico in Florence. The study of this modern revisiting of past practice belongs to cultural anthropology and the cultural history of the present.14 The task of the cultural history of the past, instead, is to attempt to reconstruct the meaning the various forms of cultural practice had for their contemporaries. This is what the authors of the present volume hope they have achieved and are aiming to offer here. Nota bene. In line with an editorial policy of the publisher’s whole series, the general editors of the present book set have chosen not to devote chapters to individual sporting activities, but rather to consider the sporting experience of past men and women as a whole, and to articulate its analysis and reconstruction throughout each volume by looking at it from a variety of perspectives. The reader will find, therefore, individual sports described or cursorily mentioned here and there, whenever they appeared to offer good examples of wider phenomena. All the same, the subject index will help the occasional reader who may be interested in retrieving information on specific forms of historical practice. It goes without saying that the above-mentioned organizational criterion may have allowed for partial repetition, but that care has been taken to avoid major themes from being missed by our radars.

Notes 1. For a discussion “as to whether tournaments, jousting, and other forms of weapons fighting in the early modern period deserve to be called sports at all” see McClelland 2007: 91–2. 2. For a reproduction of, and comment on, another painting in the same series, representing a game of calcio in another Florentine square, Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, see Chapter 8. 3. On the cultural developments of the period and their relevance to sports history, see also Chapter 7, among others. 4. For an open denial that “sport” is the appropriate term to qualify the premodern festive and ludic culture that preceded the sportification, see Eichberg 1995; the question whether sport describes aptly what went on before the eighteenth century is also discussed, from the perspective of the visual documentation, in Chapter 8.

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5. In an afterword to the reprint of his book, Guttmann (2004: 172) regrets having ignored the Renaissance period and discusses John McClelland’s criticism. For responses to Guttmann on quantification and the rest, including the fundamental doubt whether ritual and record are really mutually exclusive, or rather they combined in a modern sport that can be seen as a form of ritual, see Carter and Krüger 1990. 6. For a philosophical perspective on Scaino’s treatise, see Fischer 2016: 213–51. 7. My translation. The reference is to Henriot 1969: 31. 8. I have sketched a survey of the historiography on Tuccaro in Arcangeli 2011. 9. On women, see Arcangeli 2016. 10. For a reconstruction of the origins of the sociology of sport, see Dunning 1999. 11. At the same conference, Pieter Spierenburg (1995), also mainly referring to a later period, discussed pros and cons of Elias’s theory in comparison with alternative narratives, centered on the notion and history of popular culture. 12. Personal communication. 13. Testimony to the role played by medievalism in popular culture, “The Field of the Cloth of Gold” was also the subject of a lavish circus show set up by the Ringling Brothers in the 1900s (Means 1998). 14. The Palio di Siena as it is practiced today is also the result of a nineteenth-century medievalist revival overwriting the early modern tradition (Balestracci 1995, 2019). For a discussion of the possibility of recostructing early sports—a problem shared with many other types of performance—see in any case McClelland 2002b.

CHAPTER ONE

The Purpose of Sport ALESSANDRO ARCANGELI

One of the tasks of this chapter is to familiarize the reader with the historical vocabulary of sport, on the premise that the lexicon of any field of human pursuit will illuminate the purpose and relative status of that pursuit. What words—verbs referring to activities, nouns labeling objects, places and times, forms of practice—were in use in the languages spoken and written in the West, between 1450 and 1650, when mentioning in passing, or discussing in detail, single activities we cluster as sport? More significantly still, what collective terms were used to define an entire group of forms of such human behavior; what activities were included, what others excluded from them? Did the adoption of similar categories have judgmental or other implications? Did it undergo significant variation throughout the period? Further, as the title of the chapter plainly suggests, it will be appropriate to examine what meanings and purposes different social groups could give to a type of sporting activity; at the same time, even one and the same individual or group may have undertaken a certain course of action for more than one reason.

A WORLD OF WORDS Let us start from the vocabulary and examine the variations that the notion of sport—and a cluster of related terms—experienced in different cultural contexts. This extended family of words broadly identifies a series of cultural practices, which various communities have adopted (or rejected) through time, though not always associating them with the same set of values or regarding them as befitting one specific goal. 23

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Different communities could share (and be partly defined by) different languages, of course. This is not an obvious statement simply concerning the various vernacular languages spoken in Renaissance Europe, but is meant also to remind us of the extent to which Latin was still used in a variety of contexts, academic disciplines, and cultural environments and experiences—such as the Catholic faith, just to mention one of the most obvious. One of the trends we can identify during the period is a progressive widening of the recourse to the vernaculars, even within the ranks of academia, as the result of social transformations, the diffusion of printed material, and developments in the scientific foundations and tenets of various fields of knowledge. Nevertheless, a significant number of learned discussions were still conducted in Latin, a language that offered the advantage of being the most international, and the basis of the most widespread form of school tuition. Latin offered a vocabulary for playful activities centered on the word families of ludus and iocus. In order to convey a more specific sense of physical activity, one could resort to motus or exercitium, well attested within the medical discourse, among others, though not specifically signaling a leisurely expenditure of energy. The semantic range of ludi included game playing and the public games of the circus. Iocus, the root of English “joke,” combined playing with words and acts that provoke laughter; hence joculator, jester, the target of much medieval moral contempt. While ludus has left a limited trace in vernacular languages, iocus is the source of one of the richest traditions in the vocabulary of recreation and pastimes, having generated Spanish juego (dating back to the twelfth century), French jeu, and Italian gioco. All these terms conflated many layers of meaning, being applicable to “a pleasant exercise, a competition between individuals or teams, a game or match, a hand at cards, a battle, play objects and places, a feast, a joke, something of little importance, or else a sexual act” (Arcangeli 2003: 129). Sport, the English noun and verb, which would conquer the world in the modern age together with the renewed kind of practice it denoted, derives from the Middle English verbs disporten, sporten, in turn from Old French de(s)porter (ultimately from Latin deporto, “to carry away or down”), with the meaning of amusing, entertaining (medieval and Renaissance Italian had diporto). It shares with a cluster of other (etymologically unrelated) word groups—such as French divertissement, pastime, entertainment, or Italian spasso—the basic meaning of diversion from ordinary occupations, as well as (and this is a characteristic of a wider vocabulary, including such terms as recreation, amusement, pleasure, and delight) the double function of allowing the speaker or writer to refer to either (or both) the amusement of oneself or the entertainment of others; naturally, in the transitive (rather than reflexive) use, the effect suggested in the audience is one of pleasurable diversion provoked by watching someone else’s performance. It may be worth registering, however,

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that, notwithstanding the continuing (if not growing) importance of spectator sports, the modern English use has lost the transitive value, and whatever athletes do, we can no longer say that they “sport” their public. The sense of the activity for the performer and its value for the viewer ended up differentiating linguistically too. For a group of terms that are not etymologically related, it is striking how a number of word families in European languages share a combination of meanings that are logically not so closely connected, but historically have been somewhat associated. Gambling, which will be considered below as one of the purposes and contexts of sport, but can be easily logically distinguished from the activities one bets on, was in fact linguistically entangled with them. Ludus, juego/jeu/gioco and German Spiel, as well as English play, could just mean betting, and often simply that. (John Florio, of whom we will say a little later, states the following equivalence: “Giocatore: a player, a gamester.”) The theatrical meaning also strongly connotes the same miscellaneous group. However surprisingly, Roger Caillois ([1958] 2001) classified mimicry, imitation, as a fundamental dimension of physical play. Not everyone who takes part in a physical exercise would automatically think of themselves as impersonating somebody or something. Yet, already by the mid-fourteenth century jousters in England costumed themselves as the pope and cardinals, as the mayor and aldermen of London, and as the seven deadly sins (Barber and Barker 1989: 34–5). In its later stages the tournament became a “pretext for wearing brilliant costumes and extravagant disguises that carried both jousters and spectators into worlds fabulous and exotic” (Clare 1983, 71; my trans.). Even Henry II’s insistence that the 1559 jousts, in which he lost his life, be conducted in the old style meant that he and his fellow athletes were embodying the protagonists and plots of the chivalric literature that was enormously popular at the time. In 1580 Giovanni Bardi specified that calcio players had to wear prescribed costumes, with the result that they were not only playing calcio, they were playing the role of calcio players. The distinctively English pair of terms “play” and “game” deserves some special attention. Both have Proto-Germanic etymology. Old English gamen (noun)—and the verb gamenian—referred to the amusement of oneself or others, playing, joking (and mocking) (Cameron et al. 2018). They therefore combined reference to a fairly multiform set of human activities with their pleasant affective effect. Their etymologic root related to participation, people coming together, and the fun resulting from communion; gamble is etymologically connected. Around 1200 game is attested to have meant “contest for success or superiority played according to rules,” with reference to both athletic contests and such games as backgammon. By 1300 it could specifically refer to the sport of hunting as well as to the animals caught. Old English plegian (verb), and related variously spelled noun, covered a slightly different

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and perhaps wider semantic spectrum; while also including recreation and mocking (thus somewhat duplicating gamen), it already meant performing music, as well as occupy oneself, move rapidly, exercise, and frolic. One of its contrasting dimensions seems to be an emphasis on an individual’s action, rather than on community. In early Middle English it had acquired such values as a martial sport, activity of children, revelry, or sexual indulgence. By the fourteenth century it also indicated a dramatic performance. At the same time, the noun could mean the playing of a game, while the verb was already opposed to work from the late fourteenth century. The two terms also often worked as a pair, which presented only partial overlap of meaning. In translation, it is noticeable how they need to be both convoked to cover what partly other languages (juego/jeu/gioco and Spiel) can express in one: one needs to mention game in order to refer to a pattern of behavior and its rules, whereas play recovers the dimension of the action, the individuals’ performance and the attitude it involves. Since we are talking about a continental (islands included) circulation of forms of practice and of terms apt to designate them that was particularly intense, and included the mobility of people, books and objects, as well as connected habits (or fashions) and ideas, the cultural and linguistic transfer between different areas and experiences is particularly intriguing. Three books all published in England in 1611 assist in determining what was the semantic field into which the idea of “sport” was inserted, and how it was regarded internationally in terms of its cultural role. One of these was the translation of the Bible commonly known as the “authorized King James Version”; the other two were dictionaries: John Florio’s Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues, an expanded version of a 1598 original, and Randle Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues.1 The Bible contributes relatively little to the subject, but there are passages that, as translated, illuminate early modern understandings of sport. In the books of Maccabees (I, ch. 1, vv. 13–15; II, ch. 4, vv. 9–13), dating from the second century BCE, the author condemns those Israelites who sought, and were granted, permission to abandon Jewish customs and live as Greeks. Accordingly, the first step they took in this direction was to construct a gymnasium in Jerusalem; the King James translator avoided the already existing calque from the Greek gymnasium, but rather rendered it as “a place of exercise”—as if the latter notion might not have its own name. Similarly, when translating the passage in I Corinthians 9, 24–27 (first century CE) where St Paul uses an athletic metaphor—“those running in a stadium”—to emphasize the inherent effort required to lead a Christian life, the King James translator substitutes “race” for “stadium.” The Elizabethans and Jacobeans could imagine viewing stands being constructed for chivalric sports, but competitive running had been socially reduced to an activity for schoolboys, peasants, and other

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menials—despite the fact that stadio and stade appeared in Florio’s and Cotgrave’s dictionaries. Florio defined gioco as “any kind of game or play”; expanded to plural giochi to mean “games, plaies, sports, delights”; paired the verb giocare with “to play, to game. Also to sport” and the acting subject, the giocatore, to “a plaier, a gamester.” The adjective giocoso is rendered as “gamefull, merie, sportfull,” and this basic vocabulary accompanied by a wealth of applications to specific games (as is the case with giocare alla palla, “to play at tenis,” and gioco di palla, “a tennis-court, or play”) or idiomatic uses. Diporto is equated to “solace, sport, pastime,” spasso to “pastime, solace, recreation,” passatempo to “a passetime, a sport, a solace,” ricreatione to “recreation, solace, sport, pastime, pleasure. Also a creating againe,” thus showing the substantial overlapping and interchangeability of the whole repertoire—while diletto and intertenimento appear without specific reference to physical activity, divertimento does not yet point at the leisure sphere and svago, modern “diversion, amusement,” is not registered (Florio 1611).2 Similarly, Cotgrave (1611) had jouër, deport, plaisant (defined as “gamesome, recreative, sportfull”), passetemps and recreation. Whatever Florio and Cotgrave understood by the word “sport”—and there are sound reasons for thinking that the principal modern sense of the word was part of that understanding (McClelland 2017)—the words to which they link it analogically show that it possessed several non-material purposes. Beyond its most obvious function as a pleasurable activity (“merie,” “delight”), sport is also a way of structuring leisure (“game” implies rules and order); more importantly, sport brings a psychological tranquility to the practitioner (“solace”) and restores him or her to their old selves (“recreation, creating againe”). In contrast to the view commonly ascribed to the medieval church and to Reformation puritans, the Renaissance generally saw the practice of sport as having a humanly beneficial purpose beyond the military preparedness customarily invoked. Combined, Florio’s and Cotgrave’s definitions also provide more specific insights into the status of particular sports: the fairly lengthy accounts they give of palamaglio/Palemaille—four to five lines in each dictionary—when compared to the brief definitions of gioco di palla/paulme, reveal that pall-mall was still an unfamiliar sport in England whereas tennis was well known. On the other hand, the theatrical dimension of part of the above-mentioned vocabulary would apparently point to a significantly different experience from that of sport. However, one should always consider sport as a complex phenomenon, where viewing can play a significant part: in that sense, the display element of spectator sports has historically conditioned language uses and kept the semantic fields of sport and spectacle closely connected. If we look at more specific types of practice, without entering into the technical jargon of individual sports, a first fact worth registering is the wide

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use of generic terms also for indicating particular types of activity. As it has been mentioned in passing, some of the above words could be taken to refer to an act of playing particular sports (or part of a wider match, as with game in lawn tennis). Occurring already in medieval times, the circumstance—also mentioned—that game could be transferred to mean the target of the hunt, that is the wild animals pursued, may suggest a versatility of usage that can travel from indicating human activities to denoting their implements and environment, such as spaces and times. Another lexical family, though rather more bookish, emerged via the process of textualization of Renaissance sports (described in the Introduction as well as in other chapters of the present volume), and attempted to ennoble them by labeling them as “arts” or “sciences.”

GOOD REASONS In the Renaissance one could engage in (or attend as spectator) a wide range of activities that, from the perspective of our modern linguistic usage, could be defined as sport. This does not necessarily mean, however, that they were always and by everyone pursued with the spirit that characterizes today’s participation, in any role, to sport practice and events, nor simply as a leisurely occupation. At this point it may be worth reflecting for a moment on the relationship between leisure and sport. Just to mention the most obvious divide, take the case of professionalism, one of the traits of modernity in sport identified by Allen Guttmann. Despite making a living from it, a modern athlete or player on a team does recognizably “sport.” In a historical perspective, as we have seen for modern sport, the rise of leisure as we now understand it has also been treated by a predominant scholarly trend as being the result of an eighteenth- to nineteenth-century development. It was the modern factory and urbanization that, together with the taxing rhythm of labor, also produced leisure time and holidays (Corbin 1995). Here too, however, many objections have been raised; and, influentially, Peter Burke (1995b) has collected multiple accounts according to which an “invention of leisure” would have occurred over the previous few centuries, and significantly since the Italian Renaissance. These included guides of conduct that devoted increasing attention to recreation and wrote of it with increasing sympathy; treatises on particular types of recreation; rising attraction to leisure activities in pictorial representation, both in terms of visibility and of respectability; awareness of specific leisure time and space (retirement to the countryside) among the upper classes; cities as well-perceived and visited for the leisure opportunities they offered; a gradual sense of free time also among ordinary urban people; and acknowledgment of the existence of a room for lawful recreation even by polemicists engaged in attacking other forms of it.3

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Let us survey a series of likely reasons that brought early modern people to practice or otherwise participate in sports. Physical activities recognizable as sports per se may be undertaken for different, functional purposes. A particular one can be identified in legal customs: dueling and trial by combat as contexts for sword fights emerge at various points in other chapters in this volume. Bascetta (1978: II, 113) suggests that, strictly speaking, the evolution of fencing into a sport is fairly recent, and is conditioned by the historical exhaustion of the military and judicial functions of sword fighting. In reality, the sports dimension was already emerging around 1400, out of an evolution of complex techniques, and via their transmission by fencing masters and treatises on swordplay. We have already mentioned in the Introduction that fencing was well represented among the Italian treatises and was included in the Renaissance revisitation of the ancient art of systematizing a discipline. It became to such an extent a defining competence of a social group that French scholars have colorfully talked of a “civilization of swords,” a “society of fencers,” and a “republic of duelists.” At issue were a series of objects, gestures, and social practices than may be worth exploring in its technicality, not excluding ferocity, considering that it ultimately represented an expertise in the service of homicide (Brioist, Drévillon and Serna 2002; Brioist 2008) (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1: Copperplate engraving from Camillo Agrippa, Trattato di scientia d’arme (Rome 1553), f. 50. Private Collection. Digitalized by the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance of the University of Tours within the “Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes.”

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A multiplicity of contests has clearly served military purposes, with varying degrees of proximity to actual warfare (see also Chapters 3 and 5). The case of the medieval and early Renaissance knight and of the perfecting and display of his skills achieved via frequent jousts and tournaments is the most obvious: it lends itself to variations on Clausewitz’s famous statement about war and politics, allowing one to consider, interchangeably, the battle as a continuation of the tournament by other means, or vice versa. If we acknowledge as we must with Johan Huizinga ([1938] 1970: 110–26) the presence of the play element in war, without even slightly questioning the seriousness and harmfulness of warfare, the connections are evident, and may help in blurring the dichotomy between sport and war: people who took part in them charged them with multiple meanings and purposes, some of which overlapped. One should not, however, forget many other sports and athletic activities, shooting contests and—for the first half of the period at least—archery, considering that in Tudor England it was singled out as the one and only authorized popular pastime, precisely to ensure its survival as a useful form of military tactics and training. On top of the material published by Bascetta (1978), other texts can be added that testify to a tradition that it would be appropriate to associate with our notion of sport, but that were labeled as exercise, and that explicitly served military purposes. Pietro Monti—a master (of uncertain nationality) in the handling of various weapons, who is mentioned and praised for his skills in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier—published in Milan as early as 1509 a substantial Latin work in three books on physical exercise, including running races between two contenders, intended as military training (Arcangeli 2017: 288–90). More has been said in the Introduction about the evolution of forms of combat, down to their Renaissance taming and transformation into a virtually harmless set of entertainments. A late medieval development such as the pas d’armes, which saw knights combating with lances or axes and swords, has been expressly equated to a sport event, given the way the contests were regulated and the chivalric values they were meant to endorse and reinforce, but also the ludic pleasure princes and high-ranking nobility took in practicing them as amateur combatants. At the same time, the pas d’armes was clearly also a spectator sport, with logistical implications for the choice of the location, whether urban or inside a castle, and the practical arrangements that facilitated its attendance. With the circulation of information about the events and the propagandistic use of chronicles, the practice even anticipated aspects of modern sport journalism (Nadot 2012). A complex of purposes can be exemplified by a practice such as hunting, which presents obvious parallels and connections with the martial arts. Considered the aristocratic leisure par excellence, it is regularly present in the predominantly gender-specific literature of medical advice on how to maintain

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health. Thought to be one of the most befitting occupations for a gentleman (rather than a lady), it depended heavily on a monopoly legally ensured to the upper classes: it was, therefore, the subject of serious conflict between different social groups, the less privileged seeing themselves deprived of a potentially important source of food, while the hunting nobleman cared little about actually eating the game. Hunting prominently occupied a series of connected chapters within one of the earliest moral tracts warning against the dangers of game playing, written at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the Spanish Dominican friar Pedro de Covarrubias, who also debated specific legal questions arising from it (Thomas 1983; Arcangeli 2003: 86–7, 48–50).4 Gambling is so tightly connected to contests of many types that it occupies a key section in the semantic spectrum of the vocabulary of play (as a fundamental meaning of Latin ludus, French jeu, Italian gioco, and German Spiel, among others); and it even provided the main reason for the tradition of Roman law that discussed a series of athletic games (that is to say, the legislator, from late Antiquity onwards, only had to take them into consideration because they offered an opportunity for betting, and this was the cause of legal disputes; Arcangeli 2003: 74–81). Thus, the passion for betting must be considered as a driving force in the very setting up of sport venues and running of events, as it is the case for one of the Renaissance’s most successful games: real tennis (de Bondt 2006). It was also the target of moral reprise, as well as medical concern, anticipating the modern notion of, and attitudes towards, addiction: this is the subject and the tone of a monograph published in 1561 by the Flemish physician Paschasius Justus Turcq, who proposed to cure it via some kind of psychotherapy. Contemporary awareness of the multiple problems caused by compulsory gambling were so widespread that there is a European tradition of signing notarized promises not to do it, for a given period or forever (Depaulis 2009–10). Although the subject of leisure has already been touched upon while drawing preliminary distinctions, it needs to be reinforced as a major purpose for the setting up of sporting events, for the entertainment of both participants and the audience, if any were present. As we have seen, in parallel with the question of the rise of modern sport, historiography has debated what is often termed (and variously dated) as a shift from a “festive culture” to a “leisure culture.” Once again, industrialization offers the most frequent context. A further connotation of our image of the premodern festival comes from the hypothesis that a popular culture would have existed during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance as a locus of communal values and carnivalesque celebration, from which the elites would have subsequently broken away (Bakhtin [1965] 1984; Burke [1978] 2009). However, it would be reductive and imprecise to imagine such an evolution to have occurred all in a short time, and the elements of the later leisure culture to have been all complete novelties. The process must have

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been more complex, involving a variety of agents and a multiplicity of different spheres, power relationships and practices of cultural appropriation; and the evolution was setting off from the world of an already multifaceted experience, which comprised some festivals related to the life cycle, others still to the calendar, local and political communities, or else public social relationships (Frijhoff 1995; Arcangeli 2018). The medical justification—the discourse that tends to adopt the vocabulary of exercise—has featured among the dominant ones for millennia. Its grounds are the need to keep the body in movement, ideally moderate, as excess in speed, duration, or amount of effort could be easily judged detrimental (Arcangeli 2003: 18–45; Cavallo and Storey 2016; Turcot 2018). Here fitness and sport, strictly speaking, show potential to clash: should I run fast enough to win, or is that going to hurt me? And it is ultimately an irony that Girolamo Mercuriale, the sixteenth-century author of the first modern treatise on medical gymnastics, is credited and has been celebrated for a recovery of ancient sport and Olympism. Antiquarian his book certainly was. However, following Galen, it condemned athleticism as unhealthy, precisely because, by aiming at the mere enhancing of strength, it produced a body of excesses—apart from any other consideration. The athlete was destined not to live long, because of the quick burning of his energy (and Renaissance culture had a real fascination for the dream of living long). Such unbalance would also negatively affect the senses and mental faculties of individuals. Mercuriale’s book became a ubiquitous source of reference for, among other curiosities, the iconography of ancient gymnastics (for an example, see Chapter 8); even on that front, however, its reliability was seriously affected by the Italian physician’s collaboration with Pirro Ligorio, a talented artist who had a freely imaginative understanding of the production of historical evidence (Agasse 2006a, 2006b; Arcangeli 2014; Lee 2009, 2014; Mercuriale 2008).5

SHAPING THE RENAISSANCE BODY If medical gymnastics was, rather, Mercuriale’s ideal, that emphasis put him in tune with another, connected Renaissance development, which the historiography of both the period and the field has regularly exalted: the reevaluation of physical education in humanist pedagogical programs and practices, from the early fifteenth century onwards. If we project the nineteenthcentury birth of modern team sport in the English public school back a few centuries, some parallels do not seem too far-fetched. Both the early Italian experiments by the likes of Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua or Guarino da Verona in Ferrara, and their reprise in sixteenth-century London, expressed a renewed interest, inspired by ancient models, in the education of mind and body that assigned physical activities a specific role to play (English 1978; Turcot 2016: 283–5; see also Chapter 3 in this volume, among others).

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In the latter context, the schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster offered, in his Positions (1581), an unusually comprehensive list and description of games and sports examined in the educational context and perspective (Mulcaster [1581] 1994; Nutton 1990; Cousin-Desjobert 2003). The long title suggested that “those primitive circumstances be examined, which are necessarie for the training up of children, either for skill in their booke, or health in their bodie,” thus confirming the classical ideal. The justification, however, was overwhelmingly medical, rather than emphasizing the pedagogic advantages of play, though this does not mean that other aspects are not taken into consideration. Even if the material is predominantly antiquarian, information on recent habits and developments is not lacking. The survey included genres of exercise that look remote from our taxonomies but were consistent with the Hippocratic tradition, such as the exercise of the voice (quite appropriate in the classroom, evidently). Other series of sports and games are more immediately recognizable. Of “daunsing,” for instance, which opens the sequence of more properly physical exercises, is assessed morally: “why it is blamed, and how delivered from blame.” Here again detailed medical reasons in favor of the practice are given, down to the benefit to specific limbs. Nevertheless, the debate goes clearly beyond pure considerations of health. Critics are identified as moralists (“some sterne people”); justification derives from the antiquity of the art, and the purposes it has served since the remote past “both athleticall for spectacle and shew, militarie for armour and enemie, and physicall for health and welfare” (Mulcaster 1581: 71–5). If the argument does not present a specifically pedagogical side (and this appears to be a limit of Mulcaster’s work altogether, contextualized as it must be in the European world of schooling as it was before Comenius), it touches at least upon aesthetics, and appears to defend a relative value of pleasure from those who openly attack it. On the other hand, hunting (discussed with a distinction between the practice on foot or horseback) is presented as if it were not controversial, by producing a somewhat unprovoked (though standard) excuse:6 But we need not either for praise, or for profe, to use forraine advocats. For hunting hath alway caried a great credit, both for exercising the bodie, and deliting the mynde, as it semes to be verie naturall, because it seeketh to maister, and to take beastes, and byrdes, which are naturally appointed for mans use, and therefore though they be taken and killed, there is no wrong done them. —Mulcaster 1581: 98 Other chapters are dedicated to wrestling, riding (with an internal distinction in slowe, quick, trotting, ambling, and posting), ball games (which comprise “the hand ball, the footeball, the armeball,” the last one “invented in the

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kingdom of Naples, not many yeares agoe,” 103–5), to more specific children’s games like the spinning top, or more generic activities such as walking. Following the model he used for dancing, Mulcaster sets out a copious number of forms of exercise by enunciating the purposes of their practice and then identifying corresponding, different varieties of the activity in question. The material will consequently appear repetitive; it offers nonetheless a window on writing patterns and modes of Renaissance reasoning on sport. The one on fencing states that our ancestors used it warlike for valiauntnesse in armes, and activitie in the field, gamelike to winne garlandes and prices, and to please the people in solemne meetinges, physicklike to purchace therby a good haviour of body and continuance of health. Herof they made three kindes, one to fight against an adversarie in deede, an other against a stake or piller as a counterfet adversarie, the third against any thing in imagination, but nothing in sight, which they called schiomachia [in Greek letters in the text], a fight against a shadow. —Mulcaster 1581: 77–9; all emphases original The scheme is proposed again for running, from its incipit: The manifest services which we receive by our legges and feete, in warre for glorie, to pursue or save, in game for pleasure to winne and weare, in physick for health to preserve and heale, do give parentes to understand, that they do suffer their children to be more then halfe maymed, if they traine them not up in their youth to the use and exercise therof. —Mulcaster 1581: 88–91 While reproducing once again the same pattern (“it served the olde world in game for braverie, and shew of actiuitie: in warfare to skip over diches and hard passages, in physicke for an exercise of health”), leaping bears the additional characteristic of being introduced via an affective justification, which itself had a classical tradition: “Leaping should seeme to be somewhat naturall, and chear full, bycause at any pleasant or ioyefull newes, not onely the hart will leape for joye, but also the body it selfe will spring lively, to declare his consent, with the delited minde, and that not in young folkes alone, but also in the elder” (Mulcaster 1581: 91–3). Swimming, for which Mulcaster reconstructs the ancient reputation (“in the old time, when they would point at a fellow, in whom there was nothing to be made account of, they were wont to saye, he neither knoweth letter on the booke, nor yet how to swimme: wherby it appeareath that swimming, was both in great use, and of great price in those daies”), is also given a functional justification, given that it “can neither do children harme in learning, if the maister be wise, nor the common weale but

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good, being once learned, if either private daunger or publike attempt do bid them aventure” (Mulcaster 1581: 93–5). Through its repetition, this discursive pattern should adequately clarify that, although not exclusive, a play/sport raison d’être of a range of cultural practices (with athleticall as a linguistic or conceptual variation adopted for dancing) was distinctly present at the time as other than medical or other functional justifications. Finally “shooting” (archery, with a passing reference to Roger Ascham’s treatise) also has a brief passage on the same style—“as it hath bene used by divers nations, in diverse sortes, both on horsebacke and on foote, both for peace and warre, for healthfull exercise and pleasant pastime” (Mulcaster 1581: 100)—after which the recognition of its international diffusion gives way to an emphasis on the special consideration it receives in the British Isles. A doyen in the history of physical education, Jacques Ulmann, explored these Renaissance dynamics in pedagogical theories and practice by also attracting our attention to developments in the historical semantics of the notion of body (Ulmann 1977). It may be worth offering some wider perspective, here, on the notion of a “cultural history of the body,” considering that, although it was the somewhat provocative subject of one of the first book sets that inaugurated the format of the present one (Kalof and Bynum 2010), it may have to some extent retained the flair of an academic divertissement rather than of a subject that may attract the interest of a wider public. The implicit motivation for such skepticism, of course, is that the body is a natural given, and that if it can have a history at all, this could be largely confined to a reconstruction of its biometric evolution from early humans onwards. As it happens, the matter is far more complex and interesting. The cultural factor becomes evident if one considers the variation in the perception and understanding of the human being across different communities, both geographically and historically. To state just one significant point of departure, Homeric Greek did not have a word to indicate the living body as a whole: soma—from which some modern terminology derives—only meant “corpse,” the dead body. It took some developments in philosophy, natural history, and medicine to produce the idea of a being intended both as more than a sum of its parts and as distinguished from a psychic or spiritual dimension. Different cultures around the globe have negotiated this perception and understanding variously; the Western tradition owes much to Greek thought and to Christianity. Thus, the tendency of cultural history, particularly from the 1980s, to refer to the social “construction” of phenomena could be aptly applied to this fundamental aspect of human experience (Arcangeli 2012: 57–63; Burke 2004a: 74–99). This is true to the extent that even an “invention of the body” has been announced and chosen as a topic of research, and this may help us to go back to the Renaissance, and point at a specificity of iconography. The quoted expression appears in the title of two French books, published within a few years

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from one another (Laneyrie-Dagen 1997; Mandressi 2003), which, taken together, offer a view of the peculiarly European experience. This seems to have been characterized, among other features, by a special sensitivity to the physicality of human beings, one which finds expression, for instance, in the figurative representation of shadows, resulting from the observation of an opacity of the body that affects the transmission of light; and by a curiosity for the nature, structure, and functioning of the body, which manifested itself in the singularity of the sixteenth-century explosion of anatomical enquiry and drawing. The narrative easily fits with a distinctive path that Western art followed, starting from the Italian thirteenth century, away from Byzantine iconology towards naturalism and the expression of physiognomies and emotions. It also had a specific story in the iconographic tradition and in the field of depicting humans at play. In her essay, Antonella Fenech Kroke (Chapter 8, this volume) speaks of a “construction of the sportive body” as a Renaissance development to which the visual arts may have contributed by not just representing social practice, but also interacting with it and, in turn, influencing behavior. Further along this line, in a recent study, one of the most senior and insightful historians of the body, who has also written extensively on sport, observed the historical development of self-perception (Vigarello [2014] 2016). His narrative posits a turning point as having occurred in the Age of Enlightenment, with an increasing postulation of and sensitivity to an inner self (a sensation inédite). The light this interpretation casts on the period preceding such eighteenthcentury developments would suggest that in our period the system of the five senses remained the predominant channel of knowledge of the world, though confined to the outside, while self-exploration was the separate dominion of personal conscience, distinctly developed in the religious sphere in the Christian West from the twelfth century onwards as an effect of a reform of sacramental confession. Pain and the passions were among the few everyday experiences that challenged these schemes and posed interpretive problems. Thoughtprovoking as this scheme may be, it seems to underestimate, pace Vigarello’s expertise in the body and sports history, the role played by humanist ideals and practices of education and by a physical exercise and self-knowledge undertaken with a combined medical and recreational agenda. Once more, it may be appropriate to understand the Enlightenment’s developments as not having happened in a vacuum, out of the blue.

A CODA ON CHIVALRY As is the case with some specific sports (see the Introduction), the point of Renaissance sport’s purpose can be better understood if also approached via contextualized case studies. It will even be more fruitful than otherwise to point our searchlight towards a practice whose meanings could, at a first glance,

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FIGURE 1.2: Jousting tournament in the Belvedere Palace. Detail. Italy, sixteenth century. Rome, Museo di Roma, Gabinetto Comunale delle Stampe, Nr 2810. Getty.

appear baffling to our modern sensitivity. A case of this kind may be offered by a variety of armed displays that could be seen in the streets of Renaissance Italian cities, among which figured a version called an armeggeria. In his highly innovative Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Richard Trexler presented it as an element in a trio of public rituals, the remaining two being dances and jousts (Figure 1.2). At first, some characteristics would seem to distinguish it in a way that would not particularly qualify it as a sport: Of these activities, the joust and the dance were competitive, the best participants receiving prizes; like most competitive games, they were performed within a specific area, and were fenced off from the surroundings. The armeggeria, on the contrary, was not competitive and to a certain extent was unrestrained, its primary purpose being the creation of an erotic and lovable male. Through the armeggeria the woman would see a man worthy of her love because of his authority over his brigade, his love for his fellows, and their love for him. She would decide that any messere who could command the love of such a band of expert horsemen commanded her love. —Trexler 1980: 225

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The element of courtship may appear somewhat exaggerated in this preliminary description. It owes much to Trexler’s idiosyncratic historical anthropology, but we will nevertheless bear it in mind as one of the contexts of this practice. Giovanni Ciappelli (1997: 137–47), who has emphasized the frequency of these public forms of display around the Carnival period, further distinguishes between individual jousts and team tournaments, both competitive; again, armeggerie are singled out as non-competitive. What did they look like? As Ciappelli puts it, this was a way of showing spectacularly one’s riding skills without entering into a physical confrontation with others. The lavishly dressed and armed group would ride across town displaying their virtuosity, and usually ended by performing the task of “breaking lances,” that is, hitting fixed targets accurately from given angles. Trexler associates the last detail exclusively with the courtesy element and the courted lady’s home as the destination of the whole ride. If this was an example of youth culture (as it was referred to in the Introduction), families were heavily involved too. Trexler mentions that diarists identified armeggiatori as the sons of certain citizens rather than by their Christian names; and the family of the person who was elected as signore of a brigade paid large sums to feed and clothe his brothers and generally underwrite the activities. The relations of this set of rituals with authorities and power is complex. Dances and jousts were usually sponsored by the city: A large city like Florence attracted professional jousters seeking challenges, and the government brought them in to provide entertainment. Throughout the period northern European and Italian knights dotted the roads of Tuscany, earning their livelihood from the stakes they won at their sport. —Trexler 1980: 234 Armeggerie, on the contrary, were more often private initiatives. They could express competition between leading families, or offer the opportunity for the creation of alliances between some of them. Although they were regulated to avoid the clashes that had been common during the previous two centuries, one thing Florentine authorities did not do was try to stop them: To accommodate family honor as well as to protect the citizenry from these heavily armed and ferociously screaming horsemen, the government warned citizens that the fault was theirs if they were accidentally hurt, for the horsemen would be not prosecuted . . . Citizens retreated to their homes and looked out from the safety of their barred windows to see the spectacle. —Trexler 1980: 227

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In sum Trexler refers to it repeatedly as a sport, and the role of the spectators as judges of the quality of the performance is clear: “to be acceptable, the armeggeria like the dance had to be done perfectly, according to the norms of the audience” (Trexler 1980: 232; see also Balestracci 2001). This kind of practice should be considered within a wider context of urban rituals. Following an exceptional Florentine snowfall in February 1464, one episode narrated by Trexler also includes a snowball fight. Ciappelli (1997: 137) also mentions the carnivalesque habit, comparable to the rituals of charivari, according to which groups of Florentine youth would block a road with a pole (stile) and let passers-by through—and particularly newly-wed girls—only after they had paid a toll. Ultimately, it would appear that the precise meaning of these events changed according to individual circumstances and requires accurate contextualization in order to be assessed with any reliability. Honor is an obvious and prominent component of this mix; it is also evoked elsewhere in this volume (see Chapter 6) as a source of interpersonal and group conflict. It was the driving force for the practice of dueling and has been studied in its cultural metamorphosis through history (Frevert 1995; 2011: 37–85). Trexler’s nuanced assignment of a particular political background and meaning to each specific sort of chivalric display in late medieval Florence remind us that power structures and relationships were among the defining contextual factors of Renaissance sport, as they were for other epochs. To the above list of purposes should be added the following: public spectacles and display as a way of satisfying popular needs (panem at circenses); distraction from more pressing concerns; and effective political communication and propaganda. The competition for prestige among different individuals and municipal groups (as may also have been the case between cities, as explored in Chapter 5) have always included physical and competitive events, in a variety of forms, down to mock battles and races. A few years before Trexler’s study of the historical anthropology of Renaissance Florence, Natalie Zemon Davis had offered a similarly careful analysis of the festive culture and rites of violence of sixteenth-century France. Their relation to social structure and change appeared complex, with the rituals of misrule—more effectively than otherwise—open to be interpreted, following the lead of anthropologists, as rites de passage. In fact children and youth played a highly significant role in them (Davis 1975: 97–123, 152–87).

BACK TO SQUARE ONE How does this multiplicity of purposes and uses fit into McClelland’s semiotic square (2007: 15; see again the Introduction)? One can in fact insert them without too much trouble, as long as sport is not taken as a single point (a

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corner in the graph), but rather considered as a spectrum, with a whole range of shades and degrees by which a given practice may be aptly situated not necessarily at the end of a line but perhaps elsewhere (e.g., along one side of the square, on one of its diagonals, or anywhere else in between, as in a Cartesian graph). Thus, a joust or tournament will fall somewhere along the line between Sport and War; furthermore, different types of sports and different actual performances may have leant more in one direction than the other. Similarly, on the vertical axis some genres or instances of roughly speaking sporting activities may involve less competition and more cooperation, therefore accordingly approaching forms of work or play. The critical exercise of trying to situate a given form of practice in the mental map that is likely to have accompanied its experience and evaluation within a past (or anyway alien) culture needs to duly weigh the evidence offered by documented attitudes as well as deeds. It is not too easy to make sense of it, because the richness of sources documenting moral critiques of sport may represent only the opinion of specific literate groups, while the impact they may have actually had on daily life was perhaps limited. (That is in general a problem with preceptive literature, that it should always be balanced with an attempt to assess the extent to which rules were applied.) Nevertheless, there are historical conjunctures during which the effects are macroscopic and epoch-changing: the case of Puritanism in Interregnum England may suffice to prove it. Antisport prejudices, or more general negative attitudes towards the body and pleasure are consequently touched upon in various chapters (see Chapter 5 and, for religious contexts, Chapters 2 and 7).7 Mike Huggins (2017: 115) has spoken of this context for early modern sport as that of a “moral, religious and political battleground.”

Notes 1. The dedications of these books index their authority. The Bible was of course dedicated to the King; Florio’s “Queen Anna” was Anne of Denmark, the Queen Consort, whom Florio instructed in languages; and Cotgrave’s dictionary was dedicated to William Cecil, a member of the family that furnished both Elizabeth I and James I with their chief administrators. 2. See also Arcangeli 2006 for Florio’s use of the vocabulary and concepts of leisure and sport in his didactic dialogues. 3. As it happens, this claim may raise controversy also at the opposite end of the chronological spectrum. At an economic history conference in Prato where Burke presented this argument, Gherardo Ortalli objected that the rise of an iconography of leisure pursuits that Burke had listed among his pieces of evidence did not lack medieval precedents (see the debate transcribed in Cavaciocchi 1995: 72–4). 4. A fuller consideration of the relationship between human sports and recreations and animals should take into account equitation (including the equestrian ballet, examined in Chapter 5) and bear-baiting or other animal fights.

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5. For a new reading of the book that highlights the role of the court patronage of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in Post-Tridentine Rome as an influential context, see Kavvadia 2015. 6. For instance, when the above-mentioned Covarrubias discussed bullfighting, he condemned it on the grounds of its danger, but expressly refused the argument “on the side of bulls as God’s creatures” (Arcangeli 2003: 66). 7. On the problem of excessive play, see Fischer 2017.

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CHAPTER TWO

Sporting Time and Sporting Space ANGELA SCHATTNER

HISTORIANS’ PERSPECTIVE Time set aside by individuals and communities to practice physical exercise and sportive games or to organize matches and competitions have mainly been discussed by historians and sociologists as part of a larger curriculum of leisure, recreation, and pastime activities. Until the beginning of the 2000s, the topic was studied for the periods before the Industrial Revolution as an annex to the premodern popular “festival culture” or in the context of the “Reformation of Manners” during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (Underdown 1987: esp. 44–105, 239–70; Hutton 1994: 111–52). This focus arose out of the hypothesis that leisure as a distinct time set aside for recreational and pastime activities developed only in the Industrial Revolution, when the emerging factory system introduced clear-cut working hours, a development that led consequently to equally clear-cut free time: after-work hours and in the twentieth century to weekends and vacations. As now workers had more free time and more money, a distinctive, commercialized leisure culture and distinctive forms of pastime activities and spectator sports developed, which gave rise not only to modern leisure but also to modern sports (see, as an updated example of this thesis, Corbin 2001). In contrast, medieval and early modern societies were implicitly perceived as “festival culture” with only informal and irregular breaks from work. Before the nineteenth century, therefore, leisure was not perceived as a clearly defined space of time set aside from work but a status for those who did not have to 43

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work and thus could choose how to spend their time freely: the nobility and aristocracy (Arcangeli 2003: 120–1). Sport and exercise, particularly hunting, dancing, and tennis, in early modern society were thus first and foremost a privilege reserved for the aristocracy, following Thorstein Veblen’s ([1899] 2010) Theory of the Leisure Class (see also, for sport as privilege of the nobility, Paravicini 2006: 409). The majority of the population, which consisted of craftsmen, farmworkers and day laborers, needed such long working days to cover their basic needs that they had little time to spend on recreations and pastimes. These times were thus linked to obligatory holidays, that is, religious festival days, and were thus spent at fairs, markets and religious plays. Moreover, studies of early modern notions of leisure such as Brian Vickers’ essay on otium (1990: 153–4) supported the idea that early modern society had a negative connotation of leisure. That model of a strong divide between modern and premodern leisure culture has been widely criticized and partly revised in the last two decades. Peter Burke argued in 1995 that the period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century saw the “invention of leisure” and a growing tendency to differentiate time spent at work and in leisure in a more precise way. Newer research on working patterns and free time shows that especially urban merchants, craftsmen and their dependents started to regulate their working hours in such a way that more free time was left in turn to use for pastimes, including sports and exercise, either as spectators or participants (Ortalli 1995: 41–54; Whitney 1999: 433–58).

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE Burke (1995: 142–3) has identified four contemporary discourses or literature types in which recreation, leisure and sports are commonly discussed in the early modern period: 1) educational treatises on the upbringing of children and advice books on how to be an ideal nobleman; 2) a legal and political debate which can be found in the forms of legal measures; 3) treatises on theologicalmoral themes and Christian living; and 4) medical discourse, particularly advice books on healthy living. The publication of this literature in general and particularly the genre of advice books rose dramatically during the Renaissance period (Cavallo and Storey 2013: 14–24; Gentilcore 2016: 6–7). A fair share of these books gave recommendations on how best to spend one’s leisure time and what type of sports and exercise were suitable to practice. However, time to spend in these activities is a theme barely brushed in most of this literature. Authors of educational treatises recommended setting aside some time for sports and exercise during the students’ school days to counterbalance the passiveness of book studies. Health guides, too, recommended setting regularly time apart for

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leisure and exercise to refresh the spirits, avoid melancholy, and in general to improve health (Brailsford 1969: 158–97: Arcangeli 2003: 18–41). Recommendations on the time scheduled for these pastimes, however, stay quite vague and rather focus on the right season to practice specific exercises. Roger Ascham in his 1545 guide to archery recommended spring, early summer, and autumn as the best time to practice the exercise (Gunn 2010: 60) and Everard Digby, author of the first English treatise on swimming, thought that May to August were the best months for this exercise (Orme 1983: 120). A much more detailed discussion on spending time on sports can be found in the so-called “literature of complaint” (Walsham 1989: 16–24). The Reformation and Counter-Reformation brought a wealth of theological-moral literature dealing with discussions on how to be a good Christian and how to spend a Christian life. While the focus of educational and medical literature lies on how to pass one’s time in a suitable fashion, this genre is much more concerned with criticizing contemporary practices and warning of common vices such as the waste of time in sinful and unchristian behavior (Burke 1995: 143; Arcangeli 2003: 68–72). Large parts of these books were dedicated to the discussion as to which activities should not be indulged in at all as they were sinful and a waste of time. The list of sinful exercises varied widely among moderate and hard-line theologians of all denominations. Most theologians no matter the denomination agreed that pleasurable sportive games and exercises helped to improve health and make the players more fit for their daily duties, and some exercises such as archery also had a useful military purpose that would help the commonwealth. In this respect, moderate bodily exercise was often regarded as the most useful type of recreation next to reading spiritual literature. The differences in opinion as to which activities were recommendable and which were sinful developed rather along other lines, such as the conflict about the right point in time for sports and exercise, and how sports and exercise should correspond to a Christian life. Thus, the most fiercely debated issues centered rather on specific recreational activities such as dancing than on sports per se. And not all forms of games and exercise were seen as sinful, even by hard-line Calvinists. While Lutheran and Catholic theologians recommended only not spending too much time in diversions and not doing them at inappropriate times, for example during church service, the category of time was of central importance in English Puritan theology. It was nothing less than the perfectly balanced use of one’s given time on earth that Puritans were aiming for in their godly lives; this also meant engaging in each and every activity in a well-spent, godly way. Thus we can find detailed discussions on the topic of time spent in diversion in Puritan moral literature (Walsham 1989: 16–24; Arcangeli 2003: 68–72). Recreational activities, either for the body or the mind, had to be performed in moderation. Although every author provided a different emphasis, the

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essence of the demand was to be moderate with the time set apart for recreation, to be moderate in the costs, not to delight too much in them, and not to be overcome by passions when engaging in them. So, the time devoted to recreation had to be proportionate to the importance of a Christian’s main duties—work, religious service, family, community—which always had to come first. Some authors appraised the necessary time for recreation rather negatively, wishing human beings were not so frail to need them at all as they saw them as time they had to cut off from their main duties. Other authors evaluated the necessity of recreation more positively by interpreting it as God’s grace to mankind. A considerable number of authors of these guidebooks, though, rebuked the nobility for spending too much time at hunting, hawking, bowling, and tennis, instead of attending to their duties as judges, governors, overseers, and protectors (Schattner 2014b: 298–9). Puritan diarists were quite aware that there was always the danger of overindulgence in these matters and many Puritan diaries kept track of smaller and bigger lapses in their goal of leading a godly life. Samuel Ward, for example, kept a diary in which he regularly noted his personal lapses. He regularly mentioned overindulgence of the body in food and sleep but also “too merry talk” and “over much myrth” (Knappen 1933: 5–6, 110). It is with this attitude in mind that we must understand his sole mention of a bowling match in his diary on 24 July 1595: “My over much myrth att bowling after supper.” He did not regret having played bowls but having overindulged in the pleasure of it and probably lost track of time while playing. He does not mention bowling or another sort of game again, but that does not necessarily mean that he did not play them. Similarly cautious with his recreation was the Presbyterian Reverend Henry Newcome nearly seventy years later who likewise liked to play a match of bowls “to increase his health,” but was anxious to not spend too much time on it (Heywood 1849: 186). Not all followers of Puritan beliefs were so thorough in their daily practice and diaries were often quite ambivalent. The Presbyterian apprentice Roger Lowe, for example, divided his time between the world of the alehouse, regularly bowling there with his friends, or attending horse races and the culture of the godly conventicle without greater spiritual difficulties (Sachse 1938: 33–4, 85–6). Another concern was not only the length of time spent in these activities but the time when they were played. From the 1570s onwards Puritan writers emphasized that times for recreational activities, as well as times for any other duties, had to be “seasonable.” This meant that every activity had a specific time and that recreation should neither interfere with working hours nor with times for religious duty. A particular focus was laid on Sunday as an “unseasonable” time for recreations of all sorts as they interfered with the religious duties of the day. Puritan writers argued that Sunday should be fully devoted to spiritual

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contemplation and divine service, and that pleasurable, recreational activities including sports and exercise would divert the attention from this goal. (For an overview over Sabbatarian ideas, see Dougall 2011: 43–6; Schattner 2014b: 305–11.) These interpretations were at odds with the contemporary practice of Sunday observance in most English parishes and with the beliefs of many if not the majority of the Church of England’s clergymen. The Church of England’s emphasis lay on devotion to God in public worship and church attendance. While some supported the call to forbid Sunday revels such as church ales and wakes, most of the bishops and ministers did not call for the abandonment of all Sunday recreation but argued that they should be practiced after divine service. James I and Charles I ultimately emphasized the official Church of England’s position in the question of Sunday observance by publishing the Declaration of Sports in 1618 and again in 1633. However, these measures did not solve the conflict around Sunday sports but only fueled the controversy on a local level (Dougall 2011: 43–6; Schattner 2014b: 308–9). In the Interregnum period (1649–60), Parliament issued a prohibition of all forms of recreations on Sundays and Puritan magistrates and churchwardens tried (not always successfully) to enforce it on a local level. Instead of Sunday, most Puritans were in favor of a time during the working week to be set aside for sports and recreation (Schattner 2014b: 309–11). This prohibition posed a challenge for all dependent workers such as servants, apprentices, and journeymen. In February 1647, London apprentices addressed a petition to Parliament in which they asked to be given some time for recreation. They argued that after the rightful abolishment of holy days, they had no time at hand for lawful recreation. This led the youth to either neglect labor during work days or to profane the Lord’s day. To correct these abuses, they asked Parliament to appoint one or two days per month to this end (Journal of the House of Lords 1645–47: 714–7). The English Parliament not only discussed the petition but published two ordinances for the whole realm in June 1647, in which they ordained that every second Tuesday in every month of the year, “Scholars, Apprentices, and other Servants” should have a whole day “for Recreation and Relaxation from their constant and ordinary Labours” and warned masters not to hinder their inferiors from their recreation (Firth and Rait 1911: 954, 985–6). More research still needs to be done to compare English Protestant attitudes towards sports, games and exercise with those of other European religious reform movements, and with the practice of laymen. However, most of the religious debates about the appropriate timing for sports and games discussed here are European debates rather than particularly English ones. Sabbatarian ideas were not an exclusively English phenomenon but could also be found in

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other radical Protestant reform movements inspired by Martin Bucer in Europe and in Counter-Reformation Italy. And as in England, these Sabbatarian ideas were contested by followers of more moderate Protestant ideas about the Sunday. The only difference might be that English Puritan writers have developed the topic of redeeming time in connection with sports and recreations more consistently and with greater emphasis than other religious reform movements. And the English case was a special case inasmuch as Sabbatarian ideas in England were more closely intertwined with other contemporary religio-political struggles and therefore gained more importance than in other European countries. Moreover, Sabbatarians and Puritans gained much more power in Great Britain than in any other European country at that time and were able to enforce the strictest Sunday legislation on a local and national level in the whole of Europe (Arcangeli 2003: 68–72; Maurer 2006: 89–90; Dougall 2011: 25–27; Schattner 2014b: 311–12).

PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVE There is little research on how much time on average a noble person, a person from the middle rank or a laborer actually spent on leisure or when they typically spent their leisure time. Contemporary evidence on the practice of sports and their timings are scattered and fragmentary at best. And particularly the evidence for the lower ranks is not very detailed in its description of the use of time and space for sports and exercise. Personal Testimonials and Spending Records Noble diaries and letters give us a glimpse of the sports itineraries of their owners. While the Puritan diaries discussed above are not very helpful in this respect as they only record mishaps and lapses, other diarists focussed on recording their daily activities in more detail, which gives us a much clearer idea of time set aside for sports and exercise. The diaries of the princes of the Palatinate, for example, regularly recorded sportive events and games the princes participated in. They give us a good indication of the sports calendar of the princes and their sporting preferences. From May to December 1524 Ottheinrich von der Pfalz (1502–59), Count Palatine of Palatine-Neuburg, participated in four shooting matches across his territory, in Heidelberg and Regensburg. Between these matches, he traveled to Munich to see the foot and horse races at the St Jacob’s Fair (Jakobidult) and to participate in the dancing, hunting, and shooting competitions organized by Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. In the diaries of Prince Elector Palatinate Frederick IV (1574–1610), roughly a generation later, almost no day passes without any mention of sports. The young prince practiced tilting at the ring, shooting, and

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hunting. Compared to his predecessors, ball games such as pallone and jeu de paume had become much more important in the prince’s daily routine and he noted repeatedly in his diary that he had been playing ball “all day long” (Behringer 2016: 26–31). While the diaries often focus on large sports events, account and expenditure books of nobles provide an alternative source to trace their daily sports activities. In the account books, money lost in wagers on games and costs of compensation for playing partners and servants were recorded plus the day when the expenditure occurred. These sources together with the diaries and letters show that sports and games were a very regular occurrence in a nobleman’s life and for some a nearly daily practice. Even while traveling and changing residences, most nobles were not prepared to go without their sports. Hunting trips could be organized anywhere close by, and were often part of travel invitations anyway. Ball games such as tennis, pallone, bowling, and other games that were usually played in purpose-built facilities would be played daily, even when not at home. Nobles usually used the network of available facilities that they had built in their own residences or they used the facilities of their hosts (Behringer 2016: 26–31; Schattner 2016: 82–4). From these sources, seasons for specific activities can be equally reconstructed. Tennis, for example, while it could be played all year round, was seemingly a pastime for winter and spring. At Henry VIII’s court, the tennis courts were in high demand from December to May before the hunting and hawking season started (Thurley 1993: 180). From Elizabeth I’s reign, a bathing season or summer vacation where the court retreated to a spa or to the countryside was added to the noble sports and leisure calendar, and spa towns and countryside retreats quickly provided for the sports facilities their noble visitors expected (Hembry 1990: 4–8; Schattner 2014a: 208–9). Administrative and Legal Records Much harder to trace are the sports habits of the lower ranks who were usually illiterate and left much less direct evidence of how they spent their time. We know from diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, and topographies written by the educated elites that members of the lower ranks participated either actively or as spectators in large annual sports events at fairs or on church holidays. During the carnival season, particularly on Shrove Tuesday, large football matches in England and calcio matches in Italy were organized (Griffin 2005: 33–6; Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 43–7). At fairs, particularly during May, footraces, shooting competitions, and even whole sports events such as the “Olympick Games” of Robert Dover in England were held in towns and villages all across Europe (Rühl 1975). However, these mentions give us only glimpses

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of the most prestigious matches that caught the interest of the upper classes or where upper and lower ranks participated and watched together. To get a fuller and more detailed account, especially of the everyday practices of the lower ranks, we need to turn to more circumstantial evidence. New evidence for the practice of everyday sports and exercise has recently been discussed by Steven Gunn and Tomasz Gromelski for sixteenth-century England (2016: 49–63; see also Gunn 2010: 53–81). In their “Everyday Life Project” at the University of Oxford, they used inquest reports on sudden deaths submitted by coroners for filing to the King’s Bench to unearth everyday practices based on the detailed descriptions of the circumstances that led to the death. While most deadly accidents were linked to work or travel, sports accidents were still an important minority in the sample. Through the dates of the accidents, seasons for specific sports can be reconstructed. In England, February was the football season, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all accidents, with outliers in March, April, and May (Gunn and Gromelski 2016: 53). Archery took place all year, with peaks in spring, early summer, and autumn. Casting the bar and throwing the hammer were concentrated in summer, June and July, and went on into harvest time. Swimming, too, was a summer recreation with accidents clustered in May to August (Gunn 2010: 60; Gunn and Gromelski 2016: 54). Independent of the sports season, Sundays and church holidays were the most common days for sports and exercise. According to Gunn and Gromelski, over half of the accounted sports accidents in archery, throwing sports, and wrestling, and roughly half of all football accidents occurred on these days (2016: 54). Church court records and churchwarden presentments for the abuse of the churchyard or for the absence during church service give us additional insight into the sports practices on Sunday, as they often describe what the accused were doing when caught by the churchwarden. These provide us with an impressive list of different ball games and exercises practiced on Sundays such as cricket, tennis, fives, football, and many more (Schattner 2016: 68–9). There is only very patchy evidence about the sports or leisure practices of the lower ranks when not played on a Sunday or a church holiday. This is because practices were so common that educated writers were not interested in recording them and the practices were so uncontroversial that they left rarely a trace in official administrative records. There are only occasional glimpses in middle rank diaries and circumstantial evidence in court records. In the summer, games of all sorts, including matches of cricket, stoolball, football, and many more, would be played in the evenings on commons, village greens, fields, or in the streets. Roger Lowe also mentioned regular matches of bowling on weekdays that he played with his friends in his local alehouse in Ashton-in-Makerfield in Lancashire (Sachse 1938: 28, 89–90, 103).

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PUTTING SPORTS IN PLACE Public Space Nearly any accessible and large enough space or waterway served for sports, games, and exercises in Renaissance Europe. Footraces, cudgel fighting, wrestling, and popular ball games would be played in any accessible field, street, close, garden, yard, or park. In the summer, lakes and rivers served as spaces for leisurely rowing, sailing, and swimming, for boat races and regattas. In wintertime, when the waters were frozen, lakes and rivers would serve as space for ice-skating and all sorts of ball games including ice hockey in northern Europe, calcio in Italy, or football in England (Behringer 2012: 198; Gunn and Gromelski 2016: 53). Evidence for the use of public space for everyday sport and exercise is rather fragmentary and scattered. This is mainly due to the fact that these spaces were not dedicated to sports but served multiple purposes. This usage did not allow for more permanent constructions for sportive games to develop and consequentially did not leave permanent traces. Moreover, public spaces were usually used by the landless lower ranks of society for their sports and games. Emma Griffin (2005: 20–1) has already pointed out the importance of public places as spaces for recreation and sports for the poorer members of society who had no land of their own where they could constitute sporting spaces and consequentially appropriated publicly accessible spaces for their sports. Evidence of the use of public space for sports is usually found in greater detail in two scenarios: 1. When the usage of a specific space or place for sports was controversial, the controversy usually left traces in form of legal measures published by local authorities and in court records when an offender was fined. 2. When an event was sponsored and organized by the local authority or nobility in a public space, traces of the funding of equipment and wages for artisans and guards can usually be found in expenditure records of town authorities or noble estates, and official announcements and locally published memorabilia of the event were archived. A space that became increasingly controversial from the Late Middle Ages and particularly during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period for being used as a ground for sociability and sports was the churchyard (Figure 2.1). Church officials had always had an uneasy relationship with sociability, including games, taking place on church grounds as they had the potential for disrupting church service and, particularly in the case of ball games, causing damage to church buildings. In the reformation spirit of the late Middle Ages, concerns over the profanation of sacred ground grew and prohibitions against

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FIGURE 2.1: After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fair of Saint George’s Day (c. 1559). Etching and engraving. Houston, Museum of Fine Arts.

abusing the churchyard by profane festivals and games were increasingly issued in parishes all across Europe. These prohibitions did not have much effect until local priests, churchwardens, and local authorities joined into the sentiment during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation era and enforced the prohibitions more strongly on a local level (Dymond 1999: 476–80; Schattner 2016: 68–76). This does not mean that parishioners stopped their traditional practices, though. Letters of remission in France, and church court records in England and Wales, in which parishioners asked for pardon or were fined for disrupting church service, damaging church goods, or abusing consecrated ground, tell the story of the different attitudes towards using the churchyard as a place for Sunday sports. They provide an impressive list of sportive games played in the churchyard: contemporary popular ball games such as football, tennis, fives, bowling, and quoits were regularly played in the churchyard and quite often against the walls or over the slopes of the church roof. Running competitions and martial sports such as cudgeling, boxing, or wrestling as well as archery can be found in the churchyard or close to the churchyard, too (Mehl 1990: 253, 260–1, 369; Dymond 1999: 478–9). In addition to the open space that the churchyard offered, which was in this form also available on greens, commons, and in parks (Schattner 2016: 70–1), the churchyards’ distinctive features such as the high walls and roofs of the

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church building presumably helped to develop churchyard-specific ball games such as tennis and fives, which were played against the walls and over the slopes of roofs (Mehl 1990: 260–1; Gillmeister 1997: 29–33; Brailsford 1999: 45–6). It was probably the accessibility, usability, and convenience that facilitated the constitution of the churchyard as an important space for sports. Church service regularly brought together a specific community of people, namely the parishioners, at a specific place (the church/churchyard) and time (Sunday). Through the process of regular repetition on Sundays, parishioners could expect to play or watch sports on Sundays in the churchyard, thus actively reinforcing and institutionalizing the churchyard as space for sport. In this light, it does not seem unlikely that regular informal teams of fives or tennis players, cricketers, wrestlers, or footballers formed that way and that other parishioners regularly joined these activities as spectators. We can only sketchily reconstruct the role that gender and age played in constituting the mode of participation in specific games. Although young women had their own forms of games, more often women took on the role of spectators. Likewise elderly men and women who were no longer capable of participating and for whom physically playing did not seem appropriate any more would also join the spectators. Thus the parish members joined differently in sports and games according to their age and gender but shared a common experience of sociability. This does not mean, however, that every member of the community had to or did in fact join in these activities, as these games were also confessionally and socially encoded. Parishioners who perceived the churchyard as consecrated ground most definitely would not use it as a place for sport and would challenge other parishioners who did (Schattner 2016: 71–2). While the use of the churchyard for sports survived in some regions well into the nineteenth century, in other regions the tradition discontinued due to the pressure of parishioners and local authorities. More comparative research across Europe is needed to establish exactly by when the majority of regions had abolished the use of the churchyard and where the practice survived. Dymond (1990: 165–92) could show for English parishes in East Anglia that by the beginning of the seventeenth century the churchyard had widely been replaced by alternative sports fields. Camping closes, named after the sport of camp-ball, a mixture of handball and football, were created in close proximity to the churchyard with the consent of local authorities. Those playing fields were often private land lent to the public for recreational use at appropriate times, for example when the harvest was over. In other cases sites were bequeathed by individuals to the township for its inhabitants to use or belonged to the local inn. Local drinking establishments such as alehouses, inns, and taverns were in general important venues that superseded the churchground as centers for communal sociability and sports in the segregational process of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Clark 1983: 152–4; Kümin 2007: 172–8).

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While evidence of everyday sports in public spaces is hard to find, evidence of large urban sports events held in market squares, main streets, or in the commons just outside the city walls can be found all across Europe. Records of annual matches of football between neighboring towns or between different social groups (e.g., between different guilds, between townsmen or students) can be found in England, or in the form of calcio in Italy (Dunning 1976: 116–32; Bredekamp [1993] 2006: esp. 43–7). Where local authorities were not involved in the organization of such sports events, again the practice has been recorded mainly when the event caused complaints, for example over the damage of goods, or because of heavy outbreaks of violence and mass brawls in connection with the event. City authorities and local nobility were often concerned with the potential for turmoil these events posed and tried their best, albeit not always successfully, to suppress such practices (Dunning 1976: 119). Much more detailed accounts can be found for sports events officially organized in the name of the town corporation or local rulers. Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, Flemish and northern French towns such as Bruges and Lille hosted large jousting tournaments annually in May (Brown 2000: 316–19). Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, in London tournaments were organized in the Smithfield, a space just outside town that belonged equally to the city and the king and that was used by both as ground for recreational pursuits, executions, and parades (Dillon 2015: 133–41). Larger towns in Flanders, the Low Countries, France, and the Holy Roman Empire regularly hosted shooting competitions that were both local and intercity. Large competitive networks formed in which towns regularly competed against each other and regional cups such as the Landjuwel developed (Crombie 2016: 159–89; Tlusty 2016: 218–27). During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Bologna, Siena, Mantua, Pistoia, Rome, and Florence hosted several horse races annually, run through the city streets (Jaser 2014: 603–8). In comparison, English urban horse races developed rather late, with the first regular gatherings in Chester and York starting in the first half of the sixteenth century (Borsay 1991: 181). In Florence, high-profile calcio matches were organized as symbolic of the city’s attachment to republican ideals and urban solidarity, for example, in 1530 to flout the besieging imperial army of Charles V (McClelland 2007: 110–11). All these events were organized by urban authorities and the nobility as displays of power and wealth but also as diplomatic tools. Inter-urban shooting competitions, for example, explicitly aimed to further good relationships with neighboring towns, but also to display the wealth and military prowess of the hosting towns (Rühl 1995: 65–86; Tlusty 2016: 218–29). Horse races, on the other hand, were displays of wealth by the nobility and opportunities for tourism by the towns (Jaser 2014). In the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries calcio matches in Florence became a main arena of display of power

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and wealth of the Medicean grand dukes, who organized gala calcios as part of the lavish entertainments that marked wedding ceremonies and other politically important occasions (Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 45–65). As important political displays, most of the events were staged in the central squares of the towns where as many spectators as possible could observe the event—usually, if at all feasible, in the central market square. Shooting competitions in Flanders would take over the market space for weeks (Crombie 2016: 168–9). The calcio matches on the Piazza Santa Croce became such regular occasion that in 1565 a marble plaque was installed on the façade of the Palazzo dell’Antella on the piazza’s south side to mark the games’ center line (Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 51). Horse races by nature could not fit into the confined space. In the Italian city, they would run a course through the main streets (Jaser 2014: 603–8). For the events, the relevant space was temporarily transformed into a designated sports arena or racing course by closing it to other activities. Temporary constructions such as barriers to separate spaces for the athletes from those of the spectators and viewing stands for spectators were built for the event and dismantled straight after. Sports equipment such as shooting butts or barriers for jousting competitions was placed into the temporarily created sports arena (Dillon 2015: 133; Crombie 2016: 168–9). The display of political power was not, however, limited to the display of physical prowess in the sports arena itself. Even more important was the spatial arrangement and control of the spectators. Temporary viewing stands and seating would be erected for the tournaments and shooting competitions in the market squares. The arrangement of these facilities projected an image of the ideal social hierarchy. Purpose-built viewing stands in premium position were reserved at these events for the most important members of the nobility and city officials. Most large events also had pay-to-view stands in similarly good spaces for the urban and noble elites. Lower ranks would have to do with whatever spaces were left, mostly designated spaces for standing further away from the arena, or rooftops to view from above (Young 1987: 79–88; Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 115–16). Crowd control during the events was another important issue, particularly at high-profile events that attracted large crowds of spectators. At shooting competitions in the Holy Roman Empire, so-called Pritschenmeister were appointed to oversee the competition and keep the peace between the competitors, while probably guards patrolling the perimeter would ensure no disruptions by spectators (Tlusty 2016: 222–5). In Florentine calcio, disruptions by spectators and hooliganism seem to have been a big issue and measures against entering the field and more guards to patrol the perimeters around the field were introduced by the Medici at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 117–24).

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Private Space The private grounds of royal and noble households had always been used for sports and exercise. Before the fourteenth century, though, there were no dedicated spaces for these activities. Instead, large semi-public, multifunctional spaces such as the grand hall or the courtyard would be temporarily appropriated for games and exercises. From the second half of the fourteenth century, however, the aristocracy started to dedicate specific spaces just to leisure and sports within their households. These spaces changed quite considerably during the period throughout Europe, depending on which games and exercises or architectural features were in fashion (Behringer 2012: 198–212). Good examples of this trend are the private tennis courts and ball houses of the European nobility. Early examples of dedicated tennis courts can already be found in the second half of the fourteenth century. Charles V of France maintained in the 1360s a tennis court in both the Louvre and the Hotel SaintPol in Paris (Jaser 2016: 95). Dedicated rooms to play ball games such as tennis can be found in Italy from the beginning of the fifteenth century, when sale della balla were fitted into the palaces of the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Este in Ferrara, the Medici in Florence, and Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino. From the mid-fifteenth century, these rooms had become an integral feature in the plans of newly built palaces (Bondt 2006; Behringer 2012: 200–4). From France and Italy, the trend to build dedicated facilities for ball games in royal and noble residences spread from the end of the fifteenth century to England (Thurley 1993: 179; Best 2002: 271–82), the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia (Behringer 2012: 201–2; Gillmeister 1997: 146–73), and from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the Low Countries (De Bondt 1993: 61–70) and Scandinavia (Behringer 2012: 202). From the 1500s, integrated rooms were more and more replaced by freestanding buildings. In European royal and noble residences, these buildings were also increasingly integrated into designed complexes dedicated to sports and leisure. These complexes could include different purpose-built sports facilities such as differently sized tennis courts, courts for other ball games such as pallone or fives, arenas for cock-fighting, and outdoor sports areas such as shooting stands, demarcated grounds with permanent structures for tilting and jousting, race tracks, greens or alleys for bowling or pallamaglio (pall-mall) and many more, depending on the current fashion and preference of their owners. Often these facilities were encompassed into beautifully designed gardens for strolling and walking (Thurley 1993: 179–89; Behringer 2012: 207–9). These purpose-built, exclusive sports facilities and complexes formed part of noble conspicuous consumption. Their features, such as specifically designed penthouses and winning openings—for example, in jeu de paume courts, the sloped roofs above the galleries and the areas into which the ball may be hit in

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order to gain a point; and for pall-mall, flattened alleys—altered the games, making them become more refined and distinguishing them from similar games played by the poor on the fields and streets or by the lower nobility and urban elites in commercial venues. They were, like other parts of the residences, exhibitions of wealth, taste, and status through the display of unique architectural design and craftsmanship. This can, for example, be seen in the structure of tennis courts throughout Europe, which differed in size and in the layout of features such as placement and design of penthouses, tambours—an asymmetrical intruding buttress—and grilles—a “winning opening” located at the far corner of the receiving end. These features also changed over time and followed different fashions, creating the need and wish of every aristocratic generation to tear down outdated facilities and build newer, more fashionable ones (Morgan 1995: 140–4; Best 2002: 271–82; Lake 2009: 564–6). Many of these were located in important Renaissance cities such as Paris, London, Rome, or Florence, to name just a few. As the nobility spent substantial amounts of the year in these cities to attend to government or to do business, they tended to build townhouses with the aforementioned features integrated. These facilities were luxurious, particularly when cities became more densely populated and urban open spaces consequently rare. Together with the display of stylish sports dresses or protective equipment, servants employed to fetch and look after sports equipment, prepare the grounds, and assist in games, the controlled access of spectators who could be placed according to rank, purpose-built facilities and structures for sports and exercise were used to display a noble refined lifestyle. While these facilities were places where the nobility enjoyed informal, leisurely sports matches, they could also become the venue for royal display in official matches staged as part of royal festivals and diplomatic visits. J. R. Lake (2009: 572) has argued for the game of real tennis that it “was a tool for courtly nobility to demarcate themselves from socially inferior groups, both within the royal court and in relation to other royal courts.” This was not only true for tennis but for any sport staged as part of official events. The difference in the displays in urban public spaces, as discussed above, was that access to the venue and its display could be much better controlled and staged in these new private spaces, and a new hierarchy of exclusivity was introduced between venues. For example, tournaments, which in the fifteenth century were held by the aristocracy in collaboration with city officials, were in the sixteenth century increasingly hosted in the private confines of the royal court grounds (Brown 2000: 315–30; Dillon 2015: 129–54). One reason for the new choice of space was presumably that permanent, and more refined, tiltyard structures could only be constructed in such private spaces dedicated to the sport. Another reason to choose aristocratic private over public grounds for

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these events was one of control, as the owner of the ground could decide without the intervention of others how this space should look and who should gain access. While the tournaments were representative competitions which needed publicity and where spectators from all ranks were admitted, tennis courts were used as a more intimate and exclusive sports venue (Schattner 2016: 81–4). The space for spectators in these facilities was very restricted as viewing galleries in the courts provided space for only a few dozen spectators. During diplomatic visits, official invitations to play tennis were issued and tennis matches between select members of different courts were hosted. Access to these matches was limited and the seating arrangements probably carefully prepared (Lake 2009: 563–4). Private facilities or grounds for sports were not an exclusive feature of the aristocracy, though. Elite educational institutions created private spaces and purpose-built facilities for sports and exercise to attract wealthy, noble students. Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in England or the University of Leiden in the Netherlands built tennis courts for the exclusive use of noble students (De Bondt 1993: 97–105; Twigg 1996: 81–3). Knightly academies (Ritterakademie) intended for the nobility, with a curriculum strongly built around physical development in fencing, horse-riding, tennis, and pallone, and with dedicated facilities for this purpose, developed all around Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Behringer 2012: 162–4, 205). Urban associations, particularly guilds, also started to create private spaces for their members that were not exclusively practical but were also used for leisure. Guilds in London, for example, beginning in the sixteenth century invested in private gardens and built walks and installed bowling alleys. These were meant for the exclusive use of their members and honorable guests who were given the keys to these gardens to enter at their pleasure (Mary and Boardman 1982: 85–116; Harding 1990: 44–55). Commercial Space Whether for lack of space or just for good opportunity, proprietors of social venues such as inns, taverns, or alehouses invested early on in entertainments for their guests, including sports events but also space and facilities for sportive games. Most localities, even small ones, had an alehouse providing some sort of sportive diversion. Most inns, alehouses, and taverns owned adjacent yards or gardens, which they made available for their customers to use for outdoor sports, and provided the necessary equipment such as balls, bowls, and clubs (Clark 1983: 153–4) (Figure 2.2). In larger towns and cities, drinking establishments profited also from urban development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and this posed a rather

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FIGURE 2.2: Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85), Tavern games (1677). Drawing. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1886-A-621.

different threat to communal places by shifting and reducing open space. In London, for example, public houses gained increasing attraction as they provided necessary space for sociability and sports outside one’s own home in the otherwise overcrowded city. This function became particularly important for the middle classes and the gentry, who flocked to London during the parliamentary season beginning in autumn and ending in June (O’Callaghan 2004: 40–1). Proprietors also invested in purpose-built sports facilities such as bowling alleys or tennis courts with levelled grounds and bespoke features, which allowed for a different and more sophisticated playing experience than public spaces. Visitors to Paris often noted the high density of commercial tennis courts. In the sixteenth century, Paris saw a building boom of commercial tennis courts, with the highest density in the artisan quarter on the right bank of the Seine and in the university quarter on the left bank (Jaser 2016: 96–102). The first commercial tennis and bowling facilities in London probably existed before the beginning of the sixteenth century. However, their growth thereafter can be measured particularly well through the introduction of a licensing system by Henry VIII in 1535. Between 1535 and 1576, thirteen licenses for tennis courts and seven for bowling alleys were granted in the City of London. By 1617, James I had capped the number of licenses at “thirty-one

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bowling alleys, fourteen tennis courts, and forty gaming houses in London and Westminster and their suburbs, and a bowling alley in every village within two miles of London” in order to prevent further growth. Bowling alleys and tennis courts in connection with gaming houses had become an early leisure industry, often run by middle-rank couples. The licenses mentioned merchants, yeomen, and keepers of taverns and inns as owners (Schattner 2014a: 202–3). Unlike the private spaces reserved for the use of their owner and their guests, these commercial venues opened their doors to every customer able to pay a certain rental charge. And considering the repeated charges against artisans, journeymen, students, servants, and apprentices for using these facilities, although they were forbidden by law to do so, it is clear that a wide spectrum of town inhabitants was able to afford to play in these facilities (Schattner 2016: 77–8). Early metropolises such as London, Paris, and Rome also featured early pleasure gardens in which pleasant walks were combined with purpose-built leisure and sports facilities such as bowling greens and graveled alleys for pallamaglio for the richer elements of society. The cities also offered other forms of sports entertainment such as bull- and bear-baiting or cock-fighting arenas where not only animal fighting was shown but also other sports entertainments such as foot races, fisticuffs, and cudgel fighting. Similar developments can also be found in more provincial towns, particularly spa towns where the nobility and more affluent parts of society retreated for the summer vacations (Schattner 2014a: esp. 206–7; 201–5).

CONCLUSION Research on time spent in sportive activities in the early modern period has so far mainly focussed on the great divide between modern and premodern leisure time as well as on issues of time discussed in the so-called literature of complaint. Evidence on time spent in sports outside of these more literature-based sources is rather sketchy, particularly for the lower ranks. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that more time in sports was spent for all ranks than has so far been investigated in depth. Sports practices such as time spent in sports and spaces used for these practices were very much bound to one’s social status in the community. For the paid workers and craftsmen, Sundays and church holidays and summer evenings were times spent in sociable games of football, cricket, or tennis within one’s church community and peer groups, whereas the much-cited big Shrove Tuesday football matches and other festivals need to be seen as the exception to common practice rather than the rule. For the aristocracy and gentry, martial and ball sports played a much bigger part in their lifestyle, being a near-daily occurrence and a big part of travel itineraries. These practices were never uncontested, as can be seen in the criticism mounted in literature of complaint as well as the

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measures to curb Sunday activations in the Book of Sports controversy in seventeenth-century Britain. Sports consolidated group identities, be it in parish or village communities, the community of the royal court, student or craftsmen communities. This consolidation could be created by inclusion of large parts of communities across status and gender or by social exclusion of large parts of society and were primarily organized over the constitution of space—for example, the inclusiveness of the churchyard or the exclusiveness of royal tennis courts. Sports and games were also strongly interconnected with notions of sociability and recreational activities amid which sports and games existed as an own form of activity. However, sports and games were not all fun and play either, but could also have representational functions to display social status and a wealthy lifestyle. Sports and games are also much more connected to the commercialization of leisure and luxury goods already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than has been realized before. Thus, the usage and construction of space or places for sports can not only tell us more about sport’s place in society, but about recreation, sociability, hierarchies, consumer culture, and early modern society more generally.

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CHAPTER THREE

Products, Training, and Technology ÉLISABETH BELMAS *

In a recent article revisiting Steve Hardy’s call for a more economic interpretation of sports history, Wray Vamplew outlined a research programme which focusses on better understanding “sports products” in the broadest sense of the term. Hardy views the sports product as a “commodity” comprising the game form (the activities embodied in the rules defining the way a game is played), sport services (which meet the needs and interests of particular groups, such as schools, the military, and politicians, and of individuals seeking status, physical exercise, or recreation), as well as sports goods and facilities (the material objects which allow the game to take place). Defined in this way, “sports products” covers a specific industry encompassing the production of sports equipment and goods, the role of manufacturers and investors in producing and promoting these products, and the organizations—the clubs and associations—created by sports entrepreneurs to develop such products and activities (Vamplew 2018). Sport is more than just a sector of economic activity, but economic concerns come into play as soon as consumers agree to pay to play or to watch sport. Although Wray Vamplew’s observations relate primarily to contemporary history, the questions which he raises and the research strategy which he proposes may be (carefully) applied to earlier historical periods. Although the existence of the concept of sport prior to the late eighteenth century is the subject of recurrent debate (Elias 1994; Vigarello 2002: 55–57; Guttmann 2004; David and Oblin 2017: 9–13), research conducted throughout the last decade on medieval and modern recreational sports has demonstrated 63

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the presence of flows of money (in the form of prizes and bets), public and private entrepreneurs (the former comprising city-states and kingdoms driven by military concerns rather than a quest for prestige, and the latter seeking profit from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries onwards), and early manufacturers of sports equipment (balls, boules, rackets, mallets, etc.). From the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, numerous “physical exercise games,” as they are termed in modern France, began to be incorporated into a recreational sport sector which had multiple economic, social, and cultural impacts: equipment and spaces for play became more numerous and more specialized, while the technical side of training grew, boosted by the publication of specialized books, and the acquisition of the physical and moral qualities extolled as the socio-cultural ideal for gentlemen was supplemented by the assimilation of sporting techniques.

A “FLOURISHING SPORTS EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY” It is relevant to note that knowledge of the economic activities relating to the practice of recreational sports is limited in comparison with knowledge of the rules which governed this practice. However, from the Middle Ages, most popular recreational sports employed specific equipment and were played in spaces which had been set aside or equipped for this purpose. The enhancement of the equipment and adaptation of the locations dedicated to its use, already well under way in the fifteenth century, expanded rapidly in the sixteenth century, to the extent that John McClelland made reference to a “flourishing sports equipment industry” to describe the acceleration of the phenomenon across western Europe (McClelland 2015: 26–7). The Manufacture of Recreational Sports Equipment A wide range of equipment was manufactured, as demonstrated by the example of throwing games: marbles, pucks, and round or flat wooden balls and disks were used, which were launched with the aid of a billart, a stick or crook, or a mallet. The variety present among tennis- and football-sized balls was even larger: made of scraps of leather or fabric sewn together, they were filled with feathers, wool, twine, flour, seeds, bran, sand, hay, moss, and even inflated pig’s bladders. Balls of varying types were made in different sizes, weights, and elasticities, depending on the sport for which they were to be used: pila, pila trigone, scanno, tamis or sas, jeu de paume, soule, calcio, or pallio. Balls were thrown bare-handed, or using a glove, an escabelle (a kind of hand-held small stoool), a bat, a racket, or a wooden armlet or bracer. The ever-popular armed sports and war games required still more complex equipment: functioning as both military training and entertainment to an extent which it is impossible for

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us to measure, they taught players to shoot with a bow and arrow, a crossbow, and later a harquebus, to handle lances, swords, shields, and pikestaffs, and to strike the mannequin in the quintain. A significant proportion of this equipment was locally produced by rural artisans or urban trade guilds. For some, this represented only part of their activity, allowing them to supplement their income. This was the case of the woodturners in France, who produced “glued, ribbed bats covered in parchment exclusively for playing jeu de paume” from 1573, before obtaining permission to add “all kinds of balls and billiards for play” to their usual list of products (furniture legs, chairs, and heels for shoes or skates), including pall-mall balls, in 1601.1 The manufacture of military equipment also used for armed sports and war games—lances, swords, bows, and crossbows—which required significant technical expertise, provided a livelihood for a diverse set of guilds: until the fifteenth century, almost every item of military apparel had a corresponding profession, with some specializing in offensive weapons (bowyers, arbalists, harquebus-makers, and furbishers), and others in defensive weapons (haubergiers for hauberks, heaumiers for great helms, écassiers for shields, brigandiniers from the mid-fifteenth century for light cuirasses, known as brigandines, and armorers). The vogue for tournaments and jousting, which emerged at the end of the fourteenth century, led to a renewal of weapons and armor. Courtesy lances, referred to as à plaisance, differed from those used in war (Malszecki 2009: 121): lacking the metal tip—which allowed them to be driven into the ground— they were topped instead by a blunt end (a rochet), or by a coronel, a short, thick piece of iron with three blunt points. The lances were very long (from 4.5 to 5 metres) and made from a supple wood (ash wood, whose flexibility allowed it to absorb shock waves), which was highly tapered so that it would break easily. From the fifteenth century, wealthier individuals equipped themselves with different sets of armor for jousting and for warfare: fully articulated and elaborately decorated, jousting armor was also extremely heavy (from 60 to 85 kg) as it was fortified from head to pelvis, a vulnerable area often targeted by combatants (Gagliardi 2003: 45–7). The weaponry sector, dominated by Lombard and Germanic producers, was restructured in France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The artilliers, who became armorers in the sixteenth century, monopolized the manufacture of almost all war materials and devices (Statuts, Reglemens et Lettres patentes 1764). In towns across the country, furbishers and armorers, also known as taillandiers en oeuvres blanches (makers of sharp instruments), became active, tending to group together in streets dedicated to collaboration between those who shared the same profession, such as Rue des Fabres in Marseille or Rue de la Fourbisserie in Amiens. In Paris, the furbishers set up home in the suburbs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Jacques, and Saint-Marcel, while the armorers

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occupied the city gates and the suburb of Saint-Victor (Brioist, Drévillon and Serna 2002: 56–7). In addition to the work of the licensed trade guilds, there was unfair yet difficult to control competition from cutlers, goldsmiths, gilders, pedlars, and ironmongers, who, in various capacities, possessed the right to produce and/or to sell blades and knives for everyday use. During the Renaissance, a veritable European production chain for weaponry came into being, imposed by the technological revolution which transformed steel manufacturing. The mark engraved on the blade of a sword often denoted only the craftsman charged with placing the finishing touches to it. Thus, in 1576, Lyonnais merchants imported blades said to be from Bordeaux (now Bourdeau), a village in the Dauphiné homonymous with the city in Aquitaine, located near Rives on Lake Bourget, which Montaigne remarked upon in his Journal de Voyage en Italie (Montaigne 1943: 1037). Along the region’s streams and rivers, which provided the hydraulic resources necessary to power the bellows of the ovens and the hammers of the forges, a myriad of small workshops took advantage of local iron deposits to produce a large quantity of blades. Beyond the Alps, the region of Brescia, located between Milan and Venice, was a hub for the manufacture of bladed weapons intended, in part, for the French market. Almost 200 workshops employed more than 500 people in the area. In the villages and suburbs surrounding Brescia, blades were produced using iron from Valtrompia and Valcamonica; in the city itself, activity focussed on coloring, burnishing, and assembling daggers and swords, as well as making sheaths and leather straps for them (Brioist, Drévillon and Serna 2002: 58–61). However, the additional work which these trades derived from the manufacture of instruments used for recreational sports was nothing in comparison with the activity of the communities which held the monopoly over the production of specific recreational sports equipment, such as the paumiersfaiseurs d’esteufs (who made the balls used in jeu de paume) or the vergetiersraquetiers (who produced bats and rackets). These trades were a real economic force until 1640–50, as long as jeu de paume was in fashion: creating jobs, producing goods, and generating services, their activity had a positive knock-on effect on suppliers of raw materials, wood, leather, parchment, canvases, and casings. Other trades also reaped the benefits of their prosperity, including those which built and repaired the courts and those which provided players with linen, candles, and drinks at public jeu de paume courts, more commonly called tripots. Although this sports industry mainly benefited cities, it also had a positive impact on neighboring rural areas, which were a natural reservoir for the raw materials used, as well as acting as sub-contractors for certain items used in the game. The status, number, and activities of the Parisian paumiers-faiseurs d’esteufs, esteufviers or esteufiers, and vergetiers-raquetiers are now well known (Belmas 2006: 223–30). In the capital of the French kingdom, these two guilds shared

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the production of balls (esteufs) on the one hand and the manufacture of rackets on the other until they merged in 1690. In 1292, at a time when Paris had only eight book dealers and book sellers and two ink merchants, there were already thirteen paumiers-faiseurs d’esteufs (Mehl 1990: 34), and their number rose to forty in the sixteenth century and thirty-eight in the seventeenth century. Protected by the sovereigns, who granted them statutes in 1467, 1537, and 1594 to “counter any fraud, wrongdoing and malice which may be committed”2 and to ensure the quality of the balls made in Paris, which were renowned for their solidity and bounciness, the guilds supplied their products to France and to other countries (Lespinasse 1847: 528). Wherever they conducted their activity, the kingdom’s tennis-ball makers used identical materials and employed the same production techniques, with the result that French balls were sought after in neighboring countries: in a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V (I II 279), the French ambassador offers the English sovereign a “tun of treasure,” which is revealed to contain tennis balls. The profession also held the monopoly over exploitation of the tripots, ensuring a regular outlet for its products, although it was not permitted to sell them on site. Identical quality requirements governed production by the guild of vergetiers-brossetiers-raquetiers in Paris, which contained forty-two entrepreneurs in 1659.3 From 1486, these manufacturers produced brushes and carpet beaters as well as rackets, but the production of the latter became their sole activity in 1571. The guild statutes, confirmed by Henry IV in 1599 and by Louis XIII in 1613, imposed strict rules upon the profession concerning the types of rackets which could be produced, the materials to be used (ash and linden for the frame, ox tendons and parchment for the handle, sheep casings for the strings), and the techniques to be employed (soaking, shaping the racket in moulds, polishing using dog skin and browning in the oven, diagonal or horizontal/vertical stringing) in order to create a solid, functional finished product. The paumiers-faiseurs d’esteufs quickly sought to expand their activity by manufacturing rackets themselves, despite the privileges allocated to the vergetiers-brossetiers-raquetiers. They did not hesitate to call for the denomination “paulmiers faiseurs d’esteufs, pelottes, raquettes et balles” in 1603, which was granted to them in 1610 in the form of the title “paulmiers raquetiers.”4 This prompted Pierre Richelet, in the 1680 Dictionnaire françois, to define the paumier as “he who possesses a jeu de paume, who makes and sells the balls and racquets, but who cannot sell racquets unless they have hit the ball” (Richelet 1680: 138). The Specialization and Permanent Locating of Sports Facilities Inseparable from festive celebrations more generally, recreational sports had long occupied both public and private space on a temporary basis. From the fifteenth century, knightly games—tournaments, jousting, and quintain, which

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were replaced in the late sixteenth century by tilting at the ring, cavalcades, and carousels—were held in town squares transformed into lists or in the courtyards of royal castles to commemorate royal entries into “good cities” or to celebrate peace treaties, births, and royal marriages. The authorities remodeled the physiognomy of their cities to mark these occasions, with temporary constructions such as triumphal arches adorned with ancient allegories. Some even unpaved the streets, as in the wide section of the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris, adjacent to the Bastille, which was habitually used for jousting from the early fifteenth century. It was famously transformed into a list field in late June 1559 for five days of jousting during which King Henry II lost his life (Bonnaure 2002: 60–7). In the Republic of Venice, the frequent public celebrations, which were indissociable from the government policies of the Serenissima (as Venice styled itself), used the land between the lagoon and the canals on one side and the Piazza San Marco, Saint Mark’s Basilica, and the Doge’s Palace on the other as a backdrop and performance space (Bolard 2003: 72). Indeed, many recreational sports capitalized upon the existing topography, in both urban and rural areas. Young people, craftsmen, and servants in particular indulged in their favorite games of ball, bowls, skittles, and kiteflying in the streets and squares of towns and villages; they bounced their balls off the awnings of stalls, to the great displeasure of passers-by, who risked injury, and of local residents, whose casement windows were shattered. It was for this reason that municipal police regulations regularly banned games of this kind from the fifteenth century onwards. Recreational sports also colonized the empty lots which remained in urban areas until the eighteenth century; players seized the smallest available spaces until they had been absorbed by property growth. Along with companies of archers, arbalists, and harquebusiers, they gathered in gardens. In 1553, the arbalists of Paris practiced in an orchard just inside the wall built c. 1200 by King Philip Augustus (the site now occupied by the Rue Mauconseil, in the first arrondissement); in 1603, they rented “a square, garden and tower on the ancient wall of . . . Paris, located on Rue Saint-Denis,” before King Henry IV granted them an area in 1604 situated “behind Boulevard de l’Ardoise, on the edge of the Eperon, next to the Porte Saint-Antoine [near the Bastille], heading towards the Porte du Temple,” where they continued to gather in 1615.5 The ditches along the city walls attracted ball game enthusiasts, especially players of longue paume or battledore, who were always in search of open spaces. In Paris, they gathered on the edge of Rue Saint-Michel or behind the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the abbey house, where the walls of the ancient ramparts helped them to serve and return the ball. Lastly, the courtyards and gardens adjoining taverns accommodated various games of marbles, bowls, and skittles, as well as armed sports involving swords, staves, and shields, which added a little extra spice to the drinks and livened up the gatherings (Mehl 1990: 254–6).

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However, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, a dual process of adapting and permanently identifying the spaces used for entertainment in general, and recreational sports in particular, took root across Europe. Unlike the previous century, in sixteenth-century Tuscany, celebrations and entertainment shifted towards the private sphere. Gradually, three locations came to be reserved for these activities in patrician villas: an indoor or open-air theatre, the cortile, transformed from its original function into a ballroom, and open areas, loggias, porticos, terraces, or gardens where outdoor sports could be played (Bolard 2003: 74–5). From the fifteenth century, Parisian gardens were equipped with paying bourloires or bouloires, which were enclosed passageways with a surface made of either parquet or fine sand, equipped for playing pétanque or marbles. Some were even covered, such as the marbles game constructed by Nicolas Cointry, a goldsmith from the suburb of SaintMarcel, in his courtyard in 1544. They were so successful that in 1630, considering them to be an innocent form of recreation, Louis XIII authorized their construction for business purposes, “up to one thousand five hundred covered and uncovered venues.”6 There were also paying skittles games managed by licensees in Paris and Amiens, about which we have very little information: they may have been composed of a flattened, sandy surface or a wooden board—similar to that used for some bouloires—intended to assist the rolling of the ball (Mehl 1990: 56–7). In the English capital, the number of permits granted for opening skittles alleys and real tennis courts rose throughout the sixteenth century: four were issued for skittles and three for tennis between 1535 and 1547, with an additional ten tennis licenses and three skittles licenses issued in 1576, distributed between the city and its suburbs. In 1617, their presence became still more widespread: there were thirty-one skittles alleys and fourteen tennis courts in London and in the city of Westminster, and at least one skittles alley in every village within a two-mile radius (Turcot 2016: 305–6). In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the fashion for pallmall prompted the construction of long groomed courts lined with trees at princely and noble dwellings, as well as in most European cities. Paris had three such courts at the beginning of the seventeenth century: two in the ditches in the north of Paris, between the gates of Montmartre and Saint-Denis on one side and Montmartre and Saint-Honoré on the other, bounded by a line of elms on either side, with neither hedge nor palisade;7 the third, a long, angled alley planted with trees, was favored by Sully and King Henry IV, who enjoyed walking along it, pushing the boxwood or medlar ball (Jusserand [1901] 1986: 307). Berlin acquired the Unter den Linden mall in 1647 and London its Pall Mall around 1650 (Turcot 2016: 307). The Maliebaan of Utrecht, decorated with the city’s coats of arms, was so beautiful that in 1672, during the Dutch War, Louis XIV forbade his troops from touching it (Carré 1937: 98–101).

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Traveling on the Continent in the 1590s, the young English lawyer, Fynes Moryson, mentions the “very pleasant . . . publike gardens” in Gdansk “for sports, banquets, and exercises” (Moryson [1617] 1907–8: I, 131). There can be no doubt, therefore, that efforts to construct more permanent facilities and open them up to a paying public contributed to the commercialization of recreational sports and to the early manifestations of a new kind of industrial activity. The enclosed areas used for armed sports, jousting, and tournaments underwent similar changes. Traditionally held in rural settings beyond the city’s gates due to the large spaces they required, these events returned to urban centers from the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance period, occupying dedicated locations such as Place du Champ Clos in Dinan and Place des Lices in Rennes (Merdrignac 2002: 177–8). Galleries filled with spectators, including well-to-do ladies, surrounded the list field, which contained two rows of wooden palisades; between these, servants on horseback or on foot stood ready to assist the fighters or to protect them from the crowd’s outbursts. From the fifteenth century, a barrier separated the two champions as they galloped, attempting to hit their opponent straight-on to halt his momentum and disorient him. Now a spectator sport directed by a roi d’armes (king of arms) and juges diseurs (enunciating judges), tournaments and jousting were aimed at an urban audience. During the Renaissance, when tournaments and jousting disappeared from western Europe to be replaced by tilting at the ring and quintain everywhere from the Italian courts to the French kingdom and to the Empire, the theatrical nature of the settings where these events took place became more pronounced. Participants dressed in velvet and silk clothing paraded amid sumptuously decorated galleries, pavilions, and balconies, where theatre plays were also staged (Turcot 2016: 277–8). Among the range of ball games in vogue in the modern era, one of the most popular, courte paume (indoor tennis), gave rise to original buildings adapted to the practice of the sport which were known in French by the somewhat derogatory name, tripots. For a long time, researchers’ attentions focussed on the sophisticated venues constructed at royal and princely residences, overlooking the public courts of which few traces remain in the urban fabric. Nonetheless, the tripots occupied sizeable areas of modern cities until the middle of the seventeenth century. Built in large gardens or in the suburbs, often side-by-side, they were fully fledged sports centers, featuring the cage—of impressive dimensions (25–30 metres long by 8–10 metres wide and 6 metres high)—where the games were held and a dépouille or despeuille, comprising one or several rooms in which players could get changed, dry off, and be rubbed down by the valets. They also used these rooms to rest, eat, and play dice or cards. Nearby was the room occupied by the master paumier who managed the site, as well as the workshop where he manufactured the three varieties of game

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objects: balles, pelotes, and esteufs (Belmas 2006: 223 ff.). Despite being practiced all over Europe, especially in medieval and modern Piedmont, it was in France that courte paume made its highest profits (Merlotti 2001b: 35). The preferred exercise game of the kings of France and of the gentry until Louis XIII, courte paume won over the Parisian bourgeoisie, craftsmen, and students to such an extent that by the end of the sixteenth century, the capital had 250 tripots for a population of 290,000, according to Francesco d’Ierni, who sojourned there in 1596, accompanying the Cardinal of Florence, legate of Pope Clement VII (Raynaud 1885: 166). Tripots sprung up all over the kingdom, to the surprise of Robert Dallington, an English schoolmaster and traveler, who remarked in 1598 that even the smallest villages and towns in France were equipped with one or several such locations. The tennis historian Albert de Luze catalogued 300 tripots at the start of the seventeenth century, including forty-seven in Poitou, forty in Orléans, thirty in Rouen, and nineteen in Bordeaux (Luze 1933: 130–92). During the same era, towns such as Troyes in Champagne and Amiens in Picardy possessed fifteen and eight tripots respectively. Besides the masters, who manufactured the equipment and managed the courts, public jeu de paume venues provided a livelihood for a whole community of fellow paumiers and apprentices, scorers, and valets, whose role was to tend to the players after each game. There was at least one manager (a master or his delegate), two scorers (one for each side), a valet, and a gatekeeper, that is, a group of four to five individuals for each venue. If we add to this figure the paumiers and their apprentices who produced balls and rackets, as well as the myriad of suppliers of products and services—firewood, candles, clothing, and drinks—gravitating around the venue, we easily reach the same figure as Francesco d’Ierni, who estimated that in 1596 real tennis provided a livelihood for up to 7,000 people in the capital. An average-sized town similar to Troyes, where around fifteen courts were counted in the sixteenth century, would therefore have employed between sixty and ninety men to operate the venues, without taking into account the ball and racket makers (Gervoise 1990: 150–1). The jeu de paume industry also required construction workers to build, maintain, and repair the cages and adjoining buildings. Public courts required periodic restoration, especially of the roof, walls, and flooring, which had long been made from terracotta tiles. They provided craftsmen with a constant supply of work, as demonstrated by the maintenance costs for the Beauregard court in Paris from 1600 to 1623: 872 livres 17 sols 4 deniers t. over a twentyyear period (Coyecque 1905–34: I, 108–9). The tripots were expensive to build and maintain, with the result that until the first third of the seventeenth century, investors were required to construct them and to supply the necessary revenues to cover the significant costs they incurred: a cage and its adjoining buildings therefore represented a good investment, which guaranteed a comfortable

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income. In sixteenth-century Paris and the provinces, most owners of tripots were businessmen, craftsmen, officers, or even clerics (Coyecque 1905–34: II, 461). The installations also served as the basis for annuities, either as patrimonial assets, as in the case of the annuity of 40 sols t. established in 1543 by Guillaume Pinot, a laborer from Saint Marcel, for Louis Thubye, a priest and chaplain resident at the church of Saint Jean en Grève, or to fund memorial masses, such as the annuity obtained in 1549 by the heirs of Jacqueline Desmarais, the deceased co-owner of “L’Ane qui paît aux Marais” in the suburb of Saint Marcel (Coyecque 1905–34: II, 337). Annuities based on tripots were also regularly bequeathed and repurchased; one such example is François de Crozon, a notary at Le Châtelet, who in 1547 took back an annuity of 100 sous based on “two houses, a courtyard, barn, garden, press, jeu de paume and outbuildings,” located at a suburban crossroads, bearing the name “Ecu de France” (Coyecque 1905–34: II, 106). The real tennis industry had a knock-on effect on numerous sectors of the urban economy, prompting Thomas Platter, who sojourned in the capital in 1599, to record the land speculation associated with the extraordinary prosperity of the tripots: “when a house is demolished, a jeu de paume is constructed in its place. More profit is made in this way than by rebuilding the house, since as much money is lent for these courts as for a house” (Platter [1599] 1896: 204).

LEARNING AND TRAINING While the term “products” may be applied to the manufacture of equipment and construction of sporting facilities from the early modern period, it is less appropriate to employ the notion of “training” to describe the process of learning recreational sports. Although the term “apprenticeship” was familiar among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century populations, as all mechanical trades were learned empirically by means of observation and practice, the concept of “training,” as embodied in the vocabulary that expressed it, was rather more complex. The word “train” itself derives from the colloquial Latin term “traginare,” to drag along, and entered medieval French with that meaning as “traïner” (later “traisner,” finally “traîner”). When it migrated to English in the fifteenth century it fairly quickly acquired the secondary figurative sense that is now its primary meaning, of teaching someone to acquire a skill. It was initially applied to the education of animals and soldiers and later schoolboys, all seen therefore as unwilling objects whose transformation into desirably functioning elements required some exertion on the part of the “trainer.” This connotation was sometimes reinforced by the addition of an adverb, as in the title of Richard Mulcaster’s 1581 book, Positions Necessarie for the Training up of Children. The word was not applied specifically to acquiring a sporting skill until 1712 and in French only in 1828, where the form adopted—“entraîner”—was

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similarly strengthened by an adverbial prefix. Other languages chose words of a different derivation and of course both English and French used a variety of different terms to signify the teaching and acquisition of skills, sports skills included. Between 1450 and 1700 a plethora of books in all the western European languages were published dealing with the practice of various sports (Krüger and McClelland 1984: 133–60). Many of the titles featured the words “art” and “rules” and seemed to be aimed at the “trainers” who would use these books pedagogically. But many others had words, such as “advice, counsel, directions, how to . . . instruction(s), learning, method(s), school, teaching,” etc., and seemed to want to bypass the pedagogues and speak directly to the “trainees.” In fact, the methods used for teaching recreational sports skills as part of knightly training and those used to impart scholarly knowledge, until then limited to universities, began to converge in several phases between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The initial aim was to encourage the creation of complete men by combining bookish knowledge with mastery of athletic disciplines. This was followed by didactic reflection on the methods used to teach sports skills. This evolution was particularly noticeable in the education of young people and the training of men through and for war games. “Sports” Education, from Medieval Legacy to Renaissance Contribution From the Middle Ages to the classical era, recreational sports played an important role in the education of young people, albeit in varying degrees of formality, as it was often difficult to differentiate learning per se from entertainment. It was equally complicated to draw the line between certain everyday activities and sports entertainment, as the case of sports and “winter transport” in Nordic countries demonstrates. Winter skating was widely practiced in Flanders, England, and northern France, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries of medieval skates carved from equine bones, some of which had iron blades (Alexandre-Bidon 1993: 143–56). Sledges, initially made from horses’ jaws, as depicted by Bruegel the Elder in The Census at Bethlehem (Figure 3.1), and constructed from wood from 1525, were used for sliding or for tournaments on ice. Sleighs had been a common mode of transport in Scandinavia since the Viking era, but they were also used in Siberia and even in northern Italy to carry merchandise in winter. Meanwhile, the first mention of skis, which were worn to hunt, appeared in 1555 in the compendium entitled A Description of the Northern Peoples written by Olaus Magnus, a Swedish bishop (Merdrignac 2002: 82–3). These modes of transport, adapted to northern regions and snowy mountains, were also used for various types of games and competitions among the local community.

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FIGURE 3.1: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (d. 1569), The Census at Betlehem (1566). Oil on panel. Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

Learning occurred through imitation (Mehl 1990: 418), until pedagogical treatises began to be published in the sixteenth century explaining what should be taught and how. In most of the so-called “conventional” and “semiconventional” games, the rules and equipment had long determined the qualities to be cultivated: strength, agility, and speed were essential talents for knights. The regular practice of recreational sports as part of the education of pages, entrusted to a noble relative or friend, was intended to prepare the young men for war while keeping them in good health. Hours of study, maintenance of the lord’s weapons, and care of his dogs and horses alternated with sporting and military exercises: horse riding, acrobatics, swimming, archery, throwing sports, particularly the javelin, and running were core elements in the physical training of future squires (Merdrignac 2002: 110–19). Meanwhile, young farmers, who learned to work the land from their parents, and young city dwellers, undertaking apprenticeships with master tradesmen, practiced archery, fist fighting, running, and ball games while also learning the popular sports of fencing (using a wooden sword), stickfighting, and shield fighting. From the end of the fourteenth century, the principles of civility and elegance promoted in Italian courts combined with humanist precepts to revive the ancient ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body. Inspired by the works of Aristotle and Plato, as well as by the ancient medical tradition, the first to assert the need to craft an aristocracy by means of a skillfully measured combination of physical exercise and intellectual labor were Italian authors, such as Pier Paolo Vergerio in De Ingenuis Moribus, composed in 1395, and Maffeo Vegio

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in De Educatione Liberorum (1444), which was republished sixteen times before 1541 (Turcot 2016: 283–4). The essence of their argument was that education was more than mere instruction, contributing to the formation of the being as a whole; it should supply intellectual, moral, and physical teachings, arouse a desire to excel, and teach young people to behave with physical mastery and elegance. These maxims were applied by Vittorino da Feltre, a professor at the University of Padua, who in 1425 was charged with educating the children of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua. He opened La Casa Giocosa—the joyous house—a school for the children of the local nobility, which became one of Italy’s major educational centers, equal to the contemporary English schools of Winchester (1382) and Eton (1440), and the model for such later schools as the Athenaeum Illustre in Deventer in the Netherlands (1630). The curriculum established by Vittorino da Feltre closely linked exercises of the mind to those of the body, adapting them to the different age groups. He used team games—especially ball games—to instil respect for the rules in his pupils, hone their decision-making skills, and teach them to accept defeat. In this way, exercise games helped to prepare his noble students for their future roles as soldiers and courtiers. An education revolution was beginning to take hold in Europe (Turcot, 2016: 285–6). The De Arte Gymnastica by Girolamo Mercuriale (Figure 3.2), a physician, philologist, and avid reader of Hippocrates, was published in 1569, and was the first practical compendium of physical exercises aimed at contemporaries. The book influenced humanist Europe and continued to be taught long after the end of the sixteenth century. Mercuriale, who had studied ancient recreational sports, compiled a series of activities in his manual which were capable of maintaining the body in perfect equilibrium and ensuring robust good health, according to the principles of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. He omitted nothing, covering everything from armed and equestrian sports to swimming, gymnastics, baths, and even meals; Mercuriale extolled the benefits of walking, which he regarded as a complete form of exercise invented by the gods. He also advised readers to laugh and shout (Agasse 2006a: XV). Before him, François Rabelais, a physician, priest, and writer, advocated similar ideas when he outlined the educational programme for Gargantua ([1534] 1994): the text mentions a taste for the outdoors, regular practice of varied physical activities— including shouting—and temperance in relation to food. Intellectual training was to be accompanied by education of the body. As early as 1528, Baldassarre Castiglione, who had been a courtier and ambassador before embracing an ecclesiastical career, drew up an inventory in Il Libro del Cortegiano of physical games which, if practiced regularly, would confer the poise and elegance valued by the nobility and allow entry to the Court: it included fencing, horse riding, dance, tennis, and other gymnastic exercises, to which the magistrate and essayist Michel de Montaigne would

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FIGURE 3.2: Girolamo Mercuriale, De Arte Gymnastica (1573), Book II, fols 112–13.

be later introduced in his youth. Of the opinion that “games and exercises will be a substantial portion of study,” his father had made sure that he learned to dance, fight, play jeu de paume, swim, fence, perform acrobatics, and jump—though Montaigne professed not having any ability in these exercises (Essays II 17, “Of Presumption,” Montaigne 1943: 486–7). With the creation of the noble academies which prospered in France around 1550, a small number of exercise games inherited from knightly education were incorporated into the range of knowledge and skills to be cultivated: horse riding and related sports (equestrian vaulting, tilting at the ring), fighting, swimming, and dance featured in curricula that were based on systematic training. Therefore, for two centuries, equestrianism, fencing, and dance formed the pillars of the sporting education of the aristocracy (Vaucelle 2009b: 250–1). However, the children of the gentry were not the only beneficiaries of this type of education. At the universities of northern Italy—Montferrat in Piedmont, Milan, Pavia and Mantua in Lombardy, Siena in Tuscany, Bologna in Emilia-Romagna, and Padua in the Veneto—learning to fence was one of the main sporting activities; being able to handle the sword alone was insufficient, and students were also required to know how to fight. The students, who tended to carry their swords at their sides, seized any real or imaginary occasion to draw their weapons, despite the authorities’ prohibitions. Nonetheless, they

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did not dismiss less bloody team sports, especially ball games, with often complex rules, which it became essential to learn: calcio (see Casini, Chapter 6 in this volume), pall-mall, and tennis, which might be played with or without a net, using a racket, a paddle, or simply the gloved hand (Scaino [1555] 2000). Like running and wrestling, these games were regarded as enjoyable, beneficial activities, which allowed students to unwind from the exertions of study. Dance, which taught them the codes of gallantry between the sexes and gave them the elegance and grace required for social interaction, constituted the third pillar of Italian students’ recreational and sporting lives during the Renaissance (Grendler 2009: 296–313). From Warfare Training to Warlike Entertainment Among the numerous sports in vogue during the early modernity, armed sports, including both aristocratic tournaments and jousting matches, and the more proletarian games involving bows, arbalests, shields, swords, and staves— considered to be an imitation of knightly society by lower social classes— required compulsory technical study and regular training. In the troubled times of the late Middle Ages, the recreational and competitive functions of these sports were matched by their usefulness in preparing for war (Mehl 1990: 58). During this period, two types of bow were commonly used in battle, for hunting or in competitions, and these are depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry and in hunting treatises. The bow known as the bourguignon or arc français, made of flexible yew wood, was quite precise and characterized by slightly curved limbs. The famous longbow or grand arc anglais, most likely of Welsh origin, was straight and could reach up to two metres in length. Cut in a D-shape from solid yew for nobles, elm for yeomen, and ash for military archers, with a range between 200 and 260 metres, the longbow was renowned for its role in the victories won by English archers at the battles of Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415). Originally from Italy, the arbalest was used as a weapon in both hunting and warfare; it took the form of a bow mounted on a stock which launched bolts. The tension of the string was controlled by a trigger mechanism rather than by the shooter’s own muscular strength. Once the string was taut, the shooter only had to exert moderate physical effort when aiming the bow, which made it easier to adjust the shot. It was also possible to shoot effectively while in prone position. Widely disparaged because it required less skill and training to handle than a bow, and because it allowed shooters to kill from a distance, the arbalest was reinstated by Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus, who did not hesitate to create companies of arbalists within their respective armies. The arbalest was quickly superseded by portable firearms—the harquebus—which appeared in northern Germany at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and

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which could be fired from the shoulder; these weapons began to be manufactured from 1515. At an early stage, these armed sports drew particular attention from kings and princes, who sought to encourage their practice while closely supervising it. In 1337, King Edward III ordered that “nuls ne jeuast ne s’esbaniast fors que l’arc a main” (no one should play or amuse himself except using a longbow); renewed in 1365, his order prohibited all other games, suspected of distracting the male population from archery (Mehl 1990: 58–9). The medieval tradition continued throughout the Elizabethan era, when frequent archery competitions enlivened the festivals of towns such as Coventry, Plymouth, Warwick, and Rye. However, the increasingly ritualized rules which governed these competitions, characterized by respect for hierarchies, revealed a gradual change: their military function was fading in comparison with the entertainment and spectacle which they provided during urban festivities and parades (Hutton 1994: 227– 42). Armed sports evolved in a similar way in France from 1369, when King Charles V ordered his subjects to set aside dice, tables, backgammon, pucks, skittles, marbles, and boules in favor of shooting bows and arbalests. As in England, the recreational, competitive aspect of these games began to take precedence over their use in military training, which was still apparent in the sixteenth century. In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cities, armed sports were played on the premises of guilds of archers and arbalists granted a royal charter. When the harquebus became established in the sixteenth century, harquebusiers either joined the archers and arbalists or established independent companies. These all operated in an identical manner in the northern part of the kingdom, which was the most exposed to conflicts with foreign lands. They were led by an elected hierarchy, copied from the military hierarchy, with a captain, lieutenant, ensign or second lieutenant, sergeants, and a treasurer; they admitted only bourgeois “children of the city” or those who had resided there for a period of ten years. Their members swore an oath that they would never use their weapons against the sovereign. Besides the prestige conferred by membership of these armed guilds, associates also benefited from tax privileges, exemption from some tolls, and subsidies drawn from the taxes collected by the city (Belmas 2006: 110). During annual competitions, they competed against one another in shooting at the butts, or target shooting, aiming at a post or target positioned on a hilltop. This game was rivalled from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century by popinjay or papingo (parrot), which involved shooting at a wooden bird perched on top of a tree or mast (Lamotte 1992: 36). In Amiens, Chaumont, Beauvais, Rouen, Caen, and Paris, the ritual remained unchanged from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century: the guilds, led by drummers, paraded around the city and its suburbs then paid tribute to the authorities before retiring to play a game of popinjay. The winner was proclaimed king of

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the popinjay, received a prize, and was exempt from paying taxes for the following year (Trémaud 1972: 14–16). Aristocratic armed sports, such as tournaments and jousting matches, also took place within an institutional framework which regulated and structured them, and facilitated their supervision. At the end of the fifteenth century, there were four large regional associations in the Empire, dominated by the aristocracy and the petty nobility, which managed all events of this kind in Rhineland, Swabia, Franconia, and Bavaria; they established the rules and negotiated the organization of tournaments within the city walls, usually in the marketplace, with the urban aldermen. From 1350, they sponsored small local societies bringing together vassals and their families, and organized tournaments on an occasional basis (Rühl 2009: 147–57). The tradition of armed sports remained alive and well in sixteenth-century Germany (Figure 3.3). Many cities dedicated part of every Sunday to sports competitions, tournaments, horse races, fencing, and archery. Stopping in Augsburg one Sunday in October 1580 on his way to Italy, Michel de Montaigne watched a display at a “fencing school” and then the weekly archery competition (Montaigne 1943: 899); the winner’s prize was “a pair of trousers” (Kusudo 2009: 342). At the fencing school, led by a master swordsman who belonged to the Saint-Mark imperial guild for German fencing

FIGURE 3.3: Illustration from Album of Tournaments and Parades in Nuremberg. Late sixteenth–seventeenth century. Alamy.

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masters, the pupils fought with swords and/or daggers before an audience of spectators who had paid a fee of two pence to watch them fight. At that time, the arbalists, archers, and musketeers of Augsburg were distributed among three different companies; each one possessed a training area and shooting range, located in the ditches outside the city walls, where members met on Sundays in the summer months. Situated midway between training for war and masculine entertainment, these armed events provided German cities with an opportunity to test their defensive capacity and the bravery of their inhabitants, as well as to assert their prestige. The city council of Augsburg also established an archery festival open to competitors from neighboring cities. In addition to archery contests, the festival also featured jumping competitions, stone throwing, boules, and horse races. The event was funded by a lottery. Keen to train the city’s champions, the aldermen of Augsburg encouraged them to compete against their rivals at festivals in neighboring cities, going as far as to pay the costs associated with their travel (Kusudo 2009: 340–51)

TECHNICITY AND TECHNIQUES OF THE “SPORTING” BODY In both the education of young people and the training of men for warfare, a new type of concern emerged between the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century: it was no longer sufficient to practice, it was also necessary to know how to go about doing so. It became imperative to call upon the services of an educator in order to learn the “techniques of the sporting body,” in the words of Marcel Mauss (Mauss [1902] 1999: 366–86). From this point on, pedagogical reflection gained momentum, prompting the production of a body of theoretical work: an entire area of didactic literature was thus born, comprising treatises on games and on the education of the sporting body, backing the notion of physical exercise with a reasoned analysis of the body (Vaucelle 2009b: 252). The Codification of Sports Movements in Writing The first didactic publications concerning recreational sports emerged in the second half of the sixteenth century. Treatises on etiquette published in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, such as II Libro del Cortegiano (the Book of the Courtier) by Castiglione and the De civilitate morum puerilium (On good manners for boys) by Erasmus ([1529] 1985), described models of behavior in society, in terms of sprezzatura (nonchalance), in the former and self-control—of affect, appearance, and attitudes—in the latter; the theoretical and practical texts which followed sought to enhance knowledge of the rules of a sport, as well as to outline the various technical phases necessary to learn it (Bascetta 1982). Treatises on civility listed the sports and exercises which a

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nobleman should learn as part of his education—the sports we have listed above as part of Montaigne’s education—whereas didactic treatises presented the methodology by which readers could engage in these activities. They prioritized the three categories of activity which formed the basis of young nobles’ physical education: fencing, gymnastics/dance, and horse riding. The texts recommended adapting teaching venues and materials, especially for horse riding and dance. The riding master Salomon de La Broue therefore had a two-foot-deep track dug into the ground in order to guide his horse. Meanwhile, dancing master François de Lauze encouraged beginners to lean on a table to allow them to develop lower limb movements more easily (Vaucelle 2009b: 253–4). Both works extolled the virtues of repetition and reflected upon the role of memory and the importance of error in the assimilation of physical exercises. The description of the movements was illustrated by engravings, as in the De Arte Gymnastica by Mercuriale, who entrusted the artwork for his text to Pirro Ligorio; or in the Trois Dialogues de l’Exercice de Sauter et Voltiger en l’Air (1599) by Arcangelo Tuccaro, an acrobat who entertained at the French court under Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV, between 1570 and 1600, and whose book was illustrated with eighty-eight woodcuts showing Tucccaro in action. Most of the treatises adopted geometric models to analyze and combine movements, such as those employed in the fencing manuals, which proliferated first in Italy, Spain, and the Empire, and later France and the rest of Europe. From the fourteenth century, a succession of works were written by German master swordsmen such as Johannes Liechtenauer and Hans Talhoffer, Italian fencing masters such as Fiore dei Liberi, and Spanish masters like Diego de Valera, author of the fifteenth-century Tratado de las Armas; they laid the foundations for modern-day fencing, while schools run by guilds and confraternities of the “masters of defence” were opened in Italy, France, England, and Spain. The science of weapons was codified with mathematical precision throughout the sixteenth century, in texts such as the Opera Nova (1531) by Antonio Manciolino and the Trattato di scienza d’arme (1553) by Milanese architect, engineer, mathematician, and excellent fencer Camillo Agrippa (Turcot 2016: 280–3). These works, along with ealier and later ones such as King Duarte’s 1435 Ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sela (Instructions on how to ride in every kind of saddle) and Antoine de Pluvinel’s 1625 L’instruction du Roi en l’exercice de bien monter à cheval (Teaching the king [Louis XIII] how to ride properly) (Figure 3.4), examined every movement in detail, from the position of the limbs and the strength to be used to the attitude and conduct to be adopted for swordplay, jousting, tilting at the ring, or quintain. The blows were classified and counted, and the attacks categorized. Fencing masters like Joachim Meyer from Strasbourg, in Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (Fundamental description of the art of fencing, 1570), and Girard Thibault d’Anvers from the Spanish Netherlands, in

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FIGURE 3.4: Crispijn de Passe the Younger (1597/98–1670), Louis XIII of France during tournament practice in the riding school, in Antoine de Pluvinel, Le manège royal (Paris 1623). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. AKG.

the Académie de l’Espée (1628) (Figure 7.3), called upon master engravers to accurately reproduce the positions of the bodies and to clarify the technical terms. The resulting illustrations were characterized by numerous geometric markers representing the movements to be made on the ground (Anglo 2000: 125–30). The geometric paradigm was therefore necessary to guide human motility, as it was believed at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to be linked to the cosmological model. An identical approach was adopted by Angelo Tuccaro, who deconstructed and classified gymnastics moves in his work in order to better associate them with dance, one of the favorite pastimes of the European courts. Making reference to the authorities of Ancient Greece as well as to Mercuriale, his Trois Dialogues, which were written in French in the style of a conversation, went beyond the framework of a didactic manual for acrobatic training. In setting out the rules and regulations underpinning their perfect execution, Tuccaro aimed to honour bodily practices and those who engaged in them. Agility, forbearance, grace, and moderation were the objectives to be attained through the moderate exercises which he suggested for maintaining the body. By infusing gymnastics with the marks of nobility, Tuccaro

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reinforced the influence of the discipline in Renaissance Europe (Schmidt 2009: 377–87). Technicity and Elegance of Sports Movements The sophisticated court life which developed in the city-states of Florence, Milan, Rome, Venice, and Ferrara prioritized courtesy, poise, temperance, and gestural control. Treatises on civility and manuals for recreational sports helped to disseminate the new standards, contributing to the work on appearances undertaken between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The favorite recreational sports of the elites were subject to the distinguishing criteria promoted as part of the civilizing process. The acquisition of technical skills was to be supplemented by postural elegance, as in the cases of dressage, fencing, and tennis. While the first equestrian treatises, which appeared in Italy around 1550 and were dedicated to the rulers of the Italian city-states, described aspects linked to the natural movements of the horse which the rider learned to exploit (passades, kicks, crow hops, passasalto), the French treatises written later and aimed at aristocrats who engaged in the same physical activities as the monarchs, favored complex figures combining different types of jumps (courbette, levade, croupade), which required a tighter rein. The academies which trained young nobles in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries taught a form of dressage akin to dance. In Le manège royal, published in 1623, then in L’instruction du Roi en l’exercice de monter à cheval of 1625, Antoine de Pluvinel lamented the complacency of the era and the disappearance of old customs while adapting his work to the tastes of the time by setting equestrian exercises to music (Pluvinel 1623, 1625: 115). At fencing schools, skillful handling of the sword—far removed from harsh wartime practices—became a mark of recognition among peers. In the sixteenth century, the British nobility and gentry made use of the services of Spanish or Italian masters to train their heirs, such as Rocco Bonnetti, who opened a school in London in 1569 which quickly earned a strong reputation (Turcot 2016: 281–2). Forming part of an educational ideal, fencing was also used to teach bodily restraint, control, and nobility, as symbolized by the obligation to salute the opponent before attacking. However, although the rules were intended to eliminate any violence from the confrontations by curbing vicious impulses (Vigarello 2005: I, 251), the level of technical skill of the fighters, armed with a long, sharp rapier with a flexible blade, allowed them to deliver decisive, often deadly thrusts to the chests of their opponents (Vaucelle 2009b: 253). With regard to real tennis, it represents the perfect example of the “civilizing” function of recreational sports. The tennis master Jean Forbet translated (rather loosely) the Greek physician Galen’s second-century Exercise with the Small Ball, under the title L’utilité qui provient du jeu de la paume (The advantage

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that derives from tennis), extolling the organic and moral benefits of the game: “this exercise is the paragon of all others . . . not only does it work the body, it also delights and refreshes the mind” (Galen [1599] 1623: 22–32). To this text he appended a set of rules, the Ordonnance du Royal et Honorable Jeu de la Paume, the first itemized set of tennis rules to be published, despite the fact the game had existed since at least the thirteenth century (though dated 1592, Forbet’s book was published only in 1599; other editions followed in the first two decades of the seventeenth century). Real tennis contrasted sharply with other ball games in many respects: practiced indoors, in an organized space featuring a series of constraints, using an instrument to serve and return the esteuf, ball, or pelote, it followed complex rules, formalized in 1555 by Antonio Scaino, though his book seems to have remained largely unread, at least ouside Italy. Tennis also involved an elaborate gestural technique which had to be assimilated by learners (Belmas 2006: 164). The use of an instrument forced players to control their every stance. The asymmetrical design of the courts obliged them to vary their game depending on whether they had drawn the serving side or the receiving side. Players also had to predict their opponent’s shots and prepare the return (Parlebas 1982: 203). In this way, jeu de paume contributed to the process of behavioral change which characterized the sixteenth century. Its practice enabled the construction of a habitus which encouraged self-control, that is, the development of a fundamental inhibition in social and psychic life, which was also promoted by the treatises on civility (Mauss [1902] 1999: 366–86). However, the popularity of jeu de paume declined during the first half of the seventeenth century, as it no longer reflected the habitus of the burgeoning court society which advocated new models of distinction (Muchembled 1998: 104–5). The exercise involved appeared excessive, while the clothes worn (breeches, shirt, and hat) seemed scruffy. Real tennis had helped to transform the aggressive warriors of centuries past into agile, flexible nobles, but the tide had turned and this era had come to an end by 1650 (Belmas 2006: 164–5).

CONCLUSION The concept of “sports products” represents a fruitful area of research, prompting exploration of the ramifications of an activity long considered by historians to be insignificant. Sports products, training, and techniques represent several of the building blocks of a global social phenomenon. The growth in manufacturing of sports equipment and adaptation of specific venues accompanied increased interest in judicious physical exercise during the Renaissance. The systematic inclusion of exercises of this kind in educational programmes encouraged more extensive study and theorization of practices for learning sports movements and training methods, which had until then been

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purely empirical. Whereas the treatises on civility listed the recreational sports which were obligatory in the education of a well-born young man, the didactic works which succeeded them defined the way in which sports should be taught, based on principles inspired by the laws of geometry. The proclaimed attachment to ancient norms coexisted alongside the new measures ushered in by humanist ideals and the demands of grace imposed by the court society. It is thus evident that the economic history of sport advocated by W. Vamplew and S. Hardy merits extensive attention from researchers, as long as it is not explored in isolation from its broader context.

Notes * Translated by Eleanor Staniforth. 1. Statuts et ordonnances des tourneurs de bois de Paris de février 1573. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. 21 799, fol. 323. Articles ajoutez aux anciens statuts des maîtres tourneurs en bois de la ville et faubourgs de Paris, le 28 mars 1601. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. 8095, fol. 94. 2. Statuts et ordonnance des paumiers faiseurs d’esteufs du 24 juin 1467. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. 21 628 coll. Delamare: 9–11. 3. Liste des maîtres de la communauté des Vergetiers, Racquetiers, Brossiers de Paris en 1659. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. 21 799, fol. 569v. 4. Lettres patentes de Henri IV d’août 1603. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. 8109, fol. 550. 5. Lettres patentes de Henri IV de décembre 1603. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. coll. Delamare: fols 115–16. Edit de Louis XIII d’avril 1615, portant confirmation des lettres patentes de Henri IV de septembre 1604. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr. coll. Delamare, fols 51–2. 6. Edit de Louis XIII du 12 février 1630, concernant l’établissement des jeux de boules de Paris. Vincennes, Archives du Ministère de la Guerre. SHAT. Série A1 (12). 7. Papiers Marcel Poète, Epoque moderne, V. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms 131, fol. 548.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Rules and Order CHRISTIAN JASER

INTRODUCTION In nearly every definition of “play” and “sport,” rules and order are conceived as one of their constitutive elements. According to Johan Huizinga’s classic study, Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Homo Ludens. Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur, 1938), ludic behavioral codes are an intrinsic property of humans and animals alike and are therefore pre-cultural phenomena (Huizinga [1938] 1970: 19). In consequence, they occupy an important place in his seminal definition of “play,” which “proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner” (Huizinga [1938] 1970: 32). Twenty years later, in 1958, Roger Caillois pointed to six core characteristics of “play,” among them the governance of rules “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws” (Caillois [1958] 2001: 10). In the wake of these anthropological definitions, sport historians such as Allen Guttmann stressed that “there must be rules of competition, even in the most primitive sports, simply because sports are by definition games, i.e., organized, rule-bound play” (Guttmann 2004: 40). However, in this particular field of study, steps towards historicizing the ruleboundedness of physical contests and exercises regularly led to improper and biased claims of modern exclusivity and premodern alterity: Guttmann distinguishes instrumentally rational modern rules from “divine instructions” of the premodern past, while Henning Eichberg invented the term “force-andstrength-culture” in order to label the allegedly boorish, folkloristic, and unruly character of premodern sport—at least before 1600 (Guttmann 2004: 40; Eichberg 1983: 41; 1978: 24–30). In a far more sophisticated way, even Norbert 87

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Elias’s developmental approach to sport sociology focussed on the invention of sport in eighteenth-century England as part of a political pacification process, which separated its rule-bound, violence-containing, and organized nature from the utter deficiency of a “before” (Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008). Apparently, the normative penetration of physical games is a rather insular latecomer on the stage of the Eliasian “civilising process,” which in general— slowly but relentlessly—provided for a change of behavioral patterns in early modern Europe since the sixteenth century (Elias [1939] 1994). This explicit or implicit marginalization of premodern sport, before an alleged fundamental change towards order, control, and organization occurred, has been increasingly called into question in recent years by late medievalists and early modernists alike. These scholars advocated for a new approach to premodern sports: first, by shaking off the anachronistic benchmark of the one and only “modern sport”; secondly, by taking a fresh look on their textual and visual remains; and thirdly, by reconsidering their cultural, social, political, and economical contexts—both on a micro-historical and macro-historical level (Mallinckrodt and Schattner 2016). At the spearhead of this reappraisal is Wolfgang Behringer, who established a “Renaissance of Sport” in the Renaissance era, borne by a “sportification” of physical exercises and their urban and courtly staging as spectator entertainments (Behringer 2009: 331; Tomlinson and Young 2011: 494; cf. Behringer 2012: 137–8, 408–9; Turcot 2016).1 One of the key factors of this “fundamental process” is the discoursive emphasis on a group of recommended physical contests based on particular skills and dexterity, which are potentially serviceable for utilitarian purposes like military training. These sports were supposed to guide their players—for example, young nobles—to a behavior appropriate to their respective social rank and status (Huggins 2017: 113; Paravicini 2006: 409–10). In consequence, they were pedagogically, legally, and theologically privileged against gambling and games of pure chance (Arcangeli 2003: 53; Mehl 1990: 326). For example, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the humanist pedagogue Pier Paolo Vergerio recommended for young men fencing, running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, javelin throwing, arrow shooting, and horse racing while stressing the reciprocity of skill and amusement: “Pleasure is most suitably taken in games that require some or even great skill, and as little chance as possible” (Kallendorf 2002: 79, 87). Likewise, Antonio Scaino in his “Treatise on Ball Games” (Trattato del giuoco della palla) from 1555 claimed for the various ball games of his time—tennis, calcio, pall-mall, arm ball—the status of an art (ars) that “improves even the smallest part of our limbs, strengthens the health of our body and, in contrast to other games, depends on talent and dexterity and not luck and chance” (Scaino [1555] 2000: 13, 15–16, my translation). From time to time, the term “sport” (desport, desporter) is applied to these physical games, but mostly in a wider sense of distraction and leisure (Arcangeli 2003: 131;

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Turcot 2016: 269; Rabelais [1534] 1994: 65; cf. Mehl 1990; Jaser 2016a: 99–100). Such sportive and athletic activities, combining conviviality, bodily prowess, and ludic competition, could be nothing else than a recreational, informal practice of relatively small peer groups from all strata of society. The usual suspects would be students, nobles, and patricians, but craftsmen and peasants also had their share of this overall “Renaissance of Sport” (Jaser 2016a: 100; Roodenburg 2009). Based on the Renaissance propensity for individual and collective “self-fashioning,” sport contests also became part of the ever more sophisticated European spectacle culture and were staged as urban and courtly events, bringing together participants and spectators while creating an experiential public space of physical performances and ludic tension (Martinez 2014; Mulryne and Goldring 2017). In both cases, all participants had to agree on a known set of prescriptive and proscriptive rules that ensured a performative reliability of expectations, limited certain contingencies, and facilitated the determination of results, winners, and losers. In their more complex forms as spectator events, sports contests such as tournaments, shooting matches, and horse races involved a whole occasional order comprised of a governing body of judges and referees, a commitment of participants to a rule-bound behavior, and finally, security and other precautions to guarantee a competition as fair and undisturbed as possible. In order to discuss the cultural place of rules and order in the field of European Renaissance sport, I will, first, highlight the increasing textualization and use of written norms on the playing and jousting fields, racetracks, and shooting ranges of Renaissance Europe. Secondly, I will deal with organizational and provisional measures taken by urban and courtly hosts in order to establish order and security during the sports events. Thirdly, I will contextualize these findings within the broader framework of contemporary cultural, social, and economic presuppositions.

GUIDING SPORTSMANSHIP: RULEBOOKS AND OCCASION-RELATED RULES If rules in sport are “cultural artifacts,” as Allen Guttmann, claimed for “rationalized” modernity, then the very existence of written and, at least in some cases, legally codified rules suggests a certain level of cultural significance for ludic practices and physical contests (Guttmann 2004: 40). Beyond question, both observations apply to the European Renaissance. In fact, the medieval period had its own tradition of rather scattered and fragmented organizational and behavioral rules, with the laws governing games and playing in the huge corpus of Italian city statutes leading the way since the thirteenth century (Rizzi 2012; cf. Rizzi 1995: 89–102). However, the process of “sportivization” during the Renaissance in Italy and elsewhere was carried forward by an unprecedented

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density and range of legislative, regulative, and administrative decrees. Since 1450, the new coexistence of handwritten and printed sets of rules led, in the long run, to standardizing sport disciplines and their respective rules (Behringer 2009: 332, 2012: 164–5; Huggins 2017: 113), even if the codification of rules on a national scope by clubs and associations was, essentially, a nineteenthcentury phenomenon (Werron 2010: 344–72). According to Wolfgang Behringer, printed rulebooks and how-to-do manuals for various sports were key aspects of this development (Behringer 2009: 332, 2012: 166). Fight books for the martial arts—for example, fencing and wrestling—which combined elements of sport, self-defense, and military training, played an especially pioneering role (Jaser 2016b). Originally formulated in the late Middle Ages, instructions for these disciplines were elaborately redefined and disseminated through print beginning in the sixteenth century, particularly in Germany and Italy, and were penned by fencing or wrestling masters working for courtly and urban milieus (Jaquet, Verelst and Dawson 2016; Bascetta 1978, vol. 2: 111–249). Their emphasis lay on movement sequences and behavioral guidelines in order to curb the inherent danger for participants, but occasionally also on quantitative scoring systems for fencing performances, as described in Antonio Manciolino’s Opera Nova from 1531: “Hitting the head counts three points because of the excellence of this part of the body. Hitting the foot counts two points because of the effort required for such a low stroke” (Manciolino 2008: 19). As an early example of a printed wrestling manual, one could add Fabian von Auerswald’s “Art of Wrestling” (Ringer Kunst), which reveals its Saxon origins through the woodcuts by the school of Lucas Cranach, the leading painter of the Wittenberg court (Fabian von Auerswald 1869; Wassmannsdorff 1870; cf. Behringer 2009: 332). Gradually, the whole range of European Renaissance sports became part of the “printing revolution” (Bascetta 1978). Riding manuals, particularly of Italian and French origin, enjoyed great popularity and were diffused through reprints and translations to a continental readership: among others, one could mention Federigo Grisone’s “Rules of Riding” (Gli Ordini di cavalcare) (Naples 1550), Claudio Corte’s “The Horseman” (Il Cavalerizzo) (Lyon 1573), and Antoine de Pluvinel’s “The Royal Manège” (Le Maneige Royal) (Paris 1623), which included training and performance instructions for equestrian games like horse racing and tilting at the quintain (Grisone 2014; Corte 1573; Pluvinel 1623; cf. Behringer 2009: 332). Tournaments and jousts were also accompanied by rule and conduct books, for example, from Spain: Ponç de Menaguerra’s “The Knight” (Lo Cavaller) published in 1493, and Juan Quijada de Reayo’s “Doctrine of the Art of Chivalry” (Doctrina del arte de la cavalleria) printed in 1548 (Fallows 2010: 323–33; cf. Anglo 1988). In 1545, the dominant tradition of late medieval archery was taken up by the English pedagogue Roger Ascham in the form of a didactical treatise titled Toxophilus (Ascham 2002).

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Special attention was given to various ball games that had had a legion of adherents in western Europe since the Later Middle Ages: pall-mall, a game analogous to croquet, was played according to a fixed set of rules regarding participants, spaces, equipment, and procedural regulation, which can be traced to a letter by Bartolomeo Ricci printed in 1560: For this game one needs three things: a ball, a stick and fellow players, but there is no specific playing field. The ball should be made from very hard and solid wood, from dogwood, sorb, olive or similar trees of this sort . . . The stick is made from wood . . . The game can be played alone or with several players . . . In this game, the ball is hit differently than in any other game, because it is moved on the ground; playing the other games correctly means hitting the ball in the air. —Bascetta 1978, vol. 2: 264, 266, my translation; cf. the Parisian Les loix du pallemail from around 1640 in McClelland and Merilees 2009 Antonio Scaino’s treatise on ball games (Figure 4.1) represents an exhaustive rulebook interspersed with technical, behavioral, philosophical, and scientific arguments establishing different levels of usage and meaning. The underlying aim is to present the flawless player as perfect courtier and vice versa. Through playing with ability and by the rules, participants in tennis, football, or air ball matches could show their moral character and fitness for courtly life, even in cases of conflict and appeal against scores and results, which were supposed to be resolved by legal procedures in front of a predetermined judge (Nonni 2000: X–XIII): The players tend to argue about who is obliged to bear the burden of proof if there is a plaintiff against another player. In this case one has to know that the player accusing his opponent of some fault is obliged to prove his case by judgment and testimonies of appointed judges or other persons . . . —Scaino [1555] 2000: 85, my translation In Giovanni de’ Bardi’s “Discourse on the Game of Florentine Calcio” (Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino), published in 1580, the rather complex rules of “our genuine Florentine game”—a blended precursor of rugby and American football—were meticulously recorded: two teams of twentyseven players each, a line-up in four lines consisting of fifteen forwards (corridori/innanzi), five “defensive midfielder” (sconciatori), four halfbacks (datori innanzi), and three defenders (datori addietro) as well as plenty of tactical variants discussed by Bardi. Defined as a “public game of two teams of unarmed youths on foot who compete comfortably for honour by trying to get a medium-sized inflated ball over the opposing target line,” calcio should

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FIGURE 4.1: Frontispiece of Antonio Scaino, Trattato del giuoco della palla (Venice 1555).

sharpen the spirit of rule-bound competitiveness in the minds of young Florentine noblemen: “The importance of this game is winning” (Bascetta 1978: 138; Bredekamp [1993] 2006: 16–23). It is important to note, however, that the cultural entrenchment of rules in Renaissance sport cannot be traced adequately by relying only on printed rulebooks and manuals for specific disciplines. Rather, one has to consult a myriad of unpublished material scattered in municipal and courtly archives, documenting rules and provisions for individual sport contests organized by towns or noble households. Such occasion-related rules of sport differ in length and normative scope. In sum, they all amount to a more or less detailed list of proscriptions and prescriptions aimed at the temporal and spatial order of horse races, tournaments, or shooting matches, but even more at potentially dangerous equipment and the antagonistic behavior of the participants. During a much frequented shooting event in the German imperial city of Augsburg in 1476, a horse race was held for the prize of a piece of cloth called scharlach and its basic rules were proclaimed before the race:

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Item do not apply stinky material [presumably garlic, C.J.] on the horse. Item provide that there should be no pus on the horse. Item you can use a free bridle. Item do not use ribbons. Item do not use scourges. Item the riders should not scuffle, tear each other and grab the bridle of another horse.2 Like their counterparts in many northern and central Italian towns, such scharlach races hosted by imperial and princely towns like Nördlingen, Munich, Vienna, and Neuburg on the Danube flourished in the Renaissance era. The highly developed legislative and administrative literacy of these urban centers also permeated their annual racing contests. In Nördlingen, the city authority promulgated in 1463 17 “articles” (artickel) dealing with many performative and organizational aspects: registration of horses, riders, and racing patrons; inspection and sealing of horses; and security precautions (Eis 1961: 354). Racehorses had to be ridden with saddles and spurs but without whips or riding crops, and riders were not allowed to disturb their competitors “with their arms and hands.” Furthermore, it was strictly forbidden under penalty of forfeiture of their racehorses for participants to use “unnatural” and magical devices in order to interfere with other horses (Eis 1961: 354). In contrast, “racing recipes” of herbal drugs circulating at southern German courts since the fifteenth century, promising miraculous results (“That way, you will be uncatchable. You will experience wonders”), met with acceptance as legitimate tools of performance enhancement (Eis 1961: 354). In general, the annual palio and scharlach horse races of Italian and German cities can be regarded as the best-documented sport cultures of Renaissance Europe (Jaser 2014). The guiding principle of their set of rules—transmitted either by specific racing instructions or within the tradition of urban statutory law—was aequalitas: fundamental equality of opportunity for all participants by ensuring a rule-bound and unimpeded course of action. Since equality was rooted in the communal ideal of justice and constituted a civic core value, hosting cities such as the city republic of Siena decreed as their regulatory aim in 1493: “During tomorrow’s palio race in honour of Mary Magdalene equality (equalitas) should be observed in order to prove and experience the perfection and speed of the participating racehorses as well as the diligence and ability of their riders” (Cecchini 1983: 353; cf. Frenz 2012). Correspondingly, on both sides of the Alps, civic authorities sought to ensure that racing results should be based on the rule-bound performance of horses and riders alone, without interference by unfair conditions or ambitious racing patrons. Given the fact that the considerable expenses for prizes and organization were regularly covered by civic funds, this regulatory impulse is easily comprehensible. In order to accentuate the “ruliness” of urban horse racing events, the respective set of rules was solemnly proclaimed before the races, year in, year out, and the racing patrons—that is, horse owners—were sworn in to play by the rules

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and to instruct their riders to contest “without deceit and fraud,” as a racing instruction from Augsburg decreed in 1559.3 In many German and Flemish towns, contests in archery, crossbow, and gun shooting were organized and financed by the civic authorities and belonged to the most frequented public events (Crombie 2016; Delle Luche 2015). In the run-up to these shooting matches, manuscript or printed invitation letters were sent out to potential participants, such as neighboring towns, local and regional nobles, and individuals—sometimes even to addressees from farther away— including announcements of regulatory issues, as exemplified by the run-up of an Ulm crossbow contest in 1478: Every participant shall shoot freehandedly and with a severed sleeve of his waistcoat. In doing so, the stock shall not touch the armpit and the trigger shall not touch the chest. Moreover, he has to shoot sitting upright in a chair without leaning against it and without seeking a dangerous advantage. In case of infringement or if the shooter launches two bolts all at once, he forfeits his shot and his shooting equipment and shall be punished according to the circumstances. —Ostermann 2000: 429; McClelland 1990: 53–4 As a particular dangerous sport that entailed questions of social status and participation, tournaments and jousting matches were in themselves heavily regulated events. Even “corporative,” socially rather low-level tournaments, like the one organized by the knighthood of the “Four Lands” in Würzburg 1479, could not be staged without extensive ordinances specifically recorded in the run-up to the event: the first twenty articles concern the delicate question of admission to the tournament with the purpose of assembling a morally worthy and socially homogeneous starting field. Other ordinances are related to the swordplay (der schwertter halb) and fighting with quarter staff (von dem kolben), whereby the number of weapons admissible—no one must carry more than one quarter staff—and the behavioral rules for the attendant foot soldiers or squires are laid down (Gumppenberg 1862: 62–6; cf. Rühl 1990a: 168–72; Barber and Barker [1989] 2000: 191; Ranft 1994). Urban fencing schools were a common feature of urban life in Renaissance Europe (Anglo 2000; Jaser 2016b). These temporary gatherings of students, craftsmen, and other young men for the sake of self-defense and competitive self-fashioning started regularly with a proclamation by the fencing master containing all relevant and potentially life-saving dos and don’ts, illustrated in 1550 according to a German tradition: Everyone must know what shall be prohibited at this fighting school, such as thrust, pommel strike, points, indulging in wrestling, breaking of arms,

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hitting the male genitals, eye-gouging, throwing stones and all dishonest tricks, as many know well to apply, that I cannot name all since I have not learned them. —Wassmannsdorff 1870: 10; translation partly after Jaquet 2013: 59 Apart from rules for proper performance, precepts for the suitable playing equipment were an integral part of manuscript ordinances for physical contests. In Paris, the uncontested “capital of tennis” in the Renaissance era, where no less than seventy jeu de paume-courts can be traced between 1300 and 1600, the production of tennis balls façon de Paris became a considerable branch of trade (Jaser 2016a: 102–4). Consequently, the quality of this export commodity became increasingly regulated and standardized, for example, in a decree of the provost of Paris, Jacques d’Estouteville, from 1508: “Nobody is allowed to produce balls in this city or the suburbs, unless from good leather and good filling material, and every ball should weigh 17 estelins [approx. 26 g, C.J.]” (Lespinasse 1897: 528, my translation). In 1538, Juan Luis Vives characterized French in contrast to Spanish tennis balls as smaller, harder, made out of white leather, and filled not with cut wool cloth but with dog hairs (Vives 2005: 352) (Figure 4.2).

FIGURE 4.2: Pallone Equipment (Alpine regions, sixteenth–seventeenth century; Northern Italy, fifteenth century). Munich, Bavarian National Museum.

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Beyond the commercialized tennis courts of Paris, information about the required measurements, dimensions, and weights of sport equipment, participants, and installation at the playing area circulated in the run-up to tournaments and other major sport events—once more for the sake of equal conditions. For example, jousting matches required lances of the same measurements, as is indicated in Juan Quijada de Reayo’s manual from 1548: It behoves the judges to assure that the lance-maker provide lances of equal length so that one is not longer than another, for if one is one digit longer than another, the one that strikes first will splinter, and the other may or may not break at all. —Fallows 2010: 370–1 From time to time, jousters negotiated the right measurements of jousting horses. While preparing a tournament on occasion of the princely wedding of Duke William IV of Jülich-Berg and Margravine Sibilla of BrandenburgAnsbach in 1481, Margrave Frederick V of Brandenburg-Ansbach and the groom corresponded on equine sizes: such small horses used for tournaments like those in Ansbach could not be found on the Lower Rhine, the duke added for consideration (Militzer 1993: 47). Four years later, the same margrave informed Count Eberhard II of Württemberg about the proclamation of another jousting event that included “measurements of horses, armour and lances” (pferdsmaß, gerustmaß, stangenmaß) in order to prepare all potential participants for the upcoming tournament (Tresp 2007: 294). In the ordinances for the Würzburg tournament of 1479, there are rulings about the types of swords used for the first part of the tournament, which should be at least three fingers broad and blunted on edges and point (Barber and Barker [1989] 2000: 191). In order to take part in German horse races, the riders had to meet a minimum weight of 125 pounds, which was controlled on the public scales before the race. Any underweight had to be balanced by a handicap weight according to a decree of King Maximilian I from 1493 (Mußgnug 1922–4: 116). Likewise, the invitation letters for German shooting matches normally contained technical details for the guidance of participants. Frequently, on their back pages one can find drawings of the measurements of targets which should be used as models for the production of identical targets in the home towns of the addressees, so that they could train under competitive conditions: “One will shoot at the circular target which is drawn on the outside of this letter,” proclaimed the archers of Strasbourg in an announcement of a shooting match in 1473 (Hagedorn 1903: 25). Occasionally, there was attached a piece of cord whose length had to be multiplied by a multiplier mentioned in the letter in order to enable the addressee to forecast the extent of the shooting range (Ostermann 1998: 135).

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In a way, the guiding principle of equality with regard to rule application also implied the ideal of a temporary social equality of all participants under the conditions specified in the ordinances of the respective event. In this direction points Ponç de Menaguerra’s above-mentioned jousting manual from 1493: If kings or the sons of kings should joust against each other, let them be judged according to the same rules by which other knights are judged, for when they are performing such feats of arms they are nothing more than knights. —Fallows 2010: 331 However, immediately after his demand for competitive equality of a knightly brotherhood in arms, Ponç de Menaguerra hastens to reclaim the dignity of kingship even in the context of tournaments: And if a king or one of his sons should run the length of the course (i.e. against a non-royal) without scoring, even though he does not make the encounter, nor is here anything other than a course ran with the lance, it is worth more points than all of the encounters, manoeuvres, actions and lance strokes that the other knights of any other rank beneath the king may have made, and thus shall they have respect for the preeminence of his royal office. —Fallows 2010: 331 Even though tournaments and jousts can be considered as a meeting point both of landed and urban nobility and of different noble ranks, existing hierarchies of rank and status were not altogether leveled. Rather, unwritten social rules prevailed even during the performance of jousting matches. After the Nuremberg patrician Martin Löffelholz distinguished himself by jousting against an incognito knight during a tournament in his hometown in 1496, he refused to continue the match when he heard that his opponent had been Margrave Frederick V of Brandenburg-Ansbach. Only at the insistence of Frederick did he re-enter the lists. However, whenever the margrave was thrown out of his saddle, he also deliberately sent himself flying out of respect to the social distance between the opponents (Zotz 1986: 472). In 1486, King Maximilian I faked the signature of his father, Emperor Frederick III, in order to take part in a jousting match against the Elector Palatine, Philip I. After unsaddling the king and winning the contest, Philip felt obliged to beg the pardon of the emperor, who laughed about his son’s misfortune (Militzer 1993: 42–3). At the urban horse race tracks of Renaissance Italy, similar rules of respect for social hierarchies applied. Thus, the Florentine diarist Luca Landucci

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reported an incident involving his brother Gostanzo, a quite successful racing patron of the early 1480s, at a palio race in Siena: And when he went to a race at Siena, there was a tie between his horse and one belonging to Lorenzo de’ Medici, called La Lucciola (Firefly), that of Gostanzo being in reality one head’s length in advance to the other. And the people who were present declared that he had won, and told him to go to the magistrate, and they would bear witness. Gostanzo, however, refused to do this, out of respect for Lorenzo, and as it happened, Lorenzo was proclaimed the winner. —Landucci 1927: 42 Obviously, for upper-middle-class spice merchants like the Landucci, it was not advisable to come into conflict with the informal lord of their hometown, who did not lack competitive spirit with regard to the results of his racehorses. In other, far less public circumstances, even a king such as Henry VII of England could lose one tennis match after another, as his private account book from the 1490s indicates: 13th June 1494: To a Spanyard the tenes player, £ 4. for the Kinges losse at tenes, to Sir Robert 14th August 1494: Ad Windesor . . . To Sir Charles Somerset Curson, with the balls, £ 1. 7s. 8d. 8th March 1495: (At Shene.) To Hugh Denes for the Kinges losse at tenes, 14s. and for the silke girdle, 6s. 8d. – £ 1. 0s. 8d. 29th March 1495: For the Kinges losse at the paune (paume, CJ) pley 7s. 8d. 5th July 1496: At Waltham 5. July . . . To a new pleyer at tenes, £ 4. 30th August 1497: To Jakes Haute for the tenes playe, £10. 6th June 1499: For the Kinges losse at tenes, 8s. —Gillmeister 1997: 21–2 Given this costly series of royal defeats, the inherently misleading term “royal tennis” becomes even less fitting, notwithstanding the fact that royal victories could not find their way into this expense book. Losing to socially inferior opponents obviously involved no loss of face on the part of the king, still less against professional tenes players like the Spanyard mentioned above, perhaps the king’s private coach (Gillmeister 1997: 28; cf. Carlier and BernardTambour 2001).

ORDER: LUDIC ORGANIZATION AND SUPERVISION Publicly funded events like tournaments, shooting contests, or horse races were immensely popular in Renaissance Europe, frequently attracting hundreds of

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participants and thousands of spectators. On a lesser scale, this applies also to privately initiated contests like those occurring in fencing schools. For example, in late sixteenth-century London, the “Company of the Masters of Defence” attracted an attendance of up to 4,000 spectators (Anglin 1984; McClelland 2007: 48). In general, large crowds were eyed suspiciously by civic authorities, princes, and courtly officials alike—not least from a widespread fear of political upheaval (Israel 2012). Specific circumstances of certain sport spectacles created additional risks: during urban tournaments, civic authorities were on their guard in view of the large number of armed and battle-hardened men within the city walls. Similar concerns were raised with regard to the shooting of longdistance weapons and firearms that, at least potentially, involved danger for bystanders and fire hazards (Militzer 1993: 40–1; Delle Luche 2015, vol. 1: 344–60). On the occasion of a major tournament in 1486, the city of Cologne, numbering 40,000 inhabitants, received no fewer than 1,000 armored guests: John, Duke of Kleve and Count of the Mark, arrived on the Rhine together with 350 persons and horses; the retinue of the Count of Aremberg counted 200 persons. They were joined by the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier, other princes, and the entourages of Emperor Frederick III and King Maximilian I. In order to ensure public order during the contest, several hundred armed guards were posted at crucial places in the city, in particular at the gates and on the walls, but also in the market place where the tournament was held. During tournaments, the civic banner hung from a specially erected scaffold as a sign of the enforcement of civic peace. From this elevated position, archers were able to oversee the events on the tournament ground and, if required, could intervene as quickly as possible. From the detailed records of a Regensburg tournament in 1487, we can trace precise information about the distribution of guards across the city, at the gates and at the so-called Kornhaus where dances during the tournaments took place (Militzer 1993: 39–40; Zotz 1986: 478; Barber and Barker [1989] 2000: 184). Similar security measures were in place during the German scharlach horse races, which were mainly held on fairgrounds in suburban areas. According to the racing rules of Nördlingen from the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, forty armored men were supposed to stay quietly at a place called Schwallmühle close to the racetrack and were ordered to pay heed to illicit racing and other incidents that could possibly be detrimental to the commune. Moreover, the city’s craft guilds had to supply 210 “good, tall and strong journeymen” in armor, who had to stand watch at the Kaiserwiese, the racing venue; the group included forty-three archers and riflemen, thirty halberdiers, and 137 pikemen. Within the imperial city, specific security precautions were in force: gatekeepers were reinforced; a mobile guard of ten well-armed men tramped through the streets of Nördlingen; servants and

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guards would do the same in the fields surrounding the city and watch out for suspicious persons; finally, a man took care of the alarm bell (Mußgnug 1922–4: 120–1). Apart from the defense against outside threats, security and order had to be upheld first and foremost within the core area where the competitive performances of the participants were acted out. Normally, tournament lists, shooting ranges, fencing schools, and racetracks were enclosed by temporarily erected wooden structures like barriers, fences, stands, or bannisters in order to prevent interferences by spectators as far as possible—once again for the sake of a fair contest (McClelland 2007: 22). Such potential disturbances arise from the communal statutes of Fermo, which decreed in 1506 with regard to the local palio horse race: On the occasion of the race for a piece of velvet, scarlet or another palio taking place on the feast day of the Holy Virgin Mary in mid-August, nobody should dare to cause any adversity or impediment to the participants or give them any aid, counsel or favor in the course of the aforesaid race. This applies to the racehorses running for this palio as well as to the riders or someone else during the race up to the prize-giving. —Rizzi 2012: no. 1774, 353, my translation In Neuburg on the Danube, the capital of a territory called the Young Palatinate, the suburban racetracks of the scharlach race founded by the Elector Palatine, Ottheinrich, in 1532, were cordoned off by wooden barriers and guarded by court servants; as a result, “nobody should be harmed or interfered with by persons or animals crossing the street” (Kirch 2014: 95). Should one of the spectators nonetheless dare to interfere in an ongoing racing contest, a Viennese decree from 1454 prescribed draconian measures: a fine amounting to the costs of the main prize and, in case of default, the severing of the hand (Opll 1995: 151). Apart from security considerations and the disciplining of spectators’ behavior, officials of the hosting authorities on the scene had to monitor the moving bodies of participating athletes. Their compliance or non-compliance with the general rules of the game and the regulations of individual events had to be closely controlled and, if necessary, sanctioned according to the penalty clauses of statutory laws and ordinances, even though social hierarchies among participants could not completely be dismissed. In consequence, the supervisory staff that were intended to be part of the game at the basic level grew considerably in the context of major sport spectacles, mostly in the service of hosting cities and courts. In most sport disciplines of the Renaissance, the appointment of an individual or group of people to act as judges or referees developed into a standard

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procedure. With regard to ball games like jeu de paume or pallacorda, Antonio Scaino advocated the responsibility of the players for rule-boundedness and discipline: “By common consent they will choose one who is very expert at the game who does not object that he is made judge of the disputes, and that differences may arise between them” (Scaino [1555] 2000: 87; trans. De Bondt 2006: 212). At the tennis courts of early modern France, players even asked the spectators in case of actual or alleged rule violations, as the Ordonnance du Royal et Honorable Jeu de la Paume decreed in 1592: “In case of any problems during the game, the players should consult the spectators and the markers without contradiction” (Luze 1933: 247, my translation). Based on medieval traditions, ladies and damsels among the spectators played an important role in the course of jousting events, first and foremost by presenting the prizes to the best jousters. But the decisions about regulations, scoring, and winning or losing were usually made by judges elected by their peers and heralds, who cast an expert eye on the course of events: “Item, it is the pleasure of the King our moost dradde souuerain lord, that the quenes grace and ladies, with the aduice of the noble and discrete Juges, to gyve prises after their deseruynges vnto both the parties,” King Henry VIII stated in his Challenge for the Tournament in 1511 (Fallows 2010: 201; Rühl 1990a: 66; Rühl 1986–7; Hiltmann 2011: 188). Likewise, jousts hosted by Italian city republics were overseen by judges, yet in close collaboration with local notaries who acted as neutral clerks with legal expertise (Ciappelli 1993). In the tournament scene of a contemporary Florentine wedding chest painting from about 1455 to 1465, one can see a tribune in front of the church of Santa Croce, where judges discuss the allocation of scores; in front of them and in a lower position, a notary sits at his table in order to register the scores (Figure 4.3).4 German shooting matches, frequently attracting several hundred contestants, were ordered and supervised by a board of seven, nine, or thirteen referees— mostly experienced shooters who acted as representatives of the companionships of shooters gathered from different regions (Delle Luche 2015, vol. 2: 783– 92). A so-called Pritschenmeister, combining the role of master of ceremonies and steward, exercised a special form of internal justice by chastising shooters who either failed to shoot successfully or did not play by the rules (Delle Luche 2015, vol. 2: 809–11). In the case of fencing schools, the fencing master had the duty to maintain order and to intervene in overly fierce and unfair encounters, symbolized by a staff in his hands during the school sessions: “No one shall strike above or below my staff ” (Wassmannsdorff 1870: 10; translation after Jaquet 2013: 59). In the field of urban horse races in Italy and Germany, supervision over the competitive dynamics by civic officials was provided during the different stages of the racing performance. In Florence, in the run-up to its main race on the feast of San Giovanni, the starters were drawn by lot from the ranks of local

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FIGURE 4.3: Cassone with a Tournament Scene. Italian, Florentine, c. 1455. © The National Gallery, London, NG4906. Bequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937.

town-criers (banditori) (Corti and Kent 1991: 95). In Rome, there had been since the early sixteenth century an office of starting line judges (officium mossarum braviorum Urbis) for the palio races during the Carnival (Rehberg 2001: 307–8). According to the Munich racing ordinances from 1448, each racehorse should be observed by one official for the purpose of controlling the compliance with the racing rules and ensuring racing results that were in accordance with the actual performances (Destouches 1910: 4). In Ferrara, civic officials should gather at the finish line, so that they “can see which horse ran most rapidly and arrived first at the finish line” (Statuta 1566: 275v). Beyond this supervisory personnel at the racetrack, the final responsibility of a fair and equal course of events was borne by the towns’ governing bodies, which also acted as a kind of court of appeal in cases of disputed results. In Nördlingen, a racing commission consisting of two burgomasters and five council members was constituted for this purpose; and in Florence the city government or Signoria reserved for itself the final say in questions of rules and order, thereby drawing on the assistance of civic notaries (Jaser 2017b). Beyond the mere observation of the permissibility of the participants’ course of action, some officials had the specific duty to record scores and competitive results in quantitative or qualitative terms (cf. Carter and Krüger 1990). At German shooting contests, two groups of servants were responsible for this: persons who announced a hit by pointing at it with their staff (zeyger), and clerks (schriber) who noted it in the lists of hits (Ostermann 1998: 135; Schnitzler 1993). With regard to jousting, the task of scoring a broad spectrum of possible hits is particularly tricky and cannot be traced before the fifteenth century. An exceptionally early example are the score sheets of the Florentine notary Ser Bartolomeo da Coiano, who recorded four different local jousts from 1411 to 1446. Hits on the helmet, the breast-plate, the arm-guard, the crown-like tip of the lance, and, finally, the complete lance were counted

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separately and evaluated by graphic symbols for full and minor hits (Ciappelli 1993). In 1466, Sir John Tiptoft drew up a scoring system for English tournaments, including irregularities and penalties: Highest score: unhorsing an opponent or bringing down both man and horse. Second highest: breaking two spears coronal to coronal, i.e. tip to tip. Third highest: striking the visor three times. Fourth highest: breaking most spears. Disqualification incidents: striking a horse. striking a man with his back turned or when he is without his spear. hitting the tilt three times. taking off the helm twice, unless caused by problems with the horse. Broken spears score as follows: breaking a spear on an opponent between the saddle and the base of the helmet: one spear. breaking a spear from the tip down: two spears. breaking a spear and unhorsing or disarming an opponent, or breaking a spear coronal to coronal: three spears. Penalties: breaking a spear on the saddle: minus one spear. hitting the tilt once: minus two spears. hitting the tilt twice: minus three spears. breaking a spear within a foot of the tip does not count as a broken spear, but as a good blow. —Barber and Barker [1989] 2000: 192–3 At Tudor and Elizabethan tournaments, heralds frequently used these diagrammatic scoring techniques, sometimes by pricking the scores with pins in order to ensure ludic transparency and to determine the best jouster (Rühl 1990b: 66, 78, 85). In sum, the order of physical exercises and sport events during the Renaissance took different shapes and was established in different ways, depending on specific social and cultural logics and organizational circumstances: with regard to privately organized fencing schools, the guidance of an individual authority in the person of a fencing master was indispensable, given the risk of encounters of armed but more or less untrained pupils. At shooting matches and tournaments, participants frequently elected or delegated experienced and competent judges on their own. This approach to a peer-based disciplining reflects the corporative character of these contests—be it in the spirit of knightly brotherhood or civic friendship. By contrast, urban horse races under the aegis

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of civic authorities maintained their order through the recruitment of a considerable number of officials and burghers in order to oversee the racing performances. On top of this regulative and supervising framework were racing commissions and city governments which, in the end, decided about disputed, irregular, or otherwise anomalous results. In this respect, Italian and German palio and scharlach races reveal a distinct tendency towards judicialization, most notably in case of conflicts among participants with regard to the competitive behavior of horses and riders. Consequently, a judicial machinery was set in motion consisting of appeals against racing results, examination of witnesses, consultations and judgments of civic courts and city councils. Through these interactions between racing patrons—as plaintiffs and defendants—and civic authorities, the set of rules of urban horse racing was at least in part clarified or renegotiated (Jaser 2017b).

CONCLUSION: RULES AND ORDER IN CONTEXT Rules and order in Renaissance sports are pervaded by the ideal of equality. Through printed rulebooks and written occasion-related guidelines, players and officials alike were informed about the general setting as well as local specifics of the expected ludic experience. In addition, every host of sport contests and events sought to provide for proper playing fields, to control accessibility and starting fields, and to ensure an undisturbed course of events. Altogether, these organizational efforts aimed at creating a social space giving every participant an equal opportunity to perform and win. In order to gain clear and uncontested results, heralds or notaries were instructed to quantify and record physical performances by means of written signs and lists. The determination of winners and losers produced a temporary, ludic hierarchy based on personal merit in form of playing skills and ability according to the rules of the game (Caillois [1958] 2001: 14–17). The regulative and administrative formation of performance-based ludic spheres went, in some cases, hand in hand with betting practices (Huggins 2017: 113, 120). In general, and according to Roger Caillois, “every encounter with competitive characteristics and ideal rules can become the object of betting,” the more so if “the chances of the competitors are as equal as possible” (Caillois [1958] 2001: 18). This association with betting is particularly apparent in the case of jeu de paume, whose rather strange scoring rules—15, 30, 45, 60 (game)—are related to coinage and monetary gains, at least if we believe Heiner Gillmeister (1997: 124). Apart from this, Renaissance tennis had a considerable share in the contemporary betting culture, from noble “conspicuous” wagers down to the relatively small stakes at the Parisian tennis courts (Mehl 1990: 265–84). Such financial risks presuppose a confidence in a rule-bound and merit-based contest on the part of the bettors. The same applies to the Florentine

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merchant-bankers of the later fifteenth century who registered their horseracing bets in their account books in the same way as insurance contracts. Like many other mercantile investments, such wagers bear not only witness to the uncertainty of results, but also to a belief in a fair and merit-based competition which led to contrary assessments of the starting field and the prospect of success of an individual racehorse (Goldthwaite 1995: 40). “Playing by the rules” in Renaissance sports means first and foremost channeling the competitive energies of the participants towards integration into specific social groups and their respective normative and moral economy. In the context of tournaments and shooting matches, participants were first and foremost subject to an internal social control by peers on behalf of good companionship. However, the balancing act between egalitarian sociability and performative meritocracy was a precarious one: bad shooters had to face ritual chastisement by stewards, and jousters compelled to show their status by means of martial practices, were frequently stressed by a “performance anxiety” to lose face. This anxiety is reflected in the letters of the Mantuan margrave Francesco II Gonzaga to Rozono, the companion of his son Federico in France, in 1518: When it is time for the honorable joust, beyond the other reminders that you in your office give to our Federico, we order that you remember to tell him these words—each and every time that you give him the lance to charge: Remember that you are the son of Lord Francesco Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua. —Cashman 2002: 343 At the racetracks of Renaissance Italy, where local and foreign participants had to comply with rules and order set up by city governments and their officials, the competitive zeal of racing patrons led at least potentially to real or imagined transgressions and manipulations. Social privilege and home advantage were put in the balance in order to favor a particular racehorse either at the start, during, or at the finish of a race. However, such foul play frequently led to appeals to the city authorities and to acerbic comments by peers: when Isabella d’Este accused Lorenzo de’ Medici of an outright manipulation of the Florentine palio race on the feast of San Giovanni—“he is always wanting to win, by one means or another”—this was not meant as a compliment (Kent 2004: 129–30). In similar terms, Girolamo Savonarola created in remembrance of Lorenzo the image of an excessively competitive tyrant: if he could not succeed by his own merit, he would seek to do so by fraud and deceit (Savonarola 1898: 376). Even in the highly competitive world of Renaissance Italy, where sport contests were regarded as metaphors for life, one should win contests by respecting the rules, by choosing the right equipment, and—last but not least—

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by personal merit, at least if we believe Leon Battista Alberti: “Thus in the race and competition for honour and glory in the life of man it seems to me very useful to provide oneself with a good ship and to give an opportunity to one’s powers and ability, and this to sweat to be the first” (Burke 2004b: 192).

Notes 1. Already Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning created the processual term “sportization” in order to qualify the formative phase of “modern sport” in eighteenth-century England (Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008: 18). 2. Augsburg, Municipal Archives, Schützenakten 1, fasc. I, unpag., my translation. 3. Augsburg 1559: Augsburg, Municipal Archives, Verschiedene Provenienzen— Polizeiwesen, sign. 3, no. 49: f. 1r. 4. Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, Cassone with a tournament scene, probably about 1455–65, London, National Gallery, Inv. NG4906.

CHAPTER FIVE

Conflict and Accommodation DIANE ROUSSEL *

During the Renaissance, sports were caught in a tense tug-of-war between the value placed on activities promoting good health for both the individual’s body and society as a whole, and mounting opposition to games and amusements. On the one hand, doctors, humanists, and pedagogues praised those physical activities which, practiced in moderation and under certain conditions, were considered to be a way of preserving a healthy body—and mind. The military dimension of some of these exercises helped justify sport as a functional and even necessary activity to defend the social order. On the other hand, the period of reform in Western Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was overall a time of increasingly strict morals, of people’s bodies coming under greater control, and of increasingly influential arguments against games and pastimes, seen as dangerous to the divine, temporal, and social orders. Frightened by the disruption and the debauchery caused by the rampant increase in games, moralists, preachers, theologians, jurists, clerics, and laymen, Catholic and Protestant alike, debated the issue intensely. The effects of the debate were multiplied by recourse to the printing press and to vernacular languages, both facts that allowed the arguments to reach a much wider public. The great moral offensive against games and recreation is now well known. The Renaissance witnessed a flourishing of arguments and undertakings, which aimed to circumscribe, limit, control, and even ban the practice of games and sports, especially those played by the common people, as part of a great movement to discipline both body and soul and to temper the traditional festive and carnivalesque culture of the time (Ariès 1982; Muchembled 1985, 1988). 107

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What, then, was the place of those activities which we can retrospectively qualify as sports in this more general process? Was sport considered in the same light as the other amusements decried at the time, or did it occupy a place of its own, thanks to its newly promoted status? On the other hand, does the fact that sport eventually became established modify our understanding of this general process of rejecting ludus? What is needed is to identify whether the ample debate about sport in the Renaissance—in particular all the criticism levelled against it—can help identify an outline of the thing called “sport” in premodern times; or whether, on the contrary, the debate in fact held back its development. The undertaking presents several points of interest, as well as a number of obstacles to be overcome. For the historian, the increase in both the volume and the subtlety of theoretical and regulatory texts offers precious material for research into premodern sporting practices over the long term. Without succumbing to a teleological view, which would entail the progressive and linear affirmation of sport, it is necessary to track a posteriori in the given normative documentation certain sporting practices in the wider sense of the term (both physical and competitive games). The interest of this anachronistic approach, however, does not lie solely in the simple act of retrospective description, which demands that we accept that modern concepts and those propounded in the sources will never coincide completely (McClelland 2009). Renaissance authors, preoccupied first and foremost with defining what was to be tolerated and what was to be forbidden, drew an omnipresent yet fluctuating line between the two categories which were established less by the nature of the activity in question and more by political, religious, moral, and social factors, outside the sport itself. Even as they sought to define, categorize, and justify, normative discourse and controversy contributed to the gradual emergence of the conditions that developed the notion of “sport” while at times they obscured the concept by blurring the lines of those practices which they rejected. Attempting to identify the place of sport, given this often strictly Manichean divide between the desirable and the pernicious, calls for the use of a wide range of sources and for the adoption of more subtle and more fluid categories than those of games or recreation, since these include sport but tend to hide its specificities. In the face of a moralizing discourse which attacked the festive, gaming, and carnival-like world by blurring the lines between the licit and the illicit, regulatory and legal sources allow access to more complex realities. It is true that law-enforcement sources necessarily insisted on the authorities’ obsessions with the practices being forbidden, while those practices that were tolerated received less coverage. Conversely, the gaps allow us to assume that there were ample margins of tolerance. In particular, the enormous legislative output seen everywhere in Europe is testimony to the capacity of state and urban authorities in the late Middle Ages

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and the Renaissance to distinguish between situations and to modify the law according to varied criteria (Vallerani 2001). Constrained by reality, the powers accommodated themselves to games and amusements and only opposed them head-on when excesses and dangers demanded their intervention. While certain theoreticians ranked even the most honest of activities on the side of subversion and immorality, the authorities often saw these as a lesser evil and even as a way of limiting the growth of gambling and of channeling youthful energy. Despite the apparent normative rigidity which took over Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sports benefited from their ambivalent and indeterminate status, putting them not in the head-to-head battle between toleration and proscription, but rather in a sort of gray area, between accommodation— encouragement, even—and skeptical containment through regulation. In the end, the true line of discrimination turned out to be primarily a social one, through an increasing distinction between the practices of the urban elite— codified, valued, and visible—and those of the people, which were looked down upon and rejected. This social dimension is in fact the central factor at the heart of the dynamic between conflict and accommodation with regard to sport.

THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS OFFENSIVE. LAWFUL VS UNLAWFUL RECREATIONS: WHERE IS SPORT IN ALL THIS? During the Renaissance, the general theory inherited from the Middle Ages meant that recreational activities were seen as a necessary evil, needed to respond to a human need for recreation, so long as their practice was restrained, and kept distinct from those games considered to be dangerous and thus forbidden (Renson 1982; Arcangeli 2003). The traditional distinction between lawful and unlawful games rested on arguments which combined medicine, philosophy, and morality, to identify those physical exercises recommended to preserve good health. From Erasmus to Mulcaster, Vivès, Elyot, Rabelais, Ascham, and Montaigne, the humanists, often employed as pedagogues, promoted sport to the upper classes of Renaissance society (McClelland 2007). This might indeed have offered a first definition of sport in the Renaissance, were it not for the difficulty of clearly identifying the practices in question. As in the De arte gymnastica by the Italian medical professor Girolamo Mercuriale, first published in 1569, the first treatises by Renaissance doctors, humanists, and pedagogues often bowed to the contemporary taste for Antiquity, and so discussed the gymnasium and the ludus of the Ancients, while ignoring contemporary practices (Arcangeli 2003: 23–9) (Figure 3.2). Seventeenth-century authors appear to have been more concerned to bring their knowledge up to date by including the fashionable

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dances of the day, modern ball games, card games, and board games. But when, in 1606, the French Calvinist doctor Joseph Duchesne, close to Henry IV of France, advocated running, wrestling, boxing, dancing, and throwing, other authors of health treatises, such as Michel Bicaise, a doctor in Aix-en-Provence in 1668 or, in the same period, Vopiscus Fortunatus Plemp of Amsterdam, paid more attention to detailing the negative effects of certain practices because of their bodily and, especially, moral excesses (Arcangeli 2003: 30–6). From the beginning of the sixteenth century, moralists and theologians were also greatly interested in the question of games and recreation. Despite the denominational divides born of the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants came together in one great moralizing offensive which recycled, formalized, and amplified arguments that had been around for years. The fault line between lawful and unlawful activities gave their arguments their systematic structure. For example, there is the treatise written by the influential Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau first published in Geneva in 1579 and entitled in its English version of 1586: A treatise touching dyceplay and prophane gaming. Wherein, godly recreations and moderate disportes bee Christianly allowed and learnedly defended: so all vaine, ydel, unlawfull, offensive and prophane exercises bee sharply reproved and flatly condemned. In this vast debate on the licitness of sport, it is difficult for the historian to clearly identify the place of sports among the multitude of activities enumerated by the authors, using a logic that is often no longer apparent. For, if the treatises are voluble about the proscribed practices—dances, gambling, cards, dice— they do not always delineate very precisely the group of practices regarded as honest, useful, and lawful (Reulos 1982; Sauzet 1982; Mehl 1995). What is more, the interests of the antiquarian still regularly prevailed over those of the polemicist, and theoreticians, like doctors, referred more often to the games of Ancient Greece than to those of their contemporaries (Arcangeli 2003: 59–60). Basing themselves on Roman classifications and medieval compendiums, theologians strove to, and enjoyed trying to, trace the boundaries between games of speech and of action, lawful and unlawful games, and honest and dishonest games. Because they required skill and agility, games played for exercise were, in theory, in the same category as strategy games—that is, games of skill or “pure artis,” acceptable by their nature to the moralists and theologians, as opposed to “pure sortis” games—that is, games of chance, which were unanimously condemned (Belmas 2006: 30–1). However, things became more complicated when moving from the general to the particular and distinguishing precisely between good and bad games. Vehement in their condemnation of dice and cards, theologians adopted varying attitudes with regard to sports. Among the Catholic thinkers who came after the Council of Trent, opinions diverged regarding sports and other physical exercise. Francis de Sales, Catholic

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bishop of Geneva, dedicated three chapters of his Introduction to a Devout Life (written in 1608 and translated into English in 1613) to the question. He observes that “honest and commendable pastimes and recreations . . . are recreations so honest, that to use them well, there needs but ordinary prudence, which giveth every thing due order, place, season, and measure.” A subsequent list includes “to take the ayr,” to play music, hunting and “those games in which the gaine gotten by them serveth for a price and recompence of nimblenes of the bodie or industrie of the mind” (“tennis, baloone, stoole bale, chesse, tables, running at the ringe”). Only excess had to be avoided, to maintain good health (Arcangeli 2003: 46–7). Likewise, the teaching programmes which came out of the Catholic reforms granted a prominent place to recreation and physical exercise, based on the collegia nobilium model for the youth of the ruling class. In the Jesuit schools, running, ball games such as soule, the jeu de paume and pall-mall are used as codified and regulated instruments serving as much to edify the “true Christian soldier” as to form the “honest man” of seventeenthcentury tomes on manners (Ulmann 1977: 157–9; Rizzi 2009: 56–61). These conciliatory positions were, however, not to Jean-Baptiste Thiers’s liking. At the end of the period under consideration here, his famous Traité des jeux et des divertissements, published in 1686, defended a particularly rigoristic position. An enthusiastic compiler of all anti-sport literature (be it written by mendicant preachers, humanists, or even Protestants), Thiers regarded even games of skill with suspicion and considered Francis de Sales too permissive. He concluded that a Christian must only play out of necessity, and that it was preferable to abstain from all games (Belmas 2006: 22). In England, religious debate sowed confusion among the various categories established in early treatises on the subject. In 1563, Lawrence Humphrey, professor of divinity at Oxford University, devoted several pages of his treatise entitled The Nobles to the debate over “two sortes of playes and sports,” as was only right and proper. The first sort, the “more commendable,” corresponded to the five types of sport in Greek Antiquity, that is, “whirling, leaping, casting the darte, wrestling, running,” whose practice he recommended because of their military purpose. Central to the notion of England’s ideal Renaissance gentleman, sport was also more broadly key when it came to building the ideal of the English nation-state, as we will see later on (Colón Semenza 2003: 13). But from the end of the sixteenth century, those championing a particularly strict spirituality—often referred to as “Puritans” (not without endless historiographical debate)—had their sights set in particular on the theatre, sports, and pastimes, especially when they took place on Sunday, the Sabbath day. Sabbatarian tracts tended to consider all these activities superfluous and sinful (Brailsford 1969; Turcot 2016). In 1579, in his Treatise against Dicing, Dancing, Plays and Enterludes, with other idle Pastimes, the preacher John

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Northbrooke maintained the traditional distinction between functional sports and unlawful activities when he admitted that “the exercise eyther of the powers of mynde or bodie are not utterly forbidden.” This very relative tolerance (“not utterly forbidden”) was, however, called profoundly into question by the tract’s overall intent which was to demonstrate that even tolerated sports, practiced in moderation, were potential causes of idleness, disorder, and sin. In later Sabbatarian tracts, these old distinctions disappeared to be replaced by wholesale condemnation of all recreational activities, including sports (Colón Semenza 2003: 53–7). The development of an austere leisure landscape, thanks to these two reform movements, played a decisive role in constructing the intention to ban or to police recreational activities and the will to try and mould individual behavior. The debate on the licitness or otherwise of games led, by the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, to a very restrictive view of games in general. They were seen as acceptable only when they constituted a relaxation and were practiced very moderately. They were to be used like a medicine, with caution and as rarely as possible, under specific conditions and circumstances (Belmas 2006: 54). The distinction espoused by the sixteenth-century humanists—though often in more erudite, literary, and philosophical terms than concrete ones—between functional and lawful sports and licentious mirth—had largely been blurred so that, despite all this wise and pious formal organization, sport appears harder and harder to pin down. This burgeoning literature is not, in the end, the best place to find cogent definitions. Legal discourse, by virtue of the permanent connection it establishes between theory and social practice, offers more purchase.

LEGAL DISCOURSE: BETWEEN LAWFUL AND UNLAWFUL SPORTS, IS THERE A GRAY ZONE FOR SPORT? The classic distinction between tolerated and proscribed activities formed the fundamental basis for Europe’s Renaissance legislators. Renaissance treatises on canon and civil law testify to a strong resemblance with the texts of theologians and moralists, with which they shared a legal tradition. Consequently, by compiling the arguments expounded in Roman Law, Justinian legislation, and medieval diktats, as well as in patristic texts and those of the ecclesiastical councils, European jurists made the traditional separation their own: they approved of physical exercises which strengthened the body and promoted military values but disapproved unanimously of games of chance. Urban police forces for games and recreational activities focussed mainly on games of chance, including gambling, which were accused of encouraging dangerous behavior

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and blasphemy but also idleness, the “mother of all vices,” such as drunkenness and violence. Thus, these games of chance were accused of threatening both the divinely ordained moral order and the social and public order enforced by the temporal authorities of the day. By associating games and delinquency, legal texts reveal a progressive criminalization of games from the Middle Ages onwards (Mehl 1990). Commenting on the seventeenth-century legal texts which he compiled at the beginning of the following century in his Traité de la police, Paris’s police commissioner Nicolas Delamare even went so far as to state that games encouraged “murders, theft and armed robbery” (Belmas 2006: 96). By its very nature, this documentation highlights the authorities’ desire to organize the world of games and recreation by naming unlawful games, the prohibitions against them and the penalties for playing them. In this way, it may suggest that a generally repressive change of tide accompanied the great purificatory crusade waged by the Catholic and Reformed Churches. After closer inspection, however, and attempting to take into account the diversity of practices envisaged, the law’s discourse seems less monolithic and less negative. Across Europe, states and cities produced mountains of edicts and rules which, unrelentingly, endeavored to supervise and monitor recreational practices. Municipal sources, in particular, reveal the diversity of local situations, in terms of both new and old games and pastimes, as well as the objectives of those in power. For example, the statutes of Italian cities make it possible to observe the structuring and evolution of the demarcation between leisure activities that were lawful—even encouraged, as was the palio in the name of defending a communal spirit—and those that were forbidden and might lead to legal proceedings (Rizzi 2000, 2012). In cities that had gone over to Protestantism such as Zurich or Fribourg, where spiritual and temporal power mutually reinforced one another, the legislation attempted to draw this boundary by adapting it to its times: games of chance and dancing games were banned as in other places, especially during the Sunday service, but the Reformers accepted relaxation exercises, especially physical games, as did Zwingli, who recommended running, jumping, throwing stones, fencing, and wrestling (Burgener 1982: 114). The increase in bans against gambling went hand-in-hand with the creation of legally sanctioned spaces for other practices, which were regulated, controlled, and supervised (Arcangeli 2003: 81). Within this normative framework, more complex than is often described, sport occupied an ambivalent place, sometimes tolerated, even encouraged, sometimes ranked together with dangerous practices and so regarded with suspicion. Edicts and regulations, especially at the municipal level, testify to the authorities’ capacity to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances and purposes, which they set out to control.

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Because it was never specifically banned, sport could develop as a social practice which benefited from its ambivalent and indistinct status and existed in a gray legal zone. As a result, the definition of sport provided by these sources remains nebulous, but does appear, even while approximate, to be more productive and informative.

ENCOURAGING AND PROMOTING “FUNCTIONAL SPORT” FOR MILITARY PURPOSES In keeping with the theoretical division between licit and illicit activities, the temporal European authorities of the Renaissance encouraged the practice of exercises with martial aims. Beyond the military motivations is a political dimension and a desire to control the recreational practices that were evolving in all social classes. The old medieval shooting guilds were supported by the authorities in the name of the defense of the realm or the city, but also of public order. For example, in 1507, King Louis XII of France ordered all the Paris guilds to be equipped for and trained in archery and crossbow—as other countries did for the defense of cities—but also so that the youth could be kept occupied and away from forbidden games and other vices, which were often the cause of the debauchery and dissolute life of some of their number (Registre des délibérations 1883–90: I, 142). This also allowed monarchies to consolidate their power through a discourse with nationalist resonance. Thus when England’s Henry VIII promoted archery, he was merely reprising an argument already used by Edward III in 1337, and feeding patriotic propaganda. The memory of the victory at Agincourt seems to have still been alive when, in 1528, he recalled that it was the archers who had saved the English in times past “with a mean and small number and puissance, in regard and comparison to their enemies,” performing “many notable exploits and acts of war” (Gunn 2010: 54). In Scotland, kings and Parliament also wanted men to be war-ready: the law encouraged archery and martial sports, unlike football and golf, which were considered as “unprofitable” distractions. In 1598, James VI and I even instituted Monday as a new day for recreation, sport, and relaxation, in order to end profanation of the Sabbath by providing an appropriate time to play (Cormack 2016: 310–12). English legislation enjoined the population to maintain archery training as much as it punished the practice of forbidden games. At Ludlow in Shropshire, for example, between 1542 and 1576, a total of 176 people were sentenced to fines for not owning bows or for failing to shoot. At Fordwich in Kent, several mayors and town councillors were even brought before the local court between 1550 and 1560 for this offence (Gunn 2010: 58–9). Despite the threats and prosecutions, archery was abandoned by young men who preferred other

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games. Supplanted by fire arms and transformed by new military techniques, it progressively lost its status as a functional and serious sport, to be ranked with the suspect pastimes. The evolution was similar in Germany. Neither sports clubs in the strict sense nor pure military organizations, the shooting societies of German cities declined from the end of the seventeenth century onward, when the civic culture of weapons was being redefined by the military professionalization (Tlusty 2016). For a long time, however, archery and crossbow competitions were held in cities of northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and their function as a leisure activity was boosted during religious, local, and dynastic festivals. The infrastructure for these competitive encounters was an early example of a sports competition: organized by associations that were subsidized by the public authorities and marshalled by regulations that were published and known to all, these contests temporarily brought together competitors from different places relatively frequently and in front of a great many spectators. The internal social hierarchy made up of precedence and elitist procedures continued, however, to mark the events, which is why Georges Vigarello (2005: 259) refused to consider these contests a purely sporting enterprise. Nevertheless, like modern sports events, the shooting and sword-fighting competitions strengthened communal identity and cultivated local pride. The invitation letters sent by cities of the Holy Roman Empire to the competitors of rival cities and the sumptuous receptions that they organized can be analyzed as communication instruments in the competition for prestige between cities (Delle Luche 2015). Similarly, the craze for palio racing in northern and central Italy at the Renaissance reflected the political will of noble families—like the Este family from Ferrara, the Gonzaga family of Mantua, or the Medici family from Florence—to compete with each other. Accusations of manipulation and appeals against final results could therefore give rise to legal and diplomatic developments (Jaser 2014) (Figure 5.1). The case of shooting competitions is a reminder of how much the dimension of feast and spectacle, an integral part of medieval sport, developed during the Renaissance and contributed to increasing the visibility of certain sports. In Tudor England, the evolution of fencing illustrated this tension between sports competition and artistic performance by the participants. The fencers, masters of the sport, organized into a guild by a charter from Henry VIII, could pass from one grade to another by winning sword fights, called prizes or plays. These demonstrations became genuine public shows charging entry fees, to the extent that, by the end of the sixteenth century, the City of London began to regulate them like any other public entertainments and was as suspicious of fencers as of bear baiters or actors (Spina 2013: 338–9). In this manner, the law demonstrated a mistrust of disorder and a tolerance for certain public pastimes, in the name of a concept which mixed both morality

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FIGURE 5.1: Races and competitions at the shooting competition camps of Augsburg, 1509. Universitütsbibliothek Erlangen, Cod. B 213, 175v–176r.

and politics: the shows, if well regulated, could turn young men away from practices considered “much worse,” that is, from gambling, frequenting prostitutes, or even more violent activities like football which, by their very nature, were seen as immoral or likely to degenerate into fights or riots (Spina 2013: 180). Regulation of certain sports such as archery or fencing was therefore justified in the name of maintaining public order and controlling popular violence; sport thus fulfilled a “civilizing” role, as described by sociologists Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, because it offered a controlled outlet for heightened emotions (Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008; Elias [1939] 1994). Tennis also belonged to the group of games which could be recommended, at least under certain conditions. Forbidden to non-nobles from the fourteenth century onwards in France as in England, it was considered an honest sport that prepared the nobility for military life. The French kings’ passion for the jeu de paume is well known: Charles IX thought it “one of the most honest, dignified and salubrious exercises” for princes and gentlemen and believed it to be played as much as or more than any other sport in all the cities of the realm, especially Paris (Boucher 1992: 21). Indeed, it was in France that the appetite for it was the most remarkable: the French were born with a racket in hand, exclaimed

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the English traveler, Robert Dallington at the end of the sixteenth century, adding that the kingdom had more jeux de paume than churches (Dallington [1598] 1604: 147–9). This sport spilled out of its initially aristocratic precincts into all urban areas. In Paris, purpose-built roofed courts increased dramatically in number in the course of the sixteenth century, responding to the demand of a diverse audience of aristocrats, artisans, and students (Jaser 2016a). If it is difficult to count with certainty just how many there were (at least seventy tennis courts can be localized between 1300 and 1600), their rapid proliferation concerned the corporation of master paumiers—who had the monopoly of this lucrative game—as much as it did the authorities: the Parlement of Paris forbade the building of new courts in the city and its environs in 1551, 1579, and 1599 (Belmas 1982: 31–3). After the Wars of Religion, the Bureau de la Ville and the Parlement intended to strictly monitor the reconstruction of courts destroyed during the troubles; while they supported the building of a “palmail” court (“pall-mall” was a variety of croquet, as “pallamaglio”) between the gates of Saint-Honoré and Saint-Denis, they opposed the construction of a new jeu de paume in 1602, despite the fact that it had the backing of the king (Registre des délibérations 1883–90: XII, 182; XIII, 481). The rise of ball games in cities showed how the rapid expansion of a sport could set the authorities new challenges in terms of preserving the public and social order, while, at the same time, helping to institutionalize sporting activities by establishing permanent venues, which in turn contributed to the “sportification” of these activities (Behringer 2016: 39–47). These new and often land-hungry installations posed problems of land use and availability, just at a time when cities were expanding and bursting out of their medieval confines. Behind the question of land control lay that of asserting political authority over public order and behavior. Already by Henry VIII’s time in England, a system of royal licenses for tennis courts or bowling alleys allowed the authorities to set the rules of commercial venues and to control their number in London and its surrounding area. In 1535 and 1547, four licenses were issued for bowling alleys and three for tennis courts. In 1617, under James I, there was a move to limit the number of venues in London and Westminster to thirty-one bowling alleys, fourteen tennis courts and forty gaming houses— figures doubtless lower than the reality but evidence of the expansion of sporting venues (Ashton 1983: 8; Turcot 2016: 305–6). Without reaching the degree of passion encountered in Paris and, to a lesser extent, in London, the other cities of Europe, from the Holy Roman Empire to Scandinavia, equipped themselves with ball courts to such an extent that in the seventeenth century these became a vital part of the infrastructure of any city or university worthy of the name (Behringer 2009: 340–1). In 1601, with the city’s backing, the bishop administrator of Strasbourg requested the creation of

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a jeu de paume as a useful and honourable exercise making it possible to keep students out of the inns and to encourage diligence (Vogler 1982: 645–8). Exercise was seen as a means of diverting the young away from gambling and amusements that resulted in public disorder. The Renaissance period then was distinguished by the desire on the part of the temporal authorities to foster and supervise recreational and competitive activities which had often originated in types of confrontation practiced by the elite and which valued the physical body and training. The jeu de paume, shooting, and fencing were seen as leisure activities aimed at education, competition, and spectacle, with characteristics close to those of modern sport, in other words. Nonetheless, moderation remained a boundary to be respected and was often linked to the social status of the players, key factors that weakened the division between unlawful and lawful games and tended to dismiss certain sports as dangerous conduct.

SPORT UNDER SUSPICION: WHEN REPRESSIVE MEASURES SPREAD TO LAWFUL GAMES A priori, the sports described above were among the games that were legally permitted. Even so, suspicion easily spread to all forms of play since observing sports in terms of how they were practiced rather than solely in terms of their nature meant that they could tip over into reprehensible conduct. Players were motivated by having something to play for, whether cash or their share of what was spent at the inn, and this could turn any activity, no matter how innocent and lawful, into morally reprehensible, even criminal behavior. The general discourse whereby games were morally stigmatized also affected sports since they shared the same times, venues, audience, and even stakes as unlawful games. Designed as instruments to combat urban crime, regulatory requirements sought less to tackle the games themselves, since an outright ban would have been hard to impose, than to restrict their practice as soon as they represented a risk to public order. Time restrictions took priority, since lawmakers, like theologians and moralists, believed entertainment should not impinge upon working hours or distract workers from their tasks. As a result, municipal rulings strove to define closing hours for drinking and games establishments in accordance with the imperatives of work and religious duty. The jeu de paume was no exception. Afraid that the jeu de paume was competing with the Mass, the Parlement of Paris reminded the city’s master paumiers in 1551 that they were forbidden to open their premises on Sundays and holidays, as well as during “unlawful hours,” at the risk of corporal punishment or an arbitrary fine (Fontanon [1595] 1611: I, 887–90). Everyone, Catholics and Protestants alike, agreed that the faithful should all honour their religious obligations on Sundays. This obligation was not only

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specific to Christians: in the sixteenth century, Italian Jews were allowed to play tennis—a Christian game to their rabbis—under very strict circumstances and especially not during the synagogue service (Simri 2009). In England, the issue of respect for the Sabbath became explosive. Since the early years of the seventeenth century, some had been calling for all recreational activities to be banned throughout the whole of Sunday rather than only during church services. It was in this context of increasingly radical Sabbatarianism that, in 1617, King James I published The Kings Majesties Declaration to his Subjects, Concerning Lawful Sports to Be Used, addressed initially to the county of Lancashire and then, in 1618, to the whole of the realm. Based on moderate Protestant theological approaches, the Book of Sports enlisted the old argument that exercise had a military purpose and recognized that Sunday was the only day of the week when common people could have leave for exercise (Schattner 2014b: 309). Despite its title, however, any hope that the material contained in the book might clarify the Renaissance definition of sport is soon lost since the rationale behind the lists it presents is so opaque, with events such as bearbaiting and bowling banned but archery, church ales, May games, morris dancing, and maypoles permitted. In reality, the book did less to draw a line between authorized and prohibited activities than to establish an increasingly impenetrable boundary between the defenders of the monarchy and those unruly subjects known as the Puritans. The debate is not about sports per se, but about the relationship between popular festivities and the times of their practice and the different approaches to Christian life. Reissued by Charles I in 1633, the Book of Sports helped to make Sunday sports a political issue and to divide English society on the basis of a religious, political, and literary dispute that lasted until the Civil War (Colón Semenza 2003; Dougall 2011). In the 1640s and 1650s, legislation against leisure activities and sports linked to Papism and regarded as immoral and unworthy was strengthened. The Cotswold Games, a large-scale sports festival held south of Birmingham since 1612 and based on the way in which the Olympic Games of Antiquity were imagined, were banned at this time, to be reinstated when the monarchy was restored and Charles II became king in 1660. English society stood out therefore as a remarkable crucible in which a profound criticism of sports and leisure clashed with the emergence of new forms of entertainment (Turcot 2016: 307–10). In addition to the question of time, the issue of the spaces in which games and, in particular, sports were played came up again. In rural areas, churchyards were a privileged space of village sociability, but also an object of conflicts between parishioners and church officials who managed to ban sport from them (Schattner 2016). To avoid breaking church windows and minimize property damage, as well as to reduce disruptions to commerce, both church sessions and the Scottish burgh council regulated sports by banning bowls and

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balls from the streets and the churchyards (Cormack 2016: 314–15). In the city, control of public space focussed on the streets and squares, as well as certain stigmatized locations. Law-enforcement regulations had targeted inns, drinking establishments, and other alehouses—considered genuine “schools of mass delinquency” (Geremek 1980: 86)—since the Middle Ages, and from the sixteenth century onwards had gaming houses, often still combined with brothels, in their sights. In this way, the suspicion that fell on games of chance gradually spread to exercise rooms even though they were hosting lawful games quite legally. What the authorities in France really feared were gatherings conducive to an “infinitude of wicked acts, vile blasphemies,” “debauchery” and family ruin (Belmas 2006: 93). The word “tripot” provides a good summary of the downward process involved: originally referring to rooms for jeu de paume, the word quickly acquired negative connotations and was applied to rooms where gambling or games of chance took place. Indeed, in the tripots where the official game was courte paume as well as boules and skittles, the master paumiers usually made card and dice games and, from the start of the seventeenth century, billiards available to spectators and players who wanted to relax between games (Belmas 2006: 93–4). The versatility of games rooms maintained the confusion between games of skill, which were tolerated, and games of chance, which were banned. As Delamare pointed out in his Traité de la police: “the location is one of the circumstances which either excuses the players or renders them blameworthy, even though they are playing only permitted games” (Delamare [1705] 1719: III, 483). Clandestine games or games played in private houses, which blurred the boundary between public and private spaces, were more difficult to control. In Paris, the regulations for long and short boules stipulated that private persons could own playing areas where they could receive friends but not the general public (Reulos 1982: 636). How though to combat games of boules and skittles, which, in fine weather, drew in the craftspeople, officers, and schoolchildren of Paris? In the Faubourg Saint-Germain, games of this kind were played in houses’ back gardens and the sergeants of local justice rarely intervened, essentially stepping in only when serious incidents broke out and they were summoned to the rescue (Roussel 2012: 203–6). Above all, it was the social status of the players that was decisive in assessing the legality of games. Repression was naturally directed at populations traditionally stigmatized in legal discourse: vagrants, dropouts, and “bad boys” but, more generally, young men whose excesses were feared. Often lumped together with marginalized populations because of their idleness and hand-tomouth existence, students in particular were a constant source of anxiety for the authorities all over Europe. In 1554, the Parlement of Paris lamented the behavior of escoliers who, instead of attending to their studies, were wont to take themselves off to the master fencers and swordsmen based on the outskirts

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of the city. Although they were banned from carrying a sword, a privilege reserved for the nobility, they learnt how to wield one in these exercise rooms before proceeding to fights and deadly skirmishes that led to “disorder” in the city and were detrimental to “the good of the republic” (Dom Felibien and Lobineau 1725: III, 647–50). In both city and countryside, young men found a space for sociability in physical games as much as a means of expressing group identity or testing their virility, while the excesses of such behavior were increasingly condemned. More than the activities as such, it was the consequences of the emotions and competition inspired by play that the authorities feared. The theoretical boundary between lawful and unlawful games was often belied by the facts. Practiced in the same places and at the same time by young men whose rowdiness was a source of trepidation, they shared the same inherent principle: there was a stake being played for, which in turn might lead to reprehensible excesses, thus engendering suspicion of all such activities. Cheating was possible even in the jeu de paume and challenges to shots and points could end in serious disputes. Court and police records shed precious light therefore on players’ actual behavior. They show that the fight for space in a game, the refereeing, scoring, and distribution of winnings were recurrent themes in disputes between players. In Paris, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the public present in the jeu de paume galleries might disturb a match by chattering or interfere with umpiring (Figure 5.2). So they contributed to increasing the tensions between the players, since the defense of an honour besmirched by accusations of cheating became imperative in public. While they claimed to be engaged in a civilized recreational pursuit and to be playing for fun, Parisian players of the jeu de paume behaved just as they did at the inns, to which they would often repair to spend their winnings on drink (Roussel 2012: 205). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people played for prizes, placing the money to be won under the rope before the match. The beginning and end of the game were moments of high tension, when money, but above all honour and virility, were at stake. On November 6, 1536, several young men, who were playing a match in which whoever lost the balls (esteufs) paid for them, argued about whether a shot had been well played and had gone over the rope or not. The debate intensified during the evening at an inn until one of the men lay dead in the street. The king pardoned a similar murder that occurred on December 26, 1546 and was committed during a mass brawl after a game in Faubourg Saint-Marcel. For all that, such incidents remained relatively few in number and games courts in Paris, like the city’s inns, appear to have been locations for a recreational sociability with a definite potential for violence but, more often than not, controlled and contained by the owners of the premises, the master and journeymen paumiers and the players themselves (Roussel 2012: 203–6).

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FIGURE 5.2: Crispijn de Passe the Elder (d. 1637), Tennis players and their public (1608). Engraving. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie.

In the grip of the demon of gambling, players lost control of their emotions. In August 1610, at the Saint-Nicolas jeu de paume in the Faubourg SaintGermain, a 28-year-old doctor lost his temper, broke his racket, and struck a journeyman paumier. Questioned by the judge, he denied having wanted to take revenge and stated that he had been playing with his friends solely “for fun.” For the accused, it was a question of presenting himself as a temperate and calm player at no risk of succumbing to the gambling demon. For an excessive gambler could also bring about the ruin of his family, as Marie de Rozereau feared in 1610. This noble lady from Paris’s Faubourg de SaintGermain lodged a complaint against her husband, who was universally described as a “poor housekeeper” and was more often seen at the jeu de paume than at home. He played for large amounts of money and had run up colossal debts (Roussel 2012: 203–6). At this point, the limits of the jeu de paume as a means

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of social distinction are reached; the staggering sums of money lost by the king and the nobles of the kingdom belong to the ostentatious practices that only they could permit themselves. Such excessive conduct rapidly became problematic for the less well-to-do nobility, to say nothing of the common people. What was tolerated at court was denied to the majority. The Venetian ambassador Lippomano declared in 1577 that Paris was a city full of racket games (he counted 1,800, which seems highly excessive), and that a thousand écus a day were spent on these alone (Tommaseo 1838: II, 601). Robert Dallington, for his part, criticized the authorities for being too soft on an excessive practice that corrupted honest labor and left families bankrupt: “There is this one great abuse in this exercice, that the Magistrates do suffer every poore Citizen to play thereat, who spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke, for keeping of his poore family.” This bad habit was even “more hurtfull then our Alehouses in England.” Dallington himself preferred the game of pall-mall “both because it is a Gentlemanlike sport, not violent, and yeelds good occasion and opportunity of discourse, as they walke from the one marke to the other” (Dallington [1598] 1604: 147–9). How a sport was judged clearly depended therefore on the social identity of those who played it. A danger to the masses, the jeu de paume was deemed too trivial for the clergy and for magistrates because the movements involved were incompatible with their social status, had an adverse impact on their offices’ capacity to set an example, and abolished the distance that generated authority (Vigarello 2005: 277). While never becoming established within the French “Royal Academies” of fencing and equitation, most probably because it was too close to the betting world, the jeu de paume was gradually co-opted by the aristocracy, who played this sport with its increasingly complex rules in courts reserved for a distinguished clientele (Vaucelle 2015). The many prohibitions of court etiquette spread to players’ stances in the seventeenth century. According to Courtin’s 1670 disquisition on manners for courtiers, they had to take care not to adopt ridiculous or grotesque postures (Vigarello 2005: 278). Like all recreational activities affected by tighter control and the moralization of behavior in the classical era, the jeu de paume and sport in general were subject to a twofold movement of institutionalization and increased social discrimination.

REJECTING VIOLENCE, DISCIPLINING THE BODY The Renaissance period marked an increasingly manifest rejection of the violence expressed in sports and exercise, whether accidentally or as a means of expression for the participants. The games of the aristocracy underwent a radical change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The head-on violence

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of jousts and tournaments was less and less tolerated. Because of the probability of death in tournaments on horseback, the Spanish Franciscan moralist Francisco de Alcocer, author of a Tratado del juego (1559), considered that it is was mortal sin to participate in it (McClelland 2007: 54). Such sports were actually replaced by tilting at the ring or quintain and then by equestrian ballet and other riding displays which, even as they retained their martial reference and the chivalric ideal, constituted the new art of the court and transformed the knight into an elegant courtier, the central figure in an ongoing “civilization of manners” (Vigarello 2005: 237–52; Nadot 2012). While these dangerous activities were in decline, humanist writers of the Renaissance praised ball games as the ultimate exercise for young gentlemen. In his Libro del Cortegiano—Book of the Courtier (1528), widely translated, republished, and imitated all over Europe, Baldassarre Castiglione argued that ball games better than any sports were training not just for speed and power, but also sprezzatura, this casual and elegant grace that expresses the superiority of noble birth. As tennis was considered as “the Royal Game” of the Renaissance, the recently invented game of pallamaglio (a kind of croquet) was also quickly regarded as perfectly suited for gentlemen in Italian health regimens books, which attributed to it all the physical and intellectual benefits (Cavallo and Storey 2016). The most strenuous activities, however, were increasingly denounced by a medical discourse that dramatized the dangers of sport, in particular the warming of the body and the head. This condemnation was concomitant with the new conceptions of the nobility, which insisted on civility, the control of the body, and a sense of decorum. During the seventeenth century, European elites were called to abandon vigorous sports in favor of activities better suited to the identity and lifestyle of the nobility, such as dancing, walking, or hunting. If the distinctive games of the nobility were profoundly altered, disciplined, pacified, aestheticized, and “civilized,” those of the people at large, associated with traditional community-based types of festival, were increasingly condemned for their excessive brutality. Throughout Europe, the agro-liturgical festival calendar provided opportunities for large-scale collective ball games which took the form of often violent competitions within village or urbandistrict boundaries. The brutality of the clash, as seen for instance in Italian collective ball games, was increasingly rejected. In Florence, young men played the vigorous calcio—a form of rugby football—in a patriotic and republican spirit and in front of a fervent crowd (Figure 5.3). In the middle of the seventeenth century, although transformed into an expensive spectacle and colored to the taste of the princes of Medici, the game continued giving place to acts of a great violence on the ground. It seemed, however, on the verge of disappearing (McClelland 2007: 54, 110–11). Broadly speaking, the games, races, water jousting, and ritual

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battles that maintained the rivalry between districts of Italian cities and bolstered community spirit were gradually brought under control. In Venice, the famous Battagliole sui ponti were mock battles for the control of bridges. Very popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they pitted rival districts and groups wielding their fists or sticks against one another, particularly the fishermen against the arsenal workers. As in the large-scale village games, these were identity and community battles, in which defending the parish boundaries was combined with a show of the fighters’ agility, strength, and virility. However, this spectacle of mass brutality, which increasingly turned into duels between private individuals, became intolerable. These ritual battles were banned in 1705, after some particularly bloody incidents (Davis 1994). Despite a similar episode of civic disturbances in 1731, the Giuoco del ponte of Pisa survived until 1807. In this mimic battle, the game was rough but there were very few fatal accidents because the participants were well protected by helmets and cuirasses (Heywood 1904: 125–32). Violence—on the ground and among the spectators—appears to have been one reason among others, or even a pretext, to remove games for more political reasons (Figure 5.4). In England, the men and boys of the parishes of Saint Peter’s and All Saints’ in Derby fought one another on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday throughout

FIGURE 5.3: Johannes Stradanus (van der Straet, 1523–1605), Calcio in Santa Maria Novella. Fresco. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Gualdrada. Getty.

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FIGURE 5.4: Guerra dei Pugni a San Barnaba. Venice, Museo Correr, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, inv. L.V.1123.

the early modern period (1500–1800), gathering together about a hundred players and an enormous local audience every year. They also caused a number of injuries and, sometimes, deaths (Ruff 2001: 169). In France, these games went by the name of “soule,” a game of seizing or defending territory, an ancestor to some extent of football and rugby and even hockey when played

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with a stick. Played in particular by young men in the west of the kingdom from Picardy to Brittany, soule could still bring the whole of rural society together in a single match at the start of the modern era. In Normandy, the squire of Gouberville, concerned to maintain village sociability, was not averse to joining in with his peasants. He recounts in his diary that on Christmas Day 1555, he was thumped in the chest with such force that for several minutes he could neither speak nor see (Foisil 1981: 202). In the violence of the fray, when every type of blow seemed permitted and the rules varied greatly depending on the area, the injured often remained on the field (Mehl 1990: 75). In France as in the Low Countries and Spain, the king still readily pardoned these descents into violence and granted lettres de grâce in cases of murder. The local authorities viewed such excesses more harshly, however. The “choule” was banned in Artois as of 1456, along with archery and boules, which did not prevent the peasants playing it up until at least the start of the seventeenth century. A violent brawl between the unmarried men of Humières and those of the neighboring village of Beauvois broke out during a match on March 25, 1612, the Feast of the Annunciation, leaving one man dead (Muchembled 1982: 572–3; 1989). Similar letters of remission are found in Brittany, while the Parlement of Rennes undertook to ban the soule from at least 1615 (Nassiet 2003). Nevertheless, these accounts became increasingly rare, less perhaps because the practice was genuinely on the wane than because young men were now aware that, in order to obtain the king’s pardon, it was better to keep quiet about incidents of this kind, which were less and less condoned. In the eighteenth century, soule certainly declined but did not completely disappear from the French countryside as is indicated by the renewal of prohibitions. In a decree of 1761, the Parlement of Paris reminded the inhabitants of Brée and the neighboring villages of Maine that it was forbidden to “throw a leather ball” or “run the ball” during religious service, on penalty of 50 pounds of fine (Garnot 2006: 56–7). In England, condemnations seemed to have had even less effect on the passion of football. The monotonous repetition of bans helped impress upon the minds of the urban elite and “people of virtue” that the common people’s games were dangerous because they brought disorder and scandal in their wake. Rural areas came under equally rigorous scrutiny, resulting in criticism of the excesses of Welsh knappan and Cornish hurling, described in 1602 by Sir Richard Carew as a vulgar game and terribly dangerous for the players: “when the hurling is ended, you shall see them retyring home, as from a pitched battaile, with bloody pates, bones brocken and out of joynt, and such bruses as serve to shorten their daies” (Dunning 1990: 69). Coroners’ reports confirm how brutal the game could be—because of the speed and rigour of the game itself, or the excuse for a punch-up it allowed—and sometimes dangerous for the spectators, but also how it worked as a ritualized expression of communal rivalry (Gunn and

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Gromelski 2016: 54–5). Formerly popular and shared by all, these large-scale village games were thus gradually discredited and banned, as were clashes among the common people in the towns. Likewise, football was unanimously condemned in England by moralists and the authorities. The virulent attacks by godly pamphleteer Philip Stubbes in The anatomie of abuses published in 1583 have gone down in history (Figure 5.5). While he claimed that no sporting activity, athletic or not, should be tolerated, football was, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst of them all: football “may rather be called a fréendly kinde of fight, then a play or recreation. A bloody and murthering practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime.” This loutish activity could lead only to the vilest emotions: “groweth enuie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, displeasure, enmitie and what not else and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murther, homicide and great effusion of blood, as experience dayly teacheth.” Consequently, it was a grievous sin to play football on Sunday (Stubbes [1583] 2002: 251). However excessive, Stubbes’s opinion was not an isolated one. In 1555, football was excluded from the educational curriculum at Oxford as too violent and James I forbade his son to play it (James I [1599] 1996: 166–7). The Common Council of London ruled in 1589 that “noe football plaie be hereafter used in the streetes or Lanes” in a bid to restrict street gatherings of apprentices and servants and the licentiousness that spilled over into the city’s “Taverne, victualling house, tabling house and Alehouse.” In 1593, the municipal authorities complained about the scant impact of measures against “football playe or other unlawfull assemblie or exercises,” which had recently resulted in “divers great Ryottes.” The dangers were much greater in times of plague when “all manner of Concorse and publique meetinges of the people at Playes, Beare Baytinges Bowlinges, and other assemblies for sportes” were banned (Spina 2013: 180). Explicitly labeled a popular practice that posed a threat to public order, football had to be banned from the city as the soule was from rural areas, even though all these prohibitions were known to have little effect. In many situations, despite the combined efforts of central and local authorities, the people were resistant to reform and held onto their traditions well into the eighteenth century (Cormack 2016). Within traditional societies, collective physical games could be as much a means of expressing feelings of community belonging as a display of virility and an outlet for social tensions. Although they were a factor for order and stability within local societies, they were increasingly seen as the very opposite—as creating disorder—by the elites and authorities of Renaissance Europe. Because of their freedom, the difficulty of predicting when and where they would be held and their deep roots in local communities, these physical games had a particular status and inevitably led to an interminable standoff with the authorities (Vigarello 2005: 269). Condemned, banned, or transformed into inoffensive spectacles, popular sports were rejected because of the social danger

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FIGURE 5.5: Frontispiece of Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, 1583. London, The British Library.

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they might entail. It is, then, possible to see how disputes and debates about sport revived the boundaries in the social sphere between popular activities, placed together with popular festivities and bloody entertainments, and activities reserved for the social and urban elites, functional and useful, increasingly sophisticated, institutionalized and visible. The Renaissance was a period of constant alternation between suspicion of and tolerance for physical games without the way in which the balance swung most ever being decided. The moralizing notions of educators, religion, and the authorities veered between condemnation of the dangers of games and pastimes and tolerance for activities supposed to channel the passions and excesses of youth. Generally speaking, however, the concept of a swing in the direction of complete repression must be qualified. However vitriolic they were, the discourses opposed to gambling and games of chance must not conceal a social reality and theoretical and regulatory positions that were far more ambivalent and moderate. Christian reformers, including Lutherans and Calvinists, were not systematically rigoristic and austere (Arcangeli 2003: 72). Furthermore, it is difficult to know the impacts of this theoretical regulatory effort on actual behaviors. The relentless reiteration of repressive texts is sufficient evidence of the difficulty in changing social practices and habits, while the often inadequate legal and police instruments were brought into play for other concerns that the authorities regarded as more serious (Paresys 1987: 545). Judicial responses were often limited and pragmatic, the ideological dimensions seeming more important than the results. It is a profitable exercise, therefore, to trace the development of sport through its developing regulation, between the ever-futile attempts of the authorities to stop or contain the excesses of play and the growing desire of athletes to regulate and codify their sport (McClelland 2009: 36). Above and beyond positions of principle, the norm was being adapted to new subject matter and helping to refine and to order the spectrum of sports activities in the Renaissance. Alternating theoretical standpoints and constant adjustments to social realities had an input in regulating sport through an increasingly marked distinction between violent activities and more moderate, codified practices, between what stemmed from traditional, popular “festival culture” and what belonged to the new culture of the elites and the models of the “good Christian” and the “honest man.” For Peter Burke, the rise both in moral condemnations and in the respectability of certain recreational pursuits contributed to the advent of ever more institutionalized and regulated leisure (even before the term came into being) (Burke 1995b). Similarly, sports activities were the subject of growing regulation that was part of a more general process of civilizing manners, exerting self-control over behavior, disciplining the body, and establishing social distinction.

Note * Translated by Melanie Moore and Nadine Wilstead.

CHAPTER SIX

Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation MATTEO CASINI *

This article examines some activities falling under the definition of sport provided in the English dictionaries of the sixteenth century, namely in the sense of one “amusing oneself by active exercise in open air or taking part in some game” (Turcot 2016: 270). As already mentioned, the Renaissance and early modern period have been recognized by historians as an era of “sportification” of European society, the military exercise and popular games of the Middle Ages being translated into real sports contests, almost in a modern sense (McClelland 2007; Behringer 2009, 2016). The ludic and sporting activities were better defined, organized, and performed. According to Laurent Turcot, moreover, there was a “profound re-investment of social and cultural practices” that allowed extending sport and leisure “to increasingly vast parts of the population” (Turcot 2016: 318–19). Starting from these general suggestions, this chapter will explore the issues of social homogeneity and differentiation and how inclusion or exclusion worked in Renaissance and early modern sports. Mike Huggins has written that most recreation “was undertaken with people of similar status” (Huggins 2017: 114), but we also must ask if sports could have a non-egalitarian dimension, including some and excluding others. So, we will follow some questions raised by contemporaries and modern historiography retracing how sports impacted— and were impacted by—the society according to politics, social change, gender, and age.

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USE OF SPORT BY GOVERNMENTS AND ELITES Starting “from above,” since medieval times rulers adopted sporting activities they thought particularly suitable to their sovereign display and their politics of inclusion and exclusion. Those activities were central in defining the relation between the central power, the nobility and the lower classes. One first recognizable trend, starting in the fourteenth century, was the tendency to reserve games to the elites. Even literature was emphasizing “social exclusiveness,” how to distinguish the noble sportsman from the common herd. A second evolution, in the century after, was moving away from the military prowess to more theatrical and ludic directions. Classical aristocratic activities such as jousting, hunting, and hawking became de facto courtly “spectator sports” (Keen 1995: 311–20). Chivalric Games With regard to the most popular sports of the Middle Ages, the chivalric games, the imprint of aristocracy had been strong indeed, and still in the fifteenth century René of Anjou declared the tournaments to be reserved to the nobility only. Nevertheless, from the late fourteenth century the situation became progressively more complex compared to feudal times. The rising costs of organization called for the intervention of princes and rich towns, and, while the risk of injury or death remained high, some of those games, called “jousts of peace,” evolved in a less violent and ceremonial direction (an example recently well studied is the pas d’armes; Nadot 2012). This allowed the princes to spread new “civilizing” values, but also the major families and their clans to display an elaborate pageantry. Plus, there was the rise of new protagonists: the urban patriciate, for instance, as we will see; or professionals such as the condottieri and their soldiers, called as experts for demonstrating the best chivalric performance (for Florence see Ventrone 1990); or even chivalric orders and women (we will talk about women too). The most significant examples of these new entries were in Burgundy (Vale 1981: 70–6; Paviot 2013: 211–12). Then, knightly sports saw further changes in the sixteenth century. Because the risk of excessive disorder was still alive, Charles V and Henry IV prohibited various jousts between 1517 and 1605. In France, the nobility had to redirect their abundant energies from games such as jousting, relying on physical power and a certain dose of violence, to courtly oriented games such as the course de bague (running at the ring) and the quintain (this latter coming from the Italian medieval and Renaissance tradition). A ritualistic approach was prevailing over brutal force, therefore; the formal aspects—how to appear in a game and the use of technical skills—became gradually prominent (Monacchia 2005: 186–7; Turcot 2016: 243ff, 278). In England, Henry VIII relied on sports such as jousting and hunting to feed and keep under control the competition among the English elite at court, which

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was full of young people with considerable free time. Even the rise of the Privy Council was affected by this phenomenon. But in the Elizabethan era things started to change again. If a classical noble activity as hunting did survive, jousting and hawking went into decadence, seen as too expensive and rough. The nobility at court went from demonstrations of physical power to less physical activities such as gambling (Brailsford 1979; Williams 2008: 390–407). True, a few years later, in 1598, James I was still recommending “horseback” to his son as “the honorable & most commendable games that ye can use.” However, the chivalric games still performed in the seventeenth century, particularly in Italian and German cities, were ceremonial or mock-jousts for the purpose of pageantry and theatrical display only (Béhar and WatanabeO’Kelly 1999; Behringer 2009: 351). And the court physician in Vienna Hippolytus Guarinonius could assert, in 1610, that the chivalric games (at least their worse manifestations) had disappeared in the Imperial area (Behringer 2016: 25, 36). Meanwhile, the nobles of all Europe had started shifting to different ways of horsemanship. Famous schools in Italy, particularly in Naples, could teach young aristocrats the right skills in courtly carousels and horse ballets. In the seventeenth century, “wealthy young bourgeois” joined as well (Reid 2009: 281, 290–1). At the end, chivalric and court games proved to be a good tool for “aggregation” and “pacification”—that is, inclusion—around the central power (Guerzoni 1996: 49). Hunting Another big focus for princes and elites was on hunting and hawking, at least after Frederick II of Swabia. Renaissance rulers “expressed their very sovereignty . . . by projecting themselves as great hunters” (Kruse 1993: 251). If we look at iconography, for instance, chase was a fundamental drive to build the chateaux royaux in Fontainebleau and the Loire Valley, containing depictions of kings and royal women as supreme hunters (Guttmann 2004: 58–9). A typical case is the papal court. If hunting was a conspicuous part of the popes’ life since Avignon, in the Renaissance it became part of a “strategy of magnificence” as well as “papal statecraft” (Kruse 1993: 251). Leo X, in particular, acquired a large area of the Roman countryside for his and his cardinals’ hunting, and his autumn hunting parties were attended by cardinals, the court, Roman baronial families, other noble Italian houses, and sometimes city-states’ lords. During the trails Leo conducted regular business in consistories, even receiving ambassadors and secretaries (Kruse 1993: 250). The papal style of hunting-governing was followed by the cardinals, as treaties describing the virtues of the “perfect cardinal” recommended the chase, and by two courts that developed later in early modern times: the courts of Turin and Vienna. In both places the sovereigns made hunting a very ceremonial affair,

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with frequent court sojourns in palaces or villages around the city (Bianchi 2010: 25; Duindam 2003: 147–8). Being so relevant for the ruler, hunting was a fundamental sport for the upper classes as well. Since the late fourteenth century, hunting was restricted to the aristocracy in certain places such as England and France. Moreover, princes and kings gave the aristocracy the monopoly both of the rights to the “big chase” (hunting large animals, considered the noblest one) and of the access to reserves with weapons—not without protests from lower classes in the countryside (Galloni 2000: 139–43; Hall 2009: 232–3). Even in Venice the chase was mostly an activity for the elite: Carpaccio’s famous Hunting in the Lagoon shows hunters with rich dresses and hats, and black gondoliers as rowers. And Francesco Sansovino reports in 1581 that hunting lagoon ducks, with light boats and crews of servants accompanying the patron, could entail “very big expenses” (Sansovino 1663: 454; Figure 6.1). However, hunting and hawking could be occasion for social contacts as well. Apart from the growing presence of needed professionals, the fundamental gift of venison, falcons, and dogs was a very common thing in European society. This occurred from the local level to the international one, as gifts of the best breeds of falcons and dogs were exchanged among popes, cardinals, kings, and emperors (Pietrosanti 1992; Kruse 1993: 252; Galloni 2000: 151, 172). In England, gifts of venison affected various networks, from single regions to the monarchy. True, the difference in status between the experts and the “patron” and his guests was always visible, as Maurice Keen reminds us (Keen 1995: 309; Williams 2008: 402–5). The different falcon breeds used in hawking, for instance, indicated a precise hierarchy (the most important, the royal breed, was the gerfalk; Guttmann 2004: 58). Even the distribution of the meat portions could have a sort of hierarchical flavor. Erasmus tells us that spectators of a public hunt had a taste of “nobility” when, at the end, they received a portion of the dismembered animal (Galloni 2000: 158, 160). As jousting, also hunting and hawking went toward a “spectacularization” and a “courtly” direction in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, losing their medieval military content and being absorbed into the “etiquette” requested by the prince. In Piedmont, hunting became part of the official calendar of the Savoy public and semi-public ceremonies (Bianchi 2010: 26). In Paris, Henry III established a rite called debotté, which meant valets taking off the king’s boots after the chase: a real spectacle for the attending members of the court, basically the same attending other events of the king’s everyday life (Duindam 2003: 204). A similar change towards a gentleman-like hunting happened in England in the Elizabethan period. The risk of personal violence in the hunt was reduced as the responsibility of catching and killing the prey was taken away from humans and given to dogs. Moreover, according to the hunter Simoncello, in the early seventeenth century hunting had become both a way

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FIGURE 6.1: Nobility Hunting Fowl in the Venetian Lagoon in Winter. From Giacomo Franco, Habiti d’huomeni et donne venetiane (Venice 1610–11). Getty.

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for courtiers to learn the needed virtues and the lord to keep his entourage under observation (Keen 1995; Galloni 2000: 145–9, 159, 170). A special mention must be made about fox hunting, at the core of Norbert Elias’s interpretation of the “sportification” process in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008: 159– 73). Elias’s theory has been questioned by later research. In sixteenth-century France the chasse par force of the deer was already conducted in a less violent and more “courtly” way than in the Middle Ages. Chased by hounds, men, and women, the animal had an actual chance to survive. This fashion was adopted in England with James I, who hired French specialists and dogs. Later, the scarcity of deer led to hunting hares and foxes, but the modifications in the hunting rites had already happened. In fact, research has discovered too that in seventeenth-century France and Germany hunting turned out to be cruel again, as the animals were cornered and then easily butchered. At the court of Louis XIV this was done with the help of many servants (Stokvis 1992: 122–5). Meanwhile traditional hawking—in the past, a tool for showing the social superiority of the aristocracy—disappeared because of the rise of firearms in bird hunting. That rise could give some space to “rustics” and commoners at first, such as the ex-military harquebusiers. But in the seventeenth century, hunting fowl with a harquebus and other weapons—represented in the Venetian print of Giacomo Franco, Hunt in the Lagoon (Figure 6.1)—became “naturalized as a noble prerogative” (Hall 2009: 234, 241–3; Turcot 2016: 222–5). Another sport saw the continued prevalence of the aristocracy notwithstanding the arrival of firearms: fencing. As in many other aristocratic sports in the Renaissance, the sword lost its reference to war and became a simple sign of “elegant practice” for public demonstration, especially at court. But fencing could be used for dueling, which “provided an informal means of achieving justice and defending honor” (Huggins 2017: 118). Particularly in the sixteenth century, the sense of honor among the nobility reached its chivalric core, and dueling was defended against jurists who were instead willing to give it formal regulations. Thanks to honor, swordplay survived much longer than expected (Cavina 2009; Hall 2009: 230–1). Ball Games Similar patterns can be traced in the Renaissance ball games, often associated with the upper classes, especially in the case of the celebrated calcio fiorentino. McClelland reminds us that ball games “not only migrated upwards to become the preferred sport of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, they migrated too in a geographical sense, from the countryside to the city” (McClelland 2007: 77). Starting with the rural environment, late medieval times saw games such as the soule in northern France and the “hurling over country” in Cornwall. They were

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played by two villages or districts or groups of bachelors against married men. The confrontation was territorial and violent, as the ball had to be brought into the enemy’s territory in virtual defiance of rules. All social classes, sexes, and ages could be part, even if the young logically led the game. This sort of football was continually (and in vain) condemned in the 1300–1400s by the sovereigns of England and France, but in time urban versions developed, such as “hurling at goals” and football. These were marked by high sophistication, social differentiation, and ways of inclusion and exclusion (Muchembled 1989: 297–8; Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008: 174–88). In Venice, for example, the pallone was performed by nobles and plebeians but a sort of geographical separation grew in early modern times, as some squares were reserved for “gentlemen” only. A similar evolution happened in tennis (Tamassia Mazzarotto 1961: 148, 152–3). Played by hitting the ball with the hands, calcio fiorentino underwent significant variations in the Renaissance (Figure 6.2). First of all, it experienced a growing tendency toward pure spectacle, the same as in chivalric games and other European sports. The Medici promoted football as an intense spectacle for the lower classes, asking the players to appear in costume and moving the game to the central square of Santa Croce (normal spaces in the past had been the prato, a grassy meadow at the western edge of the city just inside the Porta al Prato, and other locations, mostly squares in front of churches; Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 41). A famous game for the wedding of Vincenzo Gonzaga and Eleonora Este in April 1584 was apparently attended, according to an encomiastic source, by 40,000: the two teams of “yellows” and “reds” had a tough confrontation but were rewarded afterwards with a rich “collation” of wines and sweets, presented in fifty-two silver cups. Once satiated, the players threw the remaining food to the people—a typical rite that, since the Middle Ages, symbolized the generosity of the rich towards the poor (Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 44, 94–6; Casini 2018). The response of the Florentine public to the new kind of football was so enthusiastic that in 1607 and 1608 disorders happened during the games, and the government had to intervene with a new set of public rules and the use of police (Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 48, 106ff.). The first treatise on calcio, by Giovanni de’ Bardi in 1580, was well aware of this development of the game in a ceremonial direction, giving precise indications about the parade preceding the game and preaching the use of “nice and graceful” clothing (Bascetta 1978, I: 141, 143). Needless to say, gracefulness was a respected virtue in the courtly atmosphere of the sixteenth century. Even Antonio Manciolino, author of a treatise on fencing, recommended it, together with beauty and lightness (McClelland 2007: 51). Lightness, in its turn, was relevant for Antonio Scaino in tennis, and for Baldassarre Castiglione in the movements of the body (Scaino [1555] 2000: 14; Castiglione: II, 8, 1959: 99–100). The idea of a gentlemanlike behavior was invading treatises, mentalities and sports (Behringer 2016: 46).

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FIGURE 6.2: Start of Football Game in Santa Croce. From Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino, del sig. Giovanni de Bardi de’ Conti di Vernio (Florence 1673). Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. By permission of the Italian Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo. Reproduction prohibited.

Going back to Florence, a second effect of the Medici intervention in the sixteenth century was a deep involvement of the nobility. If in the fifteenth century various social classes had participated in football, in the following century the situation changed; the game was reserved to the upper level of Florentine society only, as recommended by Bardi, and could be performed as aristocratic display in many dynastic events from 1533 to the eighteenth century (Bascetta 1978, I: 140–3; Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 35, 38, 44, 50, 69). An attempt at organizing a game by the Guild of Wool Workers in the seventeenth century failed precisely because of the risk of mixing members of the Guild with “gentlemen”—a clear intervention towards exclusion (Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 104). Tennis, Horse Races, and Bullfights Another sport that historiography has identified as “aristocratic” was tennis, so much loved by Renaissance rulers from Italy to Burgundy, from France to the

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German area, as to be considered the “Royal Game.” In his famous treatise, Scaino wrote that all princes and kings admired it (Scaino [1555] 2000: 17; Behringer 2016: 33ff, 43). In the seventeenth century it remained “the dominant indoor elite game” (Huggins 2017: 122). Facilities started appearing in Italy in the fifteenth century already, inside the palaces of cardinals and ducal families such as the Este of Ferrara and the Gonzaga of Mantua (De Bondt 2006: Chs 4–5, 132–3; Behringer 2016: 34). But the most important place was France, where the jeu de paume had a great success from the late Middle Ages; Paris, for example, saw an “explosion” in the number of courts that continued until the seventeenth century. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the French nobility monopolized the tennis facilities and was favored by royal edicts against the participation of the common people. So, the jeu de paume turned into a way for the aristocracy, especially the highest one, to signify “its rank . . . [and] mark its distance from the rest of the society” (Mehl 2010: 230–40). Things got more complex in the sixteenth century, though. Tennis reached a growing popularity among burghers living both in the center of cities and in the suburbs where many facilities were located (Figure 6.3). Later even the artisans of Les Halles and college students in the Quartier Latin became passionate players (Jaser 2016). A similar situation evolved in England. Tennis together with bowling—two sports gradually monopolized by nobles and urban elites—brought the need for new equipment and facilities. New private and expensive tennis and bowling clubs were born in sixteenth-century London, which made “the experience of nobles very different from that of commoners playing similar games” (Schattner 2014a: 201). This ended certain possibilities of sporting cohabitation of different categories that had happened in medieval open fields. The same occurred in Paris earlier, where in the early Renaissance cloisters, churches, squares, and streets were replaced by indoor tennis courts (Jaser 2016). In time, however, England saw new scenarios the same as France. English tennis and bowling facilities developed in “sociable venues” offering many activities beyond the daily regular ones—such as drinking and eating, circus, other sports, etc. This opened the way to the attendance of lower classes (Schattner 2014a). In Vienna this situation was felt too, as the imperial physician Guarinonius affirmed in 1610 that “everybody, even the poor” might play a ball game “as soon as they were able to buy a ball, or to make one for themselves” (Behringer 2016: 24). The enlargement of the social spectrum in European ball games might be echoed in the Italian premodern horse races called palii, once a purely aristocratic competition. Until the sixteenth century, the palio alla lunga (run on the corso, the street connecting the extreme parts of the city) was dominated by preeminent local and international families (as in Ferrara, for the race of Saint George, patron of the city; Figure 6.4). They sponsored the horses and

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FIGURE 6.3: Tennis Court of the Louvre. From Antonio Scaino, Trattato del giuoco della palla (Venice 1555), 164–5. Venice, Museo Correr. By permission of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

the boy riders, who were dressed in the colors and mottos of their patrons. The Mantuan horses of the Gonzaga, of a special breed of “berbers,” were the constant winners of many Italian races. In a second phase, though, starting in Bologna in 1506, the palio alla tonda—run in circle in the central piazza and with different social features—became increasingly popular. In Siena, the new palio had its focus on the popular classes organized in districts called the contrade, which became the real protagonists of the race (as it is today). Still, the families of the Sienese elite did not lose their central role completely, becoming “protectors” of the contrade by providing financial and social support (Silverman 1985; Zampieri 1995: 24–5, 53–69). A final sport to consider from the point of view of the elites is Spanish tauromachy. In the Middle Ages, the corrida evolved from a spontaneous, popular event into an organized public game, which on the main occasions— royal festivals, for instance—was dominated by noble knights (Spierenburg 1995: 84). Still, the knights were assisted by the mata toros, the lacayos, and later the peones, fighting on foot. These participants belonged to “a second and lower class,” as the sources say, and apparently their role grew in the early modern times: so, tauromachy might feature new ways of social inclusion. At the same time, forms of more popular and spontaneous bullfights continued, in particular during religious festivities and weddings (Del Miglio 2000: 40–59). At the end, the Spanish bullfight is an example of the “adaptation of games to the system of values of each social group” (Turcot 2016: 226).

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FIGURE 6.4 Francesco del Cossa, Palio race (1469–70). Detail of frescos at Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. Getty.

SPORT AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE Sports such as tennis, horse races, and bullfights, therefore, had been dominated by the upper classes since the fifteenth century, but the lower classes did maintain certain positions, or even acquire new ones. Also the French Franciscan friar Pierre de Gros considered in 1463 that sports could be performed by

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different classes. He wrote in his Jardin des nobles: “It would be fine if lords would forbid playing in their lands, with the exception of archery and crossbowshooting, tennis, bar- and stone-throwing, and other activities that result in bodily effort and work” (Jaser 2016: 107). So, after seeing sports where the nobility was predominant, we must enlarge our perspective by asking if there were specific games for other social groups, and if Renaissance sport was prone to social exchange. Popular Classes The lower classes were indeed involved in games with a high degree of disorder. Sport was a great tool for illuminating the social values as well as the internal tensions of a community, and violence could always erupt and was even at the core of certain games. We already mentioned the popular football. Other confrontations were: the battagliole and sassaiole (minor fights and stone fights) in Perugia and elsewhere in Italy; the Venetian “wars of bridges”; the Pisan games of mazzascudo (shields used as weapons), then of “Ponte” (bridge); the mahon at the Carnival in Amiens, France; many forms of bullfights across Europe, and others. There were invitations to peace and fraternity, obviously, as in the cartelli (challenges) of the competing squads on the Pisan bridge (Zampieri 1995: 46). However, informal and violent fights could still happen everywhere. Even an aristocratically oriented sport such as the calcio fiorentino could be a source of tension. Bardi noted the possibility of informal fighting, perhaps because the noble families were into neighborhood rivalries, and recommended not reacting to provocation. Furthermore, there were disorders at least in the years 1607–8, as we have seen (Bascetta 1978, I: 159–60; Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 48). Going back to the fifteenth century, the Castilian and Burgundian sovereigns were aware that even a relatively peaceful chivalric game such as the pas d’armes could generate protest and disorder. So, they put elite soldiers to guard them (Nadot 2012: 294–5). In fact, it is well known that “elites were at least as violent as other groups in society” (Spierenburg 1995: 83). If tension and violence were always behind the door in these events, it is because honor was highly involved. Honor was mentioned in the invitations to the archery and crossbow competitions in Flanders, and often recalled in the Pisan Guerra del Ponte: in a 1618 match, for instance, a contemporary source said that the losing side “left the bridge with scarce reputation” (Zampieri 1995: 52; Crombie 2013). Love honor was important as well. Competing for ladies was a basic part of the chivalric games, obviously, as Castiglione stated. The Pisan game of mazzascudo, for instance, performed until the early fourteenth century, had a stage with single combats that “dueling lovers” devoted to women on balconies (Castiglione: III, 4; Heywood 1904: 113–14).

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About family honor, Venetian regattas can give us some insights. A distinction arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between the gondoliers with padrini (godfathers) or without them. The gondolier of the first kind had a strong support from the family of the godfather, who was sometime the compare (the favorite friend at marriage) of the gondolier’s father. The link between the gondolier and his padrino affected the honor of families joined in a larger group called the casada (the “House”). The chief rower of the House visited the padrino before the competition and kissed his hand. On his turn, the padrino invited the gondolier to win the race to defend the honor of the House (Renier Michiel [1829] 1916: 455–6; Perocco 2006: 19–22; see Figure 6.5).

FIGURE 6.5: Women Regatta. Detail of Gio. Matteo Alberti, Giuochi festiui, e militari. . . (Venice 1686). Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. By permission of the Italian Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo. Reproduction prohibited.

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Many aspects emphasizing the role of honor may be found in another Venetian sport, the famous wars of “canes” and “fists” on bridges. During the seventeenth century, the weight of public opinion and the defense of factional honor multiplied the occasions for encounters, and sudden spontaneous fights erupted outside the festive calendar, at times one hundred on a single Sunday. Factional and family honor was defended by the champions of the two sides but also by the youth in general and, sometimes, by spectators intervening in the fight. Mostly, honor was symbolized by protagonists called again padrini. They were factional heads and most respected leaders who attended the game as fighters, referees, or simply supporters (Davis 1994: 64–6, 95ff, 112). Even in Florence, in fact, there was a similar figure, the messere dei sassi (lord of the stones, Balestracci 2001: 133–4). These preeminent members of the population, representing honor and holding a sort of informal power, should be studied in depth to understand how horizontal and vertical networks linking competitors and patrons could be enacted in sports. Without any doubt, vertical networks were established by the elites in urban plays. A famous case is the support of prominent families to fighters in the late medieval Florentine battagliole; some battles, such as the one in Santa Trinita in 1387, degenerated into factional strife and assault on private houses. The same occurred in a Siena in 1319, where a stones-throwing game was the pretext to attempt a coup d’etat against some of the dominant families of the Commune (Zorzi 1993, 74–5; Balestracci 2001: 119– 22). Even in the chivalric world of northern Europe, “Alliances and relationships contracted in war might be carried over into the tournament” (Vale 1981: 78). So, the relations between high and low classes in sports could go much beyond ceremony, supervision, and financial aid, and enact tools of inclusion such as horizontal and vertical networks linking competitors and patrons. About sports of the lower classes—even violent ones—that survived until the end of the Renaissance, we might conclude that they continued creating “communal solidarities” and directing “streamline passions and energy into socially accepted channels” (Spierenburg 1995: 80). Even more, they represented a successful fusion between violence, rituality and the interests of various social orders, sometime at the margins of society. Their capacity of creating or renewing community bonds explains why they were played in times of crisis: the Florentines held a football game while under siege in 1530, for example, to mock the imperial troops; and the Sienese staged a calcio and a bullfight during the Florentine siege of 1555 (Heywood 1904: 188–90; McClelland 2007: 109). Urban Elites Passing from the lower classes to the urban elites, we have to go back to the fourteenth century, when the nouveaux riches of major European cities in

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Flanders, the north of France, and north-central Italy adopted jousts and tournaments enthusiastically. In the Italian republican cities of Florence and Venice, for instance, jousting in central squares was staged by governments or preeminent families looking for political and social consent (Balestracci 2001: 20–32; Angelucci 1866). In the north-west of Europe, cities and towns started organizing chivalric games more intensively than the local nobility or the Burgundian court. For a long century, urban jousts constituted a fundamental sporting and ceremonial activity in Burgundy and nearby areas, and only in the late fifteenth century they did diminish, because of the political crisis after 1477 and other reasons (Van den Neste 1996: 127–34). If different at first, the bourgeois jousts soon acquired some similarities with the noble ones. For instance, they were often staged by single persons during private events such as weddings (tournaments themselves, in fact, were real “marriage markets,” according to Van Neste). Also, urban jousts in Burgundy were eventually attended by the dukes and high lords—or by their representatives—as they nedeed financial aid and political support from rich towns; this brought an occasional mixing of the nobility with the middle classes (Van den Neste 1996: 127–42; Turcot 2016: 258–9). In general, however, the co-presence of different social classes was very unlikely to happen in chivalric games, and a bourgeois would never be invited to an aristocratic joust (Mandell 1984: 122; Nadot 2012: 14–15). Urban elites had a crucial role in the archery and crossbow shooting competitions as well, proof of how sport “was institutionally connected to associational forms such as courts, municipal governments, academies, and universities” (Huggins 2017: 120). Guilds of archers and crossbowmen were founded in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. If, at first, they were open to all adult males under a certain age, then they became exclusive, dominated by the urban elites. Moreover, the guilds’ contest evolved in a way similar to urban jousts. They gradually lost their military character and turned into very spectacular festivals, lasting for months and drawing fighters and crowds from large areas. Eventually they attracted the attention of central powers; in the Flemish area, for instance, the great lords and Burgundian dukes decided to attend “as a way to strengthen their bonds with the urban world” (Crombie 2013). The arrival of handguns brought about the formation of specific shooting confraternities but did not change the general picture (Guttmann 2004: 60–2; Behringer 2009: 351). In other part of Europe there were similar scenarios. In Venice the term palio actually meant not a horse race, but the shooting competition of archery, or crossbows, or small firearms called schioppetti. They were held at bersagli, targets set up in central and peripheral squares of the city, and mostly on the Lido, the southern defensive border of Venice, on the Adriatic Sea. Shooting guilds did not form in Venice, and this brought a peculiar social differentiation.

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Both nobles and members of the people participated in competitions but had to remain separate. Plus, since the end of the fifteenth century the two categories modified their attitude. The nobility became reluctant to compete in person while assuming a larger role as judges. Instead the lower classes emphasized their pageantry with sumptuous banquets honoring the palio (condemned in vain by government laws). Therefore, the same as in other European areas, the competition of professionals became just one part of wider popular feasts. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, furthermore, the palii were opened to people from the mainland, who began arriving in massive numbers. So the government decided to reserve the game to the Venetians alone, restoring a situation of exclusion and social separation (Crouzet-Pavan 1993, 41–2; Cazzagon 2017: 8–42). The shooting contests in England possessed instead their own peculiarities. Thomas Elyot’s Book of the Governour indicated archery as a good activity for the courtier, but the shooting contests in Canterbury, London, and many other places transformed into sporting events open to all classes. They “enlivened the social relations between towns and their local gentry,” who attended with their own men. As in Venice, though, hierarchy continued to be applied, in particular in public regulations (Brailsford 1979; Gunn 2010). Political Supervision With that social potential and with solid roots in various orders of society, sports could not be easily controlled by princes or the urban elites. Prohibiting certain games was almost impossible, as people protested or simply acted in noncompliance of the laws. This happened in Perugia with the sassaiole or in Spain with the corrida (a papal bull issued by Pius V in 1567 excommunicated for bullfighting) or in Scotland, England, and France with football, just to mention a few examples (Monacchia 2005: 190-3; Del Miglio 2000: 64). In Venice, the powerful Council of Ten emitted laws after laws against the “wars of bridges,” but these laws were scarcely obeyed and were possibly “designed to send a warning or affirm a principle rather than to enforce behavior” (Cozzi 1995). Facing difficulties, at times the elites tried direct supervision of popular games: in Siena, for instance, the magistracy called Signori del Brio oversaw organizing and financing the horse race; in Venice, the palii of archery, crossbows and harquebus were organized and judged by a court of three nobles (Balestracci 1995: 209; Cazzagon 2017: 8–42). In general, though, governments and upper classes attempted to impose their action by creating new, so-called civilized options. In this direction, a good first example is the public-private control of the Venetian water competitions, the real “Olympic Games of the Venetian Republic” (Renier Michiel [1829] 1916: 452). In the Renaissance they were called regattas. Competing in the lagoon and on the canals were low-class

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gondoliers and female transporters, but in the Renaissance the competitions were decided, authorized, and paid for by the aristocratic government or by private families or elitist associations such as the youth groups called Compagnie della Calza. An interesting fact, the term regatta acquired a different meaning in seventeenth-century sources. It stopped referring to a game only and became a reference to a rich and complex set of rituals of which the competitions were only one part, and not the most relevant (Perocco 2006: 13, 19–22). This can be noticed in the abundant early modern iconographical sources (see Figure 6.5). Clearly the Venetian regattas translated into festivals as huge as the European chivalric games, hunting, football, and shooting contests. In Venice, as in the whole of Europe, monarchs, governments, and elites thought that a good way to tolerate popular sports was to make them part of public official ceremonies. A classic occasion was when preeminent foreign guests were visiting: lower-class games were showcased inside huge welcoming rituals and had to represent special features of the popular soul of the community. To take just a few examples, fights were organized in Pisa and Siena to honor the emperor Charles V in 1536, two Medici weddings in 1584 and 1589, and the visit of Magdalen of Austria in 1608 (Heywood 1904; Balestracci 2001: 134). The French king Henry III was offered a famous guerra del ponte in Venice in 1574 and fishermen’s water sports in Lyon one year after (Davis 1994: 47, 111, 188; McGowan 2013: 42). Some rulers even introduced a vast politics of sporting patronage. A major example is the Florentine Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and his successors (Plaisance 1975; Silverman 1985). We have already mentioned how the reform of football could appeal to popular classes. Furthermore, Cosimo patronized the potenze, groups from marginal areas that conducted very violent stone battles (Casini 1996: 247–52). The main target of the Medici, nevertheless, was a deep involvement of the nobility, gradually excluded from power after the end of the Republic. Playing the calcio, as we said, was reserved to the Florentine upper classes. Moreover, a palio dei cocchi (an imitation of antique chariot races using modern coaches) was launched by Cosimo in 1563, as a courtly addition to the traditional, late medieval horse race of St John the Baptist. Michel de Montaigne reports that the coaches were paid for by major families such as the Medici themselves and the Strozzi (Van Veen 2006: 149; McClelland 2007: 108–10). In the sixteenth century as well, the Medici intervened heavily in the Sienese horse races and bullfights and resurrected the very popular Pisan mazzascudo, transforming it into an aristocratic game named Guerra del Ponte. The players still came from mixed social environments, but the violent aspects were severely diminished while the Medici, together with the Florentine and Pisan nobility, dominated the fight in various ways (Zampieri 1995: 46). It seems that the Tuscan noble youth gladly accepted the call of the Medici, with ardor, a sense of competition, and a display of pageantry. The Pisan

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patriciate took control of the Ponte, and the same happened in Florence with football. In 1558, for example, when a group staged a football game for Cosimo’s son-in-law in Santa Croce, another group which had been left out mounted a rival match at Santa Maria Novella, with fancier uniforms than their rivals (McClelland 2007: 110). Moreover, young people and their families engaged in a huge patronage of ceremonies around football and jousting, spending notable sums on banquets, costumes, masks, chariots, and gifts. The fabulous spectacle mounted in April 1691 for the football game in honor of Anna Maria Luisa Medici and the Palatine Elector Johan Wilhelm, for instance, has been called “the apex of Baroque Florentine celebrations” (Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 35, 94ff.).

SPORT AND GENDER We have seen that the relations between governments and high and low classes in sports were affected by a complex blend of many factors such as solidarity, honor, patronage, ceremony, supervision, and financial aid. Other socially constructed phenomena intervened as well, such as masculinity and femininity, in which peculiar ways of inclusion and exclusion could result. The participation of women in activities dominated by masculinity is interesting, even though not well documented (but sources obviously reflect “the intellectual interests of the male leisured elite”; Turcot 2016: 336). Baldassarre Castiglione presented two different angles on women in sports. The first confirmed the standard view of women doing only activities that were suitable to their gender. A second view, instead, talked of women possibly doing “almost everything a cavalier can do”: that meant ball games, activities with weapons, horse riding and hunting (III, 7; Arcangeli 2016: 147–8). In general, treatises presented a “policy of segregating the sexes as certain physical activities and games were seen as improper for mixed-sex groups” (Arcangeli 2016: 149). For James I of England the only possibility of “either men or women” playing was dancing, while “archerie . . . leaping, vaulting, and any other such harmless recreation” had to be for men only (McClelland 2007: 112). The reality was much richer, though. Women were a stimulus for competition, sense of honor, and display of masculinity, and this was particularly true in jousting, as Castiglione pointed out (III, 3). Fighters saw ladies as “love targets” and considered the joust as an occasion to ask attention or favors from them. We encountered the Pisan mazzascudo already: here women stayed on balconies watching dueling lovers fight using shields depicting the faces of women (Heywood 1904: 113–14; for women in the palio in Ferrara see Figure 6.4). For a while, though, in the fifteenth century, women had a rising role in the chivalric sector, following the boom of the ceremonial approach. They were protagonists of the pageantry, and sometimes they acted as judges or awarded

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prizes (Mandell 1984: 114). Their presence became less evident in early modern times. In the spectacular theatrical jousts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women were relegated to simple spectators, as we can guess from the descriptions of European jousts in the diaries of the Venetian Marin Sanudo and many other sources (Balestracci 2001: 70–5; Paviot 2013, 211–12). Recalling the Florentine calcio, for instance, Bardi advised playing the game in “a main square of a city for the noblewomen and people to be able to see it” (Bascetta 1978, I: 139). High-class women retained a special position in other activities, however, such as ball games and hunting. A famous fresco of the Palazzo Borromeo in Milan shows well-dressed women playing a ball game in a garden near a lake. We know that from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, noblewomen were playing tennis—even in mixed doubles—at the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, and Vienna (De Bondt 2006: 34–5, 55). Hunting was relevant for queens and princesses such as Isabella d’Este and the wife and mistresses of the French kings, including Catherine of Medici. Elizabeth Tudor was defined by contemporaries as “queen huntress”—a sign that female rulers might use their (sometime visual) representation as hunters to display their power in a typical masculine way. But the participation of women in hunting and hawking did not involve killing (Guttmann 2004: 59; Williams 2008: 408). Even women of the lower classes could be protagonists at times. Scaino mentions female tennis players from the city of Udine in Friuli, while lowerclass women competed in the Venetian regattas from 1493 at least. They came from the contrade, the districts of the city, and from the islands of the lagoon. Apparently, they had physical strength because of the habit of conducting large boats between the center and the periphery (Scaino [1555] 2000: 13–14; Tamassia Mazzarotto 1961: 58–9). An interesting thing shown by Venetian iconographical sources is women competing in regattas with their ballotine (light boats) flanked by aristocratic sponsors: we might guess they had links of patronage to their House, as did the gondoliers (Tamassia Mazzarotto 1961: 59; Figure 6.5). In Renaissance Flanders, “girl sisters” existed in the confraternities of archers and crossbowmen—indeed a place of masculinity. They were not allowed public exposure in shooting competitions, but they played a relevant role in the devotional activities of the confraternities. The German area, instead, had female shooters competing for the title of “Queen of Shooting,” while some female rulers, such as Isabella of Hapsburg, archduchess of Spanish Flanders, showed bravery in archery (Arnade 1996: 72; Crombie 2016). Women could also be the subject of ridicule and dishonor, as occurred in the female palii (races) on foot that were organized in Verona, Ferrara, and some German towns (Zampieri 2008: 160–4; Guttmann 2004: 61). At the real limit of what we might call “sport,” the female races started in the Middle Ages with

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famous events such as the prostitutes’ races organized by the Perugians outside Arezzo in 1335 and the Pisans outside Florence in 1363. Prostitutes sometime ran as a reprimand to “normal” women. Later the governments and Church attempted to leave out the prostitutes and recruit “honest” women, or “girls,” or even “country girls,” but these were very hard to find. Only girls of very low condition could be invited at last, leading to miserable spectacles of insults and objects being thrown by the spectators. In Verona the female palio—indeed an example of an almost segregation in premodern sport—was finally abandoned in 1634 (Zampieri 2008: 160–4, 173; Heywood 1904: 12, 21–2). Women participation shows that the Italian horses and foot races were attended by everyone from the best aristocracy down to the lowest and most marginalize social groups, and had the same function as many European carnivals, to be a true show window of the social differences inside a community (Zampieri 2008: 172–3). And if Renaissance sport was indeed a tool for socialization in which women could make an appearance, it remained, with a few exceptions, a channel for virility and male dominance (Turcot 2016: 221).

SPORT AND AGE Some sports could actually group all classes of ages, performing an inclusive lifetime action. This happened in the stone fights in Perugia, for instance, and in the Roman Carnival, where naked “boys, young, and old men” ran foot races (Zampieri 2008: 168–9). At the Pisan wars of the Ponte, the young would start at first, followed by the adults and sometime the old, caught up in the excitement (Balestracci 2001: 136). Children and young people had to pursue specific activities, though. Vittorino da Feltre and others predicated a sporting education for children in schools and treatises. Vittorino allowed ten-year-old boys to learn military games such as archery and fencing, and even had a room in his “Joyous House” frescoed with playing children (Turcot 2016: 279–80, 284; De Bondt 2006, 36). At a lower level, children had their own, often very rough games, such as urban “wars” in medieval Italy. In Perugia, boys under ten fought the battagliola of stones (Maire Vigueur 1992; Monacchia 2005: 191). This trend continued into Renaissance Venice, where the young boys competed violently on bridges. Moreover, children participated in the carnivalesque mahon of Amiens in their way to becoming adults, and, together with women, in the Pisan Ponte (Sanudo 1879–1902: IX, 425; XVII, 349; Heywood 1904: 113–14, 153). Still in the sixteenth century, the Florentine Donato Giannotti wrote that children “just take delight” in games such as “fists and stones” (Balestracci 2001: 140). The Middle Ages and Renaissance thus had ritual competitions in which society asked children to perform a violent function. But later they were involved in more gentle ways, following the general courtly trend of European

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sport. “Gentlemen children” competed in Florentine football matches in 1574 and 1675, for example, while European iconography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries displays children playing tennis (Gillmeister 1997: 58, 62; De Bondt 2006: Figures 4, 33). As for youth, the period between childhood and maturity, the situation was complex because this was the major age category involved in sport. In popular violent games, such as the soule and stones or bridge fights, young people participated as champions of masculinity of their own faction and perceived the possibility of being admitted into the adult world using the competition as a “working-class rite of passage” (Davis 1994: 112). Young rich bourgeois or patriciates, on the other hand, jousted and played calcio in the late Middle Ages on their way to a “promising administrative career” (Van den Neste 1996: 134; Bredekamp [1993] 1995: 39). Also, junior associations existed inside the archers and crossbowmen confraternities at Ghent and other Flemish cities. Juniors appeared at some of the most important regional shooting contests, even if frictions could arise between the two age classes (Arnade 1996: 72–5). In other situations, such as in Artois, France, shooting confraternities were completely an affair of the youth and their activities and feasts were considered a good chance for a military and moral education (Muchembled 1989: 290). Noble youth dominated many sports. Going into the early modern times, the young aristocrats had many learning opportunities in college, specialized schools (we mentioned equitation), and during the “Grand Tour” in Italy and France (Behringer 2016: 38). Needless to say, sport was mandatory for the “young nobleman destined to government,” as stated by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (archery, lance-throwing, running, hunting, and swimming were particularly on Piccolomini’s mind; De Bondt 2006: 13). In some cities, the aristocratic youth formed companies with a crucial role in sports. Sometimes they were just organizers, as the Venetian Compagnie della Calza (major sponsors of regattas, chivalric and other games); other times they performed as real athletes: the French Enfants de la Ville, for instance, were capable of brave feats of horsemanship during major festivals (Casini 2011; Reid 2009: 276ff). There were occasional examples of confrontation between the young of various social provenances, as in the Ponte during the feast of St Anthony in Pisa, in the seventeenth century (Zampieri 1995: 43), or in certain shooting contests. However, it seems that every Mediterranean and European community had different liminal tools with the delicate function of domesticating the instinctual passions of adolescence: stones, soule, and bridges (and others) for the children and young of the common people; chivalric games, tennis, football, and fencing for the young of the elites. Just as in social structure and gender, therefore, sports had a fundamental communal age function, underlining inclusion or exclusion, acceptance or rejection.

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CONCLUSIONS At a first look, it seems that the process of social change in sports in the Renaissance, accompanied by the humanistic description of sport and definition of rules, reduced popular games to simple leisure and enacted the passage from the culture of violence to the courtly culture (Turcot 2016: 343). Even the rise in the social condition of the professional athletes or masters—particularly in hunting, fencing, and tennis—had a relevant part in this (McClelland 2007: 76, 92; Galloni 2000: 150–1). In this scenario, only one unique example of “communion of all the different categories” occurred: the Cotswold Olympic Games in England (Turcot 2016: 307–9). In general, though, situations of social separation certainly arose, as in jousting, hunting, tennis, and sporting activities specifically for the young. And the fast, growing control and ceremonial use of sports by governments brought variations to some lower classes playing activities. They lost their medieval content of military prowess and civil participation and became instead grounds for social separation, pageantry, affinity to power, and professionalism. All this happened even in a republican city such as Venice (Crouzet-Pavan 1993: 42–3). The historical context of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries is extremely nuanced, though, and we cannot deny that “the compartmentalization of sports among the three classes of society began to break down” (McClelland 2007: 77). Even Castiglione took into consideration some mingling between the courtiers and country people (II, 10). This brings us to reconsider Elias’s theory of the coincidence between “leisure” and “civilization” in modern sports. The theory has been widely criticized and, as we have seen, demonstrated chronologically erroneous at least from the point of the view of the celebrated fox hunt (Stokvis 1992; Elias and Dunning [1986] 2008: 159–73). Certainly, the impact of the court and the political and legal action of Renaissance princes and kings was strong in France, Italy, Spain, Burgundy, and England. So, we might still say that there was a certain progress towards “civilizing” the aristocracy and lower classes and engaging them in less violent and increasingly ceremonial sports. However, this happened in times and forms very much different from what suggested by Elias, and other elements came into play. First, the religious element. This element was not analyzed in this chapter, but we cannot forget that the interventions of the Church of Rome and the growing doctrinal divide between Catholics and Protestants could substantially encourage, alter, or block sporting activities. Second—and this is something we have seen above—the very complex response or resistance to central powers that old and new elites put into motion. Europe now had a much greater interdependence than in feudal times, following urbanization and the affirmation of a new courtly culture. Beyond being simply “civilized,” the elites underwent big changes and were at times—such as the urban patriciates—the real promoters of the development of sport into

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modernity. If the old-rooted nobility had its role adopting or transforming lower-class games such as football, hunting, and bridge wars, the “upwardly mobile bourgeoisie” targeted chivalric games, shooting competitions, and horse races instead (McClelland 2007: 77; Behringer 2009: 355). Third, the development in the attendance of lower classes. Those classes were often absorbed in the ceremonializing process of sports, a sign of their loss of weight in the political process; still, sometimes they could hold certain positions or gain fresh ones. Old traditional popular games, such as the wars and palii in Venice or stones in Perugia, were continued (and stopped only in the eighteenth century), and some games that were highly modified, such as the Sienese palio, tennis, or the Venetian regattas, saw some breakthrough obtained by popular strata. In conclusion, if social differentiation could induce sport differentiation, exclusion from one sector could bring inclusion in different, new contexts. Or, a new social differentiation could be reflected in new sporting activities or the transformation of the old. What matters, then, is the flourishing dynamic of European society during the Renaissance and early modernity, which brought a historical refashioning of sports that, going much beyond a “civilizing process,” developed rich and complex lines in which all social, gender, and age groups could contribute in their own way to the passage towards modernity.

Note * Deep thanks to John McClelland, Bob Hannigan, and Alessandro Arcangeli for revisions and suggestions. All translations are mine.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Minds, Bodies, and Identities LAURENT TURCOT *

The Renaissance is a remarkable time as concerns transformations relating to sports practices. The idea that the Renaissance was a period of unprecedented and powerful artistic and intellectual development has long been supported, but there is more to it. The expansion of art and learning came about thanks to a new way of perceiving the world, referred to as humanism. Originally, “humanism” merely meant the intensive methodical study of the “human”— that is, secular—culture of Antiquity. But the term came to refer to the notion that the Human Being was at the center of Creation, the measure of all things, nature’s potential master, epitomized in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing, Vitruvian Man (Figure 7.1). The idea that a golden age had arrived gained momentum, largely due to economic success, the influx of thinkers and manuscripts from the Byzantine Empire, conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the development of printing which was a determinant in the dissemination of ideas and, finally, the emergence of new mind sets. A generation of deeply original people emerged, including philosophers, priests, scholars, and artists, who had a game-changing influence on literary and artistic creation. One of the sources of this renewal was indeed Antiquity. This was not merely a going back to Antiquity; rather humanists interpreted, invented, reinterpreted, reinvented, and distanced themselves from the mass of documents they collected left and right from the exiled Greeks or that had been copied in monastery libraries. They compared texts in order to correct poor translations. Where the Middle Ages found in Aristotle a thinker who structured philosophy, humanists looked to Plato and more specifically, to Neoplatonic thinkers. In Aristotelian 155

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FIGURE 7.1: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Vetruvian Man (c. 1480–90). Getty.

reason, there was a distinction between the signifier and the signified, and between reality and the image of reality, whereas for Neoplatonists the image was reality. A new level of understanding could be gained. The symbol was the thing that it represented. This idea came to define the cult of beauty that became established in Renaissance Italy, for the body was the soul, reality (the body) was the image that it embodied (the soul). Therefore, those who have a beautiful soul also have a beautiful body. Without the body, beauty is an abstraction that is unable to awaken love, and this same beauty is a reflection and a gift of the divine. Through the intense contemplation of beauty, particularly the beauty of

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a human being, an individual might ascend to a contemplation of the divine beauty of God (Cassirer [1927] 1963: 52 ff., 135 ff.). Hence we cannot understand art or physical attributes, and therefore sport, in the Renaissance without considering the guiding philosophy of that time. The represented human figure underlies the soul and integrates harmoniously into a process of personal happiness for all individuals. Recognizing the value of human beings, as well as the quest for beauty and harmony that was the legacy of Ancient times, allowed for a redefinition of the body no longer as perishable garb, but as an envelope that could be shaped according to the individual’s desires. There was no separation between body, mind, and identity; they went hand in hand and proceeded from one another. Medicine, courtesy books, and treatises on morality were some of the frameworks that defined the physical attributes that provided to individuals a measure for their individuality (Jahan 2004: 7–12).

RELIGIOUS CONTEXT The start of the sixteenth century was the theatre of a decisive fracture in previously monolithic Western Christianity, as an increasing sense that all was not right, both theologically and morally, within Roman Catholicism led to what became known as the Protestant Reformation. Reformers attacked among other things the Catholic doctrine of justification through good works, which was widely and willfully misinterpreted to mean that one might buy one’s way into heaven and that therefore one’s mortal comportment did not affect one’s chances for salvation. The literature of the time, both comic and serious, was rife with criticisms of dissolute behavior, especially on the part of monks and ecclesiastics who, despite their vows, drank, fornicated, and otherwise indulged their bodies with unbridled games. Discipline of the body, including the tacit or explicit condemnation of physical exercise and games, became one of the watchwords of the Reformers. Catholic educators of the fifteenth century had introduced sports into the curriculum to enhance the physical and psychological health of their pupils, but Reforming pedagogues of the next century either made no mention of such activities or condemned them outright. Erasmus rejected the need for pupils to have some physical exercise to compensate for the fatigues of studying, arguing that the intellectual benefits outweighed the loss of bodily robustness and summing up his position in the aphorism: “Our concern is not to train athletes, but philosophers and statesmen” (Erasmus [1529] 1983: 323). Though younger than Erasmus, Martin Luther had already, if less succinctly, advanced the same argument in the 1524 letter “to the Councilmen of All the Cities in Germany, that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools.” In that document he advocated for schools that taught a rigorously intellectual

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program, and he complained that boys already wasted their time “with their pea-shooters, ballplaying, racing, and tussling” (Luther 1962: 370). Fifteen years later, in conversation with some friends recorded in his Tischreden (table talk), he briefly relented, prescribing—in imitation of the Ancients—the “exercise” (Uebung) of music and the knightly sports (Ritterspiele) of fencing, wrestling, and jumping. The former was a cure for melancholy, the latter ensured good health and strength and was a surrogate for the drunkenness, gluttony, fornication, and gambling that he observed to be rife in the cities and princely courts of Germany (Luther [1539] 1910: col. 1561). Although the situation varied from country to country, Counter-Reformation Catholics, especially in France and Spain, tended to adopt puritan Protestant attitudes toward sport. Saint Francis Xavier, for example, was an enthusiastic athlete during his student days in Paris in the 1520s, but “his addiction to that form of athleticism and the pride he took in his success afterwards caused him acute remorse” (Brodrick 1952: 33 and n. 2). On the other hand, German Reformers and teachers, such as Bugenhagen, Trotzendorf, and Camerarius, though followers of Luther, insisted on making room for recreational pastimes and for the pupils’ souls and bodies to be brought together to the same degree of moral prosperity (Ulmann 1977: 158). Later on, when Elizabeth I was defining and organizing the new Church, rejecting both Calvinism and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, the virgin queen supported the emergence of Anglicanism which was much closer to Protestantism than it was to Catholicism, although she had hoped for a compromise between the two. In January 1559, she determined the structural framework of Anglicanism with the Act of Supremacy, which re-established the monarch as supreme governor of the Church, and the Act of Uniformity, which made attendance at church on Sundays compulsory. This was followed in 1563 by the Thirty-nine Articles that presented the doctrine. Compromise was still emphasized, in particular in relation to hierarchy, rite and the dangers of heresy that were characteristic of Catholicism, to which was added a “very Calvinist” recognition of the depravity of man. This is when Puritans appeared, their intention being to purge Anglicanism of its papist residue and to push the Reform further. According to their view, only a handful of men and women are chosen by God to attain spiritual salvation. Without creating a political party as such, Puritans were part of all social categories. Puritans were not necessarily against leisure, but they attempted to frame it within moral life on the earthly plane. Many diarists at the turn of the sixteenth century condemned group recreation such as going to alehouses and the theatre. This criticism did not proceed from the desire to quell all forms of rest or entertainment; many Puritan families used to gather together to talk or go fishing. What they took exception to was mainly games that took place on Sundays, the idea being to “keep the Sabbath day holy” (Brailsford 1975:

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316–30). However, some radicals went much farther, viewing work not only as a means to gain, in terms of money and time, but also as an end in itself, almost as a form of cult. They based this approach on Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.” Devout recreation then became the most effective protection against excesses, inasmuch as rejecting all pleasure was not sustainable in the long term: the flood gates would break, unleashing sinful violence. The Puritan minister Joshua Moody stated before his community that “God has given us temporals [worldly things] to enjoy we should therefore suck the sweet of them, and so slake our thirst with them, as not to be insatiably craving after more” (Daniels 2006: 448). A genuine catechism of games was taking shape, defining most as ungodly. Those that were deemed to be acceptable always took place in the countryside. Running, fishing, and hunting were accepted, namely because they took place in a bucolic context, although there was fear of hunting provoking outbreaks of violence and some ministers proscribed it altogether (Thomas 1983: 25). The list of prohibited games got longer with time. All combat sports, including those with animals such as bear-baiting and cock-fighting, were immediately branded as being depraved, the main objection being that hurting the creation of God for pleasure was a sin. The same considerations led Puritans to reject boxing (Sim [1999] 2009: 177–80). The jeu de paume (early, preracket tennis) was deemed questionable as well in some quarters, especially because of its origins in largely Catholic countries (Turcot 2016: 303). Puritans took advantage of installations, however, in particular those of Cambridge colleges, even the most Puritan of which, Emmanuel College, had a tennis court, as they were called in England at the time. According to the Puritan pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes, the worst game of all was football, which he denounced in his Anatomy of Abuses published in 1583 as “a friendly kind of fight [rather] than play or recreation, a bloudy and murthering practise [rather] than a fellowly sport or pastime . . . Any exercise . . . which withdraweth vs from godlinesse, eyther upon the Sabboth day or any other day, is wicked, & to be forbidden” (Stubbes [1583] 2002: 251). Not all of England was won over by Protestantism, especially with the accession of King James I to the throne in 1603. Some regions such as Lancashire were the center of controversies opposing Puritans, Anglicans, and Catholics on the issue of Sunday observance. In August 1616, Puritan officers of the court issued a number of rules aimed at regulating these practices: “That there bee no pipinge, dancinge, bowlinge, beare or bull beatinge or any other profanation upon any Saboth Day in any parte of the Day: or upon any festivall day in tyme of Devyne service.” Catholics appealed to the King to abolish these decrees. James, as head of the Church of England and thus both anti-Papist and antiPuritan, found a middle ground in his 1617 Declaration of Lawful Sports to be Used (later titled The King’s Book of Sports) by stipulating

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And as for Our good peoples lawfull Recreation, Our pleasure likewise is, That after the end of Diuine Seruice, Our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, Such as piping, dauncing, either men or women. Archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse Recreation, nor from hauing of May-Games, Whitson Ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting vp of Maypoles & other sports therewith vsed, so as the same be had in due & conuenient time without impediment or neglect of Diuine Seruice. —Rühl 1984: 140 The only people allowed to practice sport on Sundays were those who had attended the “divine service” of the Church of England. Catholics and Puritans were excluded. The purpose of the Book of Sports was to encourage Catholics to convert, because until they did, they constituted as political threat (the Continental Catholic powers had not yet abandoned the idea of invading and re-converting England). The “lawful recreations” thus established were used by Charles I in 1625 as a means to replenishing the coffers, that is, by issuing fines for offenses to the Sunday Observance Act. This law remained in force in England until 1969, testimony to the importance of Puritan policies in British legislation (Brailsford [1992] 2006: 37). Aside from the theoreticians of Puritanism and the implementation of the doctrine in England, the land of the Tudors and the Stuarts became a remarkable laboratory for games and recreations of all kinds. Kings and queens—such as Henry VII, who introduced sports at the court and built tennis courts and bowling alleys— have always considered them as forms of recreation that were necessary to staying healthy and as a means of displaying their physical power before the powerful of the kingdom. Tournaments and jousts continued to be practiced and staged at the court, and the more archaic they were, the more prestige they had, since during Elizabeth’s rein nostalgia was in style (Williams [1995] 2010: 432–44). The British court was emulating the Italian and French courts, displaying the same forms of entertainment and paying similar attention to stage setting. Games were not limited to the court, however; they underwent change, in particular owing to the desire to invest in the nobility’s education, either as a form of social distinction or as a medical prescription encouraging exercise. Thomas Elyot contributed to the dissemination of the educational model carried forward by the Renaissance, encouraging “exercises apt to the furniture of a gentleman’s personage,” such as hunting, dancing, and arms, practiced according to Galen’s teachings (Elyot [1531] 1962: 60). This model would later be taken up by the Anglican Reform educators, including Roger Ascham (1515–68), professor at Cambridge, and Richard Mulcaster (1530–1611), head of Merchant Taylor’s School in London, the latter noted for not catering only

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to gentlemen but also to the commercial bourgeoisie. Again, everything was borrowed from the Ancients: the choice of exercises, their function, their nature and justification. Their most significant contribution was to include, as part of education, exercises that until then were only prescribed by physicians or considered as being pleasant pastime. There was a serious endeavor to formalize knowledge of physical education and the way it was applied in society. Ascham and Mulcaster were in this respect practitioners. Basilikon Doron, the royal gift, the treatise written by James I for his son in 1599, illustrates the views that English high society entertained on physical education: exercises, especially those that might contribute to the body’s health, disposition, and agility must be practiced. Those recommended by the king to his son were running, jumping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, archery, tennis, pall-mall, and especially riding and hunting (James I 1996: 167). A remarkable synthesis between historical exercises characteristic of nobility and those that are the foundation of urban social life, the king’s advice even included practices that did not come from the aristocracy and could be adopted by it, the court sometimes copying the city.

EQUESTRIAN GAMES From Antiquity to the Middle Ages, equestrian games were a powerful context for entertainment while also being a hallmark of nobility in jousts and tournaments, where they were moving away from military situations and becoming large-scale spectator events. Sovereigns enjoyed making an appearance at these spectacles, especially as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a time of state reinforcement and gradual centralization. This clear trend of forming the gentleman’s body as to appearance and bel air (looking good) was in line with etiquette (Vigarello 2000: 35). It became necessary to attach a symbolism of power to rituals that would enable the monarchy to establish its imperium in relation to other regional powers and, in particular, foreign powers, while reinforcing the cult of the prince or the king. When describing important personalities and kings, the following essential attributes were always cited: force, resistance to fatigue, and military feats. The French monarch Francis I multiplied his hunting parties, tennis-playing, and participation in jousts and tournaments, as did Charles V and Henry VIII. One governed with the mind but one had to impress with the body, a principle that entailed military training, but also sports where one might exhibit oneself (Thurley 1991: 163). This dynamic lasted throughout the modern period, inspiring new ways in sports that continued to redefine education as well. This was not a new practice and Italy was at the heart of its revival. In Florence, twelve tournaments were held between 1387 and 1434 (Barber and Barker [1989] 2000: 94–6). The structure of these prestigious spectacles drew

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directly on chivalric literature and myth, reinterpreted in a way to benefit power. This is particularly true for the Medici family. Cosimo de’ Medici, who held on to power for almost thirty years (1434–64), was simply a banker—in other words, a commoner. In order to establish his family’s authority, he wanted to control his opponents politically, economically, and symbolically. To succeed, he clung to feudal values reinforcing the legitimacy of his family’s social ascent (McClelland 2007: 101). When Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo was about to assume power hereditarily in 1469, his right to rule was demonstrated by his winning a tournament organized by his family, thus sending a message to the other noble families who competed with the Medici, such as the Pazzi. The spectacle initially connected with jousts and tournaments gradually became associated with diplomatic ritual in the context of signing peace or mutual assistance treaties, hence turning into a political extension of war. These were not private events, quite the contrary; the Italian political system being concentrated in the cities, they naturally took place in public squares, and paintings and prints show the large crowds of all social categories that gathered to attend the spectacles in stands, boxes, and from their windows. Depictions also enable us to admire the finesse of jousters’ costumes and the minute planning of the staging. Although it is true that the risk of injury or death for knights was higher in the fourteenth than in the sixteenth century, jousting games involved a surprising degree of violence, the idea being to employ full physical force in a confrontation where there is little restraint (Vigarello 1986). Chivalry was indeed declining to the extent where in 1605, Miguel de Cervantes created the character of Don Quixote of La Mancha—a parody of the knight-errant who, imbued with tales of knightly derring-do, set out to combat windmills, thinking they were giants. The days of chivalry were over. The reference to war, which had underlain and defined the nature of the noble, was not dropped, but it was remodeled (Vigarello 2005: 241). Men of the Renaissance invested in two practices that were associated with the military education of young nobles, also practiced by peasants to imitate jousts: course de la bague (tilting at the ring) and quintain (Clare 1983: 71). The former consisted in spearing a high-set ring and the latter in striking an object with one’s lance so as to break it. Brute force was replaced by skill and dexterity; precision became a sign of physical strength and military merit (Turcot 2016: 262–344). The target was no longer an opponent in the flesh, but a geometrical space. Risk of injury and the chance of ever seeing a king lose his life again were henceforth avoided. Competitions were associated with a skillful ritual composed of as many knowns as unknowns by the spectators. They started with an official challenge (cartel) specifying the date and the place of the competition, the conditions to be respected and the prizes that would be given. The tournament vocabulary was used, speaking of the challenge to be faced as specified in the cartel, and of

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the oath of allegiance, referring to the entry of the knights. Since it was no longer a matter of counting broken lances in order to determine the winner, juries were set up; the winner was chosen on the basis of the reports of the judges. As was the case for jousts, before the start of the contest, participants were presented to the attendance, dressed in their finest garb—velvet and silk were dazzling. This was an opportunity to exhibit one’s wealth, originality of heraldry, and skillful staging, for he who could make his entry with grace, elegance, and poise would turn heads. It was no longer a place of combat, but rather a theatrical space surrounded with boxes, pavilions, and balconies, lavishly adorned with drapery. The places chosen, often located at the center of towns, were the same where theatre performances were held. Unsurprisingly, beautiful music was also part of this choreographic spectacle. In place of the blood and the dust, what took precedence henceforward were opulent settings, costumes, harnesses, and the graceful demeanor of the knights. As was the case for jousts and tournaments, a specific literature emerged. In 1593, the first French treatise dedicated to the course de bague (tilting at the ring) was published by Salomon de La Broue under the title Cavallerice françois, soon after followed by Antoine de Pluvinel’s works, most notably his famous Instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval (instructing the King in the art of riding) in 1625 (Vaucelle 2004: 67–99). Knowledge was drawn from Italian treatises that had previously codified the renewal of quintain, namely the one authored by Messer Claudio Corte di Pavia in 1573. Hitting the target and putting the lance through the ring no longer sufficed; it was up to the judges to determine who the winner was. Aside from strength and skill, they also considered elegance and style. The game involved playing with form; the lance was expected to trace a geometrical line and the knight to avoid any sharp movement of the horse. Military values were indeed present, but danger of injury and death was to be avoided. The determining feature by which competitors’ attitude was judged fell into ther larger category of civility.

DETERMINING SOCIAL NORMS The social and cultural transformations that were underway in the papal, princely, and ducal Italian courts were to determine the new social model and, more importantly, new behavior. The courts of Florence, Milan, Rome, Venice, and Ferrara entered into a competition that went beyond the political and military game. They commissioned artists and intended to determine a framework for expressing their superiority. As was the case in the duchy of Burgundy, an elegant court life was developing factoring courtesy, politeness, measured language, and subdued gestures (Laty 1996: 93; Bury 1996). Courtly life set behaviors by way of a civilizing emulation that polished manners, hence the term politeness. Baldassarre Castiglione, a diplomat at the courts of Urbino

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and Rome, invented a theme: conversation between courtiers that presented a code of manners and elegance for members of the court. In his Il libro del Cortegiano (1528), he stated that the courtier must above all seek sprezzatura, which can be translated, albeit poorly, as casualness and nonchalance: I have found quite a universal rule which in this matter seems to me valid above all others, and in all human affairs whether in word or deed: and that is to avoid affectation in every way possible as though it were some rough and dangerous reef; and (to pronounce a new word perhaps) and to practice in all things a certain sprezzatura (nonchalance], so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it. —Castiglione 1959: 43 The author did not stop at regulating the conduct of aspiring courtiers and young aristocrats, he also defined rules aimed at organizing social life. Social transparency in gestures and attitudes was the model to follow. The success of the treatise rapidly extended beyond the borders of the city-states of the peninsula and Castiglione influenced a number of authors, including Thomas Elyot, cited above. Of course in order to display sprezzatura one had to be in good physical shape, and here tennis was the ideal sport. Following in the medical tradition established by Galen (On the Exercise with the Small Ball), one of the speakers in Erasmus’s dialogue De lusu (“Sport,” 1522) argues that “there is no better exercise for all parts of the body than handball” (pila palmaria in the original Latin, i.e., jeu de paume, tennis; Erasmus [1522] 1997: I 76), thereby confirming the educational role of physical exercise in defining the morality of human beings, for those who engage in it must do it with decency and elegance, as Erasmus himself said in the immediately preceding colloquy, Monitoria pedagogica (“A Lesson in Manners”: “puerum ingenuum decent ingenui mores,” noble behavior befits the noble boy; Erasmus 1997: I 71; Pennuto 2013: 44) (Figure 7.2). Fencing was also an illustration of the profound change in values, in particular those that tended to pacify the aristocratic body while preserving the symbols of its identity of memory. The focus was no longer on the art of killing but on the art of living, which showcases the body on the stage of courtly sociability. Rules also allowed for a purge of violence, but it was not until 1653 with the emergence of the foil, having no cutting edge, that cutting blows were forbidden (Brioist, Drévillon and Serna 2002: 73; Julhe 2010). As early as the sixteenth century emerged a practice related to foot-work that became a weapons skill. In his 1570 Ragione di addoprar sicurament l’arme, a rational method for securely wielding weapons, Giacomo di Grassi outlined the passo and the mezzo passo, the step and the half-step, and the alta, largha and bassa guards, high, wide, and low

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FIGURE 7.2: Frontispiece of Baldassarre Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano (Venice 1528). Alamy.

stances. These conditioned the lines of attack: di sotto, di sopra, di dentro, and di fuora, from below, from above, from inside, and from outside, all of which were illustrated graphically, detailing each articulation depending on the movements (Vaucelle 2004: 255). Clearly, this was not a brutal, unregulated clash. Fencing became more defined precisely at the time when firearms started redefining the art of war on the battlefield; indeed this development has been

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referred to as a military revolution. The power of artillery led to changes in military strategy and defense that forced knights to abandon their heavy armor (Chagniot 2001; Potter 2008). It became a matter of finding solutions to adapt to the new firepower. The ease with which the king of France, Charles VIII, marched down to Italy and progressed through the peninsula in 1494 with his heavy artillery remained etched forever in people’s minds. Then followed the harquebuses, then other portable and increasingly efficient firearms whose use imparted an ever larger offensive role to gunnery. War was becoming the thing of professionals trained to conduct it, weakening the historic role of the bellatores, nobles who fought with lance and sword and whose identity was defined by those weapons (Garin 1957). As was the case for the tilting at the ring and the quintain, the legacy of chivalry was once more reinvested. Wearing the sword was not at the time, contrary to popular belief, the exclusive privilege of nobility; rather it corresponded to the obsession with differentiating the lower from the higher. In this context, fencing found fertile ground for development and emerged as a sport practiced by nobles (Anglo 2000: 119–47). Gradually divorced from war and war’s forms of entertainment, as was the case for nobility in Ancient Rome, European aristocracy turned the sword into a symbol of an elegant practice of staged combat (Stone 1965). Italy was once again the center of attention and some French nobles, as noted by Montaigne, went to Italy to learn the art of fencing (Essays II 15, II 27, Montaigne 1943: 464, 527; Travel Journal, Montaigne 1943: 926, 1029), while a number of Italian fencing masters settled throughout Europe to teach their skills. Fencing schools were founded in France, England, Spain, and Italy. The British elite considered, however, as early as the sixteenth century, that young nobles should learn with masters from Spain and Italy, reinforcing the aspect of social distinction by arms (Henricks 1991: 85). In 1569, an Italian by the name of Rocco Bonnetti opened a fencing school in London that remained popular for thirty years. Practice was not foreign to the continent. François de Bassompierre, soldier and diplomat under the French kings Henry IV and Louis XIII, born in 1579, went to Germany and Italy in 1587–96 in order to perfect his education, first in academic matters, then with the great fencing, riding, and dancing masters. In his Memoirs he cited with pride and gratitude the masters who trained him (Bassompierre [1665] 1870: 41–50) (Figure 7.3). Fencing became a dance that required an upright posture that marked the mind. It can legitimately be said that we shifted from force to bearing and from power to agility (Vigarello 2005: 251). In the same way as physicians joined artists to better represent the human body, such as Andreas Vesalius, who commissioned artists for the illustrations of his De humani corporis fabrica in 1543, so authors of treatises on fencing hired master engravers to break down each movement of the body and to avoid the ambiguity of certain terms, such

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FIGURE 7.3: Engraving (1628) from Thibault d’Anvers, Académie de l’Espée (Leiden 1630).

as “back” and “jump” (Brioist, Drévillon and Serna 2002: 137). Fencing was precise and all means were used to “educate” those who wished to master the techniques. Beside, above, and below the body of the fencer there were geometric figures that fixated the trajectory of his members. In 1553,Camillo Agrippa worked in collaboration with an artist to produce fifty-six engravings for his book Trattato di scientia d’arme, a treatise on the science of weaponry, for the artist could not simply be asked to execute: each work was the result of extensive discussion between the author and the artist in order to create the most accurate and faithful representation of the movement described. The prints adorning the book published in 1570 by the Strasbourg fencing master Joachim Meyer, Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens, a fundamental description of the art of fencing, or that of Girard Thibault of Antwerp entitled Académie de l’espée (1628), achieved ultimate realism (Castle [1885] 2003: 122). Nobles thereby became masters at wielding the sword, controlling their urges, being able to wait for the right moment to strike. In a nutshell, they embodied Castiglione’s much-lauded sprezzatura. It is no coincidence that two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet (1599–1602) and King Lear (1603), contained scenes of sword fighting that underlie the dramatic tension. This new ideal soon influenced all bodily practices that defined the rebirth of the body.

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REBIRTH OF THE BODY Treatises on education multiplied and allowed for the definition of an ideal according to which education must be more than instruction, because it shaped the human being as a whole. Education had to be general, intellectual, moral, and physical, and it involved trusting individuals into whom, by virtue of humanistic morals and therefore personal effort, was instilled the desire to surpass themselves. Yet, no one was able to match the remarkable erudition of Girolamo Mercuriale, in comparison to whom some historians have considered Girolamo Cardano to be superficial and Thomas Elyot to be a mere artisan (Nutton 1990: 302). Born in Forlì in 1530, Girolamo Mercuriale studied medicine in Bologna and then in Padua. In 1555, he received his doctorate from the Collegio dei Fisici in Venice and began practicing in his hometown. In 1552, this son of an honorable family had already published a treatise on pediatrics, but did not seem destined for greater success. However, in 1562, he was chosen to defend the interests of his fellow citizens at court of Pope Pius IV in Rome. At the time, Rome was a lively philosophical and artistic center—Michelangelo was still working there—in addition to being a center for the study of Antiquity. Mercuriale, then 32, became the personal physician of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Farnese opened wide the doors of his study to Mercuriale, who was thus able to establish contacts with the antiquarian circles of Rome. At Farnese’s court, he interacted with a host of personalities, an opportunity which helped him to refine his judgment and perfect his knowledge of the ancient world, as well as of the medical literature that so many humanists had undertaken to recover over the past century. He met Fulvio Orsini, librarian at the Farnese Palace, the Florentine humanist Piero Vettori, Giovanni Della Casa, the author of Galateo (1558), an important work of manners and personal hygiene, commensurate with Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, as well as the artist Pirro Ligorio (Agasse 2006a: xv). Over the next seven years, Mercuriale developed a program that he presented very simply in the dedication of the second (1573) edition of his work, De Arte Gymnastica. Despite “the . . . advantages . . . [that] have flowed from this art [of gymnastics] . . . it has perished . . . and is now extinct . . . Although this is so, we should not relinquish the hope . . . that . . . we may summon it from the grave and bring it once more to the sight of men and to the light” (Mercuriale 2008: 5]. He thus dived into the ongoing quest for knowledge that animated Roman scholars and that the invention and development of printing had accelerated. Conducted in Rome, Mercuriale’s work was marked by a philological and interpretive effort with a Christian flavor. Within the Church, as was the case in the Middle Ages, two branches coexisted: one, championed by Saint Paul, ignored the body, while the second brought it into focus (Agasse 2006b). Both currents are represented in the De Arte: there are citations from

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the censorious Tertullian and from the more progressive Clement of Alexandria (150–220). The latter was one of the few fathers of the Church to favor strenuous physical exercises, writing in his Paedagogus (III, ch. 10) that youths, and males generally, ought to prefer the gymnasium to the baths (in an earlier chapter he had condemned the baths as morally dissolute and effeminizing). He finds that gymnastic exercises contribute to health and ambition, inspiring not only good physical condition (euexia) but also the cultivation of self-assurance (eupsychia). He insists on the need for physical exertion (ponos) and particularly recommends running, wrestling, and, echoing his contemporary Galen, a game he calls phaininda, using a small ball (Clement of Alexandria 2002: 177–79)— in short, a Christian version of mens sana in corpore sano. Mercuriale was therefore not the first to urge the advantages of methodical physical exercise, but he was the first in modern times to provide his contemporaries with a practical manual, restoring, as Jacques Ulmann stressed, ancient Greek gymnastics in its totality and without limitation (Ulmann 1965: 109). Much like Galen’s De sanitate tuenda (on the preservation of health), first translated into Latin in 1517 and a well of inspiration for the De Arte, Mercuriale divided his text into six sections or “books” of varying sizes for an impressive total of 110,000 words (McIntosh 1984: 104). He tackled his topic with implacable logic, echoing the structure of resurgent Italian philology. Book I dealt with the role and functioning of gymnasiums; Book II was a reminder of all the sports of ancient gymnastics, such as boxing, wrestling, pankration, to which he added ball games; Book III examined exercises practiced outside gymnasiums, such as swimming, hunting, and fishing. In Book IV, Mercuriale categorized exercises according to season, place, the subject’s age, habits, and so on. Finally, Books V and VI are entirely devoted to the effects of exercise on the body and the health of the individual (Laty 1996: 104–5). Between the first edition published in 1569 and the 1573 edition, many changes were made, including the fundamental addition of illustrations to supplement the text, similar to the approach of those physicians who illustrated anatomy with the help of artists (Figure 3.2). Mercuriale proceeded in the context of the new conditions offered by printing for the publishing of scientific works. The first medical text to be illustrated by woodcuts dated back to 1461—thus, only a short time after Gutenberg perfected the technique in 1450. A new artistic field was emerging: some artists began to specialize in scientific areas, the greatest demand being in anatomy. The medical literature that Mercuriale studied from the time he was a student contained illustrations and it was indeed believed at the time that a good scientific theory had to come with illustrations (Rossi 2001: 44–8; Barbier 2017 passim). Following the relevant practice for medical books, he chose to write it in Latin rather than Italian, inasmuch as science was still propagated in the language of Antiquity, the highest form of expression of the resurgent Republic of Letters.

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VIOLENCE IN THE RENAISSANCE Judging from the changes that affected tournaments, but more importantly, the reinvestment into a kind of gymnastics that did not involve confrontation but that was compatible with the rise of indoor leisure, the drive towards good manners in the Renaissance period seemed to expand to include the broad range of sports and recreation in order to establish practices that were hinged upon the reduction of violence and self-presentation within the frame of civility. However, this ideal had to be somewhat tempered; although violence was characterized by deep transformations in the Renaissance, certain sports remained particularly brutal. One form of violence, although gradually played down, that found expression in Renaissance Italy was calcio, a rough game played with an inflated ball. However, it would be wrong to imagine that those who played in the Florence of the Medici and those who play in Series A Italian football (calcio) clubs are of the same caliber. There is a world of difference between the two. Along with the jeu de paume (tennis) discussed previously, soule, as it was called in France, or calcio in Italy, was another game whose rules were defined at the time. Semantically, calcio derived from the game played in the context of the Carnival, that is, the Florentine giuoco del calcio (kick game, but see below). In fact, Mercuriale confirmed that the name of the game comes from the fact that it involved kicking a ball. The first accounts of calcio date back to the time of the Medici in Florence (i.e., 1460–70), some of them suggesting a connection between the five balls or palle of the Medici family coat of arms and the Florentines’ fervor for the game. The players were gentlemen who came from prominent families of the municipal nobility, and the violence was as much an expression of emotional release as it was a demonstration of power. A number of popes were reputedly formidable calcianti before they wore the miter (although there is no real evidence to support this popular belief), including Giovanni de’ Medici, who became Leo X (1513–21) and Giulio de’ Medici, who became Pope Clement VII (1523–34). Lorenzo the Magnificent, undisputed master of Florence from 1469 to 1492, the opulence of whose court provided a living for humanists, painters, sculptors, and engineers, was particularly fond of organizing calcio matches for the city’s youth. The players who were not old enough to assume official functions found in this spectacle that overlooks social boundaries an excellent setting for their future stardom and an opportunity to make themselves known to public opinion. In 1491, for example, a game was held on the frozen Arno river, a singular event that captivated a large crowd (Guerzoni 1995). Upon Lorenzo’s death (1492), Savonarola attempted to put in place a theocracy of sorts. The Dominican friar tried to purge the city of pagan images that he had burnt in “bonfires of the vanities.” Calcio fell into disrepute and it was not until the return of the Medici in 1512 that the game was reinstated into

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official and private celebrations. Good manners making headway against bodily exuberance also affected the physical exercises practiced at the highest levels of society. The transformation of the vigorous Florentine calcio into a colorful spectacle, purged of violence, was mirrored by other, typically aristocratic, festivities where the old bloody challenges of the age of the knights were reconstituted. In 1580, Giovanni de Bardi (1534–1612) published his Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino, dedicated to Francesco de’ Medici, in which he outlined in a general way the rules of the game (Bardi [1580] 1978), though they were not actually itemized until the Discorso was reprinted in 1673 (Artusi and Gabbrielli 1972: 61–4, 73). Bardi established a relationship between the ball games of Greco-Roman Antiquity and the exercises that were developed in the Florentine Republic. Humanist, poet, soldier, composer, and mathematician, Bardi framed a global culture of the body and the mind within the purest definition of Renaissance philosophy, reinvigorated by the science of the Ancients. Bardi demonstrated that limiting the circle of players to young nobles would provide the opportunity to develop their courteousness at the same time (Figures 7.4 and 7.5).

FIGURE 7.4: Jacques Callot, Soldier hitting a large drum; in the background, crowd attending a game set on Piazza Santa Croce, in Florence. Etching (c. 1621). British Museum 1861,0713.1169. Alamy.

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FIGURE 7.5: Frontispiece of Pietro Bini, Memorie del calcio fiorentino (Florence 1688). From http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/10A13E0B. Digitalized by Google.

Calcio enjoyed the prestige reserved for Greek and Roman exercises, a factor that contributed even more to elevating the game to the level of official celebration. It became the hallmark of Florence, but with the passage from being a republic to being a grand duchy, the circle of players was restricted to nobility. The participation of the common people was limited to the right to be spectators. The game became a spectacle for those who were not part of the elite. The ritual became more and more complex. The players’ and officials’ dress was part of the theatrical staging. It marked the identity of an elite that had to affirm itself as such and continuously exhibit an image of itself. It becomes clear that the main condition for a successful game, worthy of that name, was the players’ self-mastery. There was an attempt to banish anger

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which induced discourteous behavior that was unbecoming of nobles. In 1607, due to repeated outbursts among spectators, a severe law was passed to ensure that order was maintained during games. Calcio represented a form of enlightened combat which, while calling for physical strength, allowed for refined combinations displaying elegance and agility (McClelland 2007: 111), thereby producing a cathartic transposition from untamed nature into an art form. From a popular game it turned into established domination, laden with enough conflict to not be a mere role of representation. The calcio was the most vital form of celebration of the Medicean principate (Bredekamp [1993] 2006). More than a precursor to football, the calcio was an independent variant thereof, including elements of rugby. Calcio games started in the late afternoon and ended when it became too dark to play. The playing field—most desirably the rectangular piazza in front of the Santa Croce church—was a little smaller than current football fields. Victory was achieved by causing the ball to pass over the adversary’s goal line, usually by the fullback driving it with his fist (“questo fa per lo più il datore col pugno”). Carrying or throwing the ball was strictly forbidden (“con mano giamai trarla e scagliarla non lice”) and was a blunder to be laughed at; kicking it across the goal line occurred only rarely (“di calcio con piede le si dà rade volte”) (Bardi [1580] 1978: 139). Bardi explains that the game ought therefore to have been called pugno but then it would have been confused with the free-for-all fist fights that occurred in medieval and Renaissance Italian cities (see Casini, Chapter 6 in this volume). Teams were composed of twenty-seven players facing each other on the field. Three groups of five players were positioned near the central front line: they were called corridori (runners), innanzi (forwards), or antiguardia (center forwards). Behind them a chain of “destroyers”—halfbacks (sconciatori), whose job was to stop the offensive of the forwards of the opposite team. Because of their sturdy build, they were compared to war elephants from Ancient times or to modern-day cavalry. The fullbacks (datori innanzi) had to snatch the ball in risky situations and pass it forward. The last line of defenders, positioned in front of the back line (linea di fondo), was composed of three fullbacks (datori addietro), playing the role of the ultimate security lock. The engravings made by Jacques Callot between 1610 and 1624 help to get a better idea of the composition of the teams. The main difference between gala calcio (calcio a livrea) and ordinary calcio (calcio diviso) is in the ceremonial. Gala calcio teams were not formed directly on the field. They were constituted by the best players among nobles. The morning of the game, the teams wearing their costumes met at the house of the flag bearer and then paraded to the Piazza di Santa Croce. The teams did a solemn tour of the field. The match was officiated by six referees, chosen among former players, positioned on a raised tribune situated along the length of the field. Gala calcio lasted two hours, including the one-hour-long ceremony. The

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most important figure at the ceremony was the flag bearer, escorted by a group of seven pages. The rest of the team followed. An entire mythology was used in order to make the spectacle pleasant and meaningful. The opening parade clearly shows that a game of calcio was anything but a simple sports event. The hour-long match was followed by a ball and the handing of the flags by the defeated team to the winners. This ritual was artfully told by Bini in his Memorie del calcio fiorentino, published in 1688. Written for Ferdinando de’ Medici’s wedding with Violante Beatrice of Bavaria, the book was the first history written about the calcio fiorentino (Bredekamp [1993] 2006). The objective of the book was to please Ferdinando who had a keen interest in this sport and, constituting an updated treatise, it was also intended as a legacy to Florentine youth in order to enable it to train according to the rules. Thus, although the calcio could be qualified as an art of war, it was also increasingly defined by the nobility’s identity markers and by its concern for self-presentation.

CONCLUSION A founding moment of the emerging modernity, the Renaissance has long been associated with the revival of Antiquity, in opposition to the Middle Ages that were governed by a collective spirit of religion and authority, as Jules Michelet preferred to describe them. Far from this rhetorical dichotomy that did not correspond with reality, the Renaissance was above all a time of cultural and social renewal that transformed the daily life of populations, for both prince and peasant. The way men and women exercised, played, entertained themselves, and passed the time was in keeping with the medieval world. However, the tensions—in particular religious—that appeared placed constraints on the body and the mind. Limitations were established, against those who did not indulge in the right recreations as per divine providence and the rules of the state that was in the process of strengthening its authority: they were prevented, threatened, and punished. Ironically, these men undertook to put entertainment in words and in the minds, especially humanists who wanted to understand the world they lived in and to connect it to that of the Ancients, hence the reason for all the technical treatises devoted to games, in which rules and forms of organization were evoked (on jeu de paume, fencing, calcio, and dancing, for example), referring systematically to Greek and Roman practices. Slowly, the language was developed to provide more refined definitions of sports and leisure. Other major transformations and crucial changes that came with the Renaissance were the norms and forms to respect in games. Winning was no longer sufficient; it had to be done according to a ritual of civility of increasing precision and complexity. The freedom of the player could only be expressed through the constraints that were named, explained, and presented in a variety of forms in books that printing allowed to disseminate more and

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more widely. The success of Castiglione’s Cortegiano was immense. Shortly after, people started referring to the “delicateness of gestures” as a term to describe physical games and to “composure” in the context of table games. Attitude became more important than the outcome of the game. The civilization process consisted in adapting a culture of violence to a culture of the court, without being replaced by the latter. This was a slow process, in the course of which the two overlapped. Thus, we find calcio, the embodiment of violence, at the heart of the Florentine court space. These exercises were intended to cultivate the grace and beauty of the aristocrat’s body and when he was in danger of being maimed, injured, deformed, or ridiculed, they were revised: the quintain prevailed over jousts, professional players were used to play tennis instead of the prince. This redefinition of the framework of games was associated with a ritual that removed the games played by the aristocracy from those played by the common people. However, the peak of ritualization of exercise and games had not yet been attained.

Note * Additional material was supplied by Alessandro Arcangeli and John McClelland.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Representation ANTONELLA FENECH KROKE

Questioning the relation between visual culture and games is the occasion to reflect anew on the phenomenon of play in the cultural process (Ariès and Margolin 1982). While between the end of the Middle Ages and the early modern period one can observe a steady increase in the number of games (Krüger and McClelland 1984; McClelland 2007) and a boom in the category of leisure (Burke 1995b; Arcangeli 2003), this explosion also concerns the production of images portraying games. What do they show us about early modern visual culture and the culture of games, both for the sports historian and the art historian? How do they connect physical practices, the history of the body, and social history? In what way do they question the relation between actors, spaces, and contexts and contribute to a definition of norms linked to the contemporary notion of the body and time, as well as to relations among groups and individuals with spaces and institutional powers? From the fifteenth century, the depiction of physical exercise games drew on motifs already in part present in medieval visual culture (Barletta 1993; Francioni 1993), revamping them, however, through the prism of an early modern redefinition of games (Arcangeli 2003, 2010b, 2017; Tosi 2013). On the one hand, tournaments, ball games etc. continued to be visual indices of a courtly, then courtier ideal. Very early on, in central and northern Italy, these visual productions decorated aristocratic palaces: in Milan in the Palazzo Borromeo and in the Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, or in Bracciano in the Odescalchi castle, monumental frescoes depicted the life of the nobility, relating games that used a small tennis-sized ball, such as palmata (handball) and palla, in which the ball was struck with an implement, to feminine sociability. On cassoni (marriage chests) and deschi da parto (birth trays) (central Italy) as well as in 177

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illuminated books of hours (northern Europe), games were often linked to the festive and ritual calendar against a background of urban reality: the Florentine Scheggia shows the game of civettino, a kind of hot hands or slapsies game, in the streets of Florence (c. 1450, Palazzo Davanzati, Florence), Giovanni di Francesco Toscani paints a palio (horse race) on the Piazza San Pier Maggiore (1418, Cleveland Art Museum) while the margins of the Book of Golf (atelier of Simon Bening, 1520-1530, British Library) contain illustrations of outdoor sporting and leisure activities. In institutional and princely residences, these images took on a political and official tone: this is the case for the palio di San Giorgio in the Sala dei Mesi of the Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara (1476–84) as well as for the painted frieze in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio where Giovanni Stradano, around 1560, depicted a calcio fiorentino (Sasse van Ysselt 1993) (see Figure 5.3). On the other hand, the revival of the formal and sportive repertoire of Greco-Roman culture led to a revaluation of the gymnastics of Antiquity. Wrestling, swimming, boxing, weight-lifting and salto (acrobatics) (1572–74) are represented in the Sala dei giochi of the Castello Estense in Ferrara (Figure 8.1) (Lucchini 1987; Caporossi 2002) as well as in Cristoforo Coriolano’s engravings illustrating Girolamo Mercuriale’s De arte gymnastica (Venice, 1573) (Figure 3.2) (Siraisi 2003; Gage 2008; Vagenheim 2008, 2010–12).

FIGURE 8.1: Leonardo Brescia, The Pancrazio, a merging of Wrestling and boxing (1572–4), detail of the ceiling of the Hall of Games. Fresco. Ferrara, Castello Estense. Bridgeman.

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Already at the beginning of the fifteenth century Greek and Roman gymnastic practices characterize, in an astrological iconography, images depicting the Children of the Sun (Fenech Kroke 2019): men born under the influence of the Sun are shown there as apt for administering the state and justice, apt for religious practices but also for “athletic” activities. Appearing in German-speaking areas around 1430 (Blüme 2004), this iconography became the norm in the miniatures of De Sphaera painted for Francesco Sforza (attr. to Cristoforo de Predis, c. 1450). The scenes relating to royal dignity and to devotion occupy a separate folio while, just under the anthropomorphic figure of the Sun (Figure 8.2), gymnasts execute

FIGURE 8.2: The Sun. From Sphaerae coelestis et planetarum descriptio—De Sphaera (c. 1450). Modena, Biblioteca Estense universitaria, ms. lat. 209.

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the movements of fencing, wrestling, pole vaulting, weightlifting and acrobatics. Around 1460, the Florentine Baccio Baldini re-elaborated this iconography, highlighting its antiquarian character with the exercises presented and in the triumph of the planets. This antiquarian and astrological iconography disappeared at the end of the sixteenth century, but it was revamped by the inventions of the engraver Jansz Müller, who made athletes the unique representatives of the Children of the Sun. The renewing of this “sportive” imagination is the result both of a multiplication of images and of the spread of practices in Europe through an economy of games and the mobility of its actors. Certain sports became the defining attributes of some Ancien Régime nations as in the series engraved by Raphaël and Jan Sadeler (c. 1560), after Hans van Aachen: Italia has at its feet the ball and brassard of palla al bracciale (Figure 8.3), Germania has fencing swords while the allegory for France is shown with jeu de paume’s instruments.

FIGURE 8.3: Johann Sadeler (after Hans van Aachen), Italia (c. 1594). Engraving, 227x262 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, cat. RP-P-OB-7442.

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THE RISE OF THE “SPORTIVE” BODY An integration of games of exercise into medical practice (Arcangeli 1999, 2010b, 2014, 2017) and educational policy (Merlotti 2001a; Vaucelle 2009b) also bears witness to a process contributing to the emergence of a “sportive body.” From the beginning of the sixteenth century one finds in Europe portraits of noble children with rackets and other paddles; the works of Barocci, Ridolfi or Vitali depict the young Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, or others, now lost, signaled in the Barberini inventories in Rome. In France before the eighteenth century, only the Portrait of the infant Charles IX (1552, Musée Condé, Chantilly) by Germain Le Mannier and that of the young Louis XIV attributed to Philippe de Champaigne (c. 1650, Fondation Saint-Louis, Amboise)1 indicate the role of exercise in preparing young princes for governing the state. At the same time one can observe a rise of the genre of “children’s games” as exemplified in the series, very early and inspired by Antiquity, that Marco Zoppo drew around 1460 (Marco Zoppo or Lord Rosebery Album, British Museum, London, cat. n. 1920,0214.1.1). This type of image indicates that physical exercise was already integrated into philosophical-medical thinking, such as that of Marsilo Ficino (Morin 2009), as well as in numerous treatises on pedagogy such as De Ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis adulescentiae (The character and liberal studies befitting free-born youths, c. 1404) by Pier Paolo Vergerio, the Linguae latinae exercitatio (Practicing the Latin language, 1540) by Juan Luis Vives (Renson 1982) and of course the works by Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the 1420s, these conceptions had already been put into practice in the Ca’ Iocosa (House of Play) founded in Mantua by Vittorino da Feltre with the aim of educating the Gonzaga children (Freddi 2017). Supplementary to the time spent in studying, up to the age of ten, these children had to practice team ball games and running, followed later by horse-riding, swimming, wrestling, and fencing. Humanist thinking included sport in schooling for reasons of pedagogy and hygiene—as shown as well in visual culture (Veldman 2001, 2004)2—thus anticipating a systemization of these practices by Jan Amos Comenius. From the 1560s, Jesuit educators took on a significant role in this process; moderating the place of mortification of the flesh in youth training, through physical exercise they aimed to strengthen both body and spirit of competition, a fundamental feature of the Jesuit educational system. However, instead of the gymnastics of Antiquity promoted by the humanists, contemporary games—as ball games, races, pall-mall, or even skittles—were preferred (Ulmann 1965); one finds this, for example, in Les Trente-six figures contenant tous les jeux qui ne se peuvent jamais inventer et représenter par les enfants, a collection of engravings published in Paris traditionally ascribed to Guillaume le Bé or Lebé and dated around 1587 (Manson 2003; Depaulis and Parlebas 2017).3 The engravings organize the games depending on age. While games for infants were

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held to be necessary for their early learning, when attention was turned to exercises linked to a more advanced age, the engravings depict children making the gestures of skittles, badminton, indoor and outdoor jeu de paume, archery, as well as hoop rolling (Figure 8.4). Some verses underline stance, vigor, the “marvelous effort” produced by exercise, and accent the idea of warming up

FIGURE 8.4: Guillaume Le Bé or Nicolas Prévost (ascribed to), La balle et autres ieux (The ball and other games). From Les Trente-six figures contenant tous les jeux qui ne se peuvent jamais inventer et représenter par les enfants (Paris 1587), fol. 61. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, cat. Ea 79 Rés.

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produced by physical activity. The series is presented as a taxonomic enumeration of games in the tradition of the illuminated Book of Hours of the Ango family (known as the Livre des Enfants, 1500, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, NAL 392), of Zoppo’s drawings, inspiring later the engraved series such as those by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella or by Louis Testelin. However, unlike the latter—inspired by antique models and iconography of the putto playing various games or having playful attitudes, as one can see in many medieval and Renaissance artworks—the Trente-six figures have aims other than simply listing games, as they also implicitly reflect the educational policies and health function of games at the end of the sixteenth century. Based on Galen’s notion of temperaments and the different stages of life, Renaissance physicians—Bartolomeo Platina, Ambroise Paré, Girolamo Mercuriale, etc.—considered that infancy and adolescence were the ages where the body possessed the most heat and humidity. Warming up through exercise and the drying out which followed were considered adapted to those ages as they accompanied, physiologically, the development of the body towards the third age, that of youth or virility where the body became progressively hotter and dryer in its complexion. Antonio Scaino da Salò also emphasized this idea in his Trattato del giuoco della palla (Venice, 1555), the first modern treatise on ball games: In childhood exercise, albeit when irregular or immoderate, is good, save only it not be too tiring, for it absorbs the abundance of humours peculiar to that age & stirs up better the heat that is less naturally active in children. For youth, the beginning of the more robust age, containing more active & more vehement heat, more robust exercise is suitable, though it must be subjected to rule & measurement as regards the time devoted thereto more than it is appropriate for childhood. At the virile age the kind of exercise practised in youth can be followed, but it must be more restricted to rule & more moderate, for that age lacks the copiousness of humours that abounded in youth & yet more in childhood. —III, 6—Scaino [1555] 1984: 189; translation slightly modified Exercise was to be increasingly moderated with age depending on the development of the body, an idea also reiterated in Trois dialogues de l’exercice de sauter et voltiger en l’air (Paris, 1599) by Arcangelo Tuccaro, the first manual on acrobatics (Schmidt 2008, 2009; Arcangeli 2011).

SPORTIVE BEHAVIORAL STANDARDS FOR FINE GENTLEMEN The interrelation of visual culture, medical culture, and pedagogy is significant as regards the relations between physiology and propriety in the construction

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of a sportive body (which is a social and political body), but it also allows a better understanding of the visual strategies in depicting differently young players and adult ones. While the producers of images aimed to reflect the movements in children’s games, when they represent the age of virility the treatment changes; indeed the sportive nobleman is often a static player! Medical, health, and educative functions cede their place to the socio-political role of games (McClelland and Merrilees 2009; Mallinckrodt and Schattner 2016). In this context, ball games are emblematic (Bredekamp [1993] 2006; McClelland 2003). A rare document of the game of scanno (a game in which the ball was struck with a kind of complex wooden bat), practiced principally in central and northern Italy, and the first portrayal of a “sportive” adult, the Portrait of scanno player was painted around 1510 by Francesco Beccaruzzi (Figure 8.5) (Fenech Kroke 2014). The ostentatiously presented small leather ball and paddle, the figures’ gestures and expressiveness, the composition with

FIGURE 8.5: Francesco Beccaruzzi (ascribed to), Portrait of player of palla da scanno with a page (c. 1520). Oil on canvas. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. n° 158. Courtesy of Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

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Piazza dei Signori in Treviso in the background, the action of the page, all this idealizes the man and defines scanno as an aristocratic leisure activity. The association in the image of the game and the effigy presents the socio-political and economic implications of this type of ball game. While in the Middle Ages such ball games were feminine pastimes, in the early modern period they became masculine activities, no longer taking place in enclosed gardens (allegorized), but from the sixteenth century becoming a spectacle that gave visibility to the elites (Guerzoni 1995, 1996; De Bondt 2006). “The ball game is also almost always played in public, and is one of those spectacles to which the presence of a crowd lends great attraction,” wrote Baldasarre Castiglione in Il Cortegiano (Castiglione II, 10, 1959: 102). In England, Thomas Elyot (The Boke named the Gouvernour, 1531) and, on a different note, William Shakespeare (As you like it, 1599) bear witness to that same necessity for a gentleman to demonstrate his physical (and social) superiority over commoners through his athletic skills. Sport became an attribute of the nobility (Williams 2008; Fontaine 2009) and a form of collective self-contemplation which led to a distinction between “ostentatious leisure activities” with a political function and “ordinary leisure activities” practiced within a social group (Romani 1995). Beccaruzzi’s portrait celebrates the values of the body, making the Treviso player an ideal of virility and nobility: his pose, his gaze at the viewer, the ostentation of the scanno with its handle leaning against his hip are an ensemble of iconographic markers inspired by contemporary martial portraits (for instance, the Portrait of a man in armor, c. 1510, by Francesco Granacci). Among these markers, the page (generally himself noble) suggests, on the one hand, that the game is not an impromptu leisure and, on the other, that it is a social and political spectacle. In alluding to and reworking the figure of the squire in the service of the condottiere (Portrait of a man in armor with two pages by Paris Bordone or the Portrait of Scipione Clusone by Tintoretto), it accents the isomorphism of games, politics, and war (McClelland 2003). Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, jousts and tournaments served to exercise and prepare the body for a military career, which, because of the nature of armaments and combat, demanded strength and force. The early modern characterization of the body and sportive games must be put in relation with the change in military techniques that accompanied the introduction of firearms and the institution of standing armies. Physical agility was then more advantageous than strength, strategic expertise and flexibility became characteristics of this new military art. Considering the norms of ball games as a transposition of the laws that govern the world, Scaino went as far as to integrate the topics of political literature, making these practices a preparation for political action, thus extending the serious aspect of games.

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From this charming & honoured game valiant captains can gain much wise advice for the arranging of their armies, the planning of a battle, the capture and defence of a fortified place, for advancing & retreating in due time & order, the making of strategic moves not thought of by the enemy, for taking him unawares . . . For this game is of so excellent a nature that, although many practise it, few nevertheless become perfect therein: for it requires only men who are dexterous, agile, graceful, noble-minded & quick at making, without loss of time, sudden decisions that help the hand & mind of the excellent Ball player. —I, preface—Scaino [1555] 1984: 25 While Scaino sketches one of the first written portraits of an athlete, it is in French visual culture that one of the first models of the noble player (Figure 8.6) appears, in a costume book: two engravings, almost identical, show a man facing forward, static, elegantly attired, and holding a racket.4 While the inscription of the first (1581) simply explains that it is a “jeu de paume player,” the second (“Gentilhomme jouant à la Paulme,” gentleman playing real tennis, 1586) evokes the action of the game despite the posture and the neutrality of the background, which gives no indication relative to space and action. As a counterpart of the racket, the sword is the element of the composition that underlines the interrelation between jeu de paume and fencing. While until the beginning of the sixteenth century noblemen were shown with a sword in martial portraits, later the rapier as civilian arm became a social marker. Wearing one was authorized only for aristocrats and bourgeois in order to provide their self-defense, but it was forbidden for servants, students, and clerks (Brioist 2002; Vaucelle 2009a). Status symbols, sword and racket were thus attributes of the two practices which trained the maintenance, measure, and control of movements of the body. More than forty years later, an engraving of the Jardin de la Noblesse françoise (The garden of French nobility) by Abraham Bosse bears witness to this evolution in behavior. With his rapier still on his belt, a large feather hat on his head, a pall-mall club upside down in his hand, the noble player poses showing an ostentatious nonchalance, his back slightly turned to the viewer. A monumental figure and once again static: physical action gives way to a coded image of a “sportive” body. In the name of decorum, leading to an evolution in leisure gestures, the player is obliged to exercise a greater control of movements in a society which dictates very strict rules of self-control. This is evidenced by a decline in interest, notably in France, for strenuous physical exercises such as jeu de paume or ball games and the rise of those games that assured presence and elegance (Belmas 2006, 2011; Vigarello 1988, 2002, 2005). The appearance of Bosse’s player (Figure 8.7) signifies this change and the new infatuation with pall-mall which allowed a propriety of attitudes, movements, and clothing. Leisure action is minimized and almost disappears

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FIGURE 8.6: Unknown French artist, Gentleman playing the paume (1586). Watercolor and gouache. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

among the elements of the background where three small silhouettes play in a park. Thus in this progressive elaboration of an idealized sportive body, the player is principally a political and social body (Hairston and Stephens 2010; Kalof and Bynum 2010) and paradoxically a static body. Action and movement are distanced in favor of the image of a sportive body as artefact of civilization.

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FIGURE 8.7: Abraham Bosse (after Jean de Saint-Igny), The pall mall player. From Le jardin de la noblesse franüoise dans lequel ce peut ceuillir leur manierre de Vettements (Paris 1629). Engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-42.109.

SPORTIVE PRACTICES BETWEEN POLITICS AND SOCIABILITY These images bring together exercise, propriety, and self-control as social markers associated with the outdoor activity all contemporary authors advised. In the sixteenth century, depicting noble players in strenuous physical activity is indeed relatively rare. Putting to one side the best studied case of the jeu de

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paume (De Bondt 1993, 2004, 2006; Weemans 2012; Tosi 2013), we will look at two other contemporary examples. The first, cited above, is a scene in the painted frieze (1561–2) in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Sala di Gualdrada in Florence (Bredekamp [1993] 2006; Sasse van Ysselt 1993; Zollinger 2000) where a calcio is played on Piazza Santa Maria Novella (Figure 5.3). Traditionally the teams confronted each other on the Piazza Santa Croce at the occasion of the feast of Saint John (June 24) and for carnival, but also, from the 1530s, during princely festivals (entrances, marriages, baptisms). Calcio’s rise from the second half of the fifteenth century corresponds to the political rise of the Medici and the formation of the state of Tuscany; it reached its peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, only to fall off in the following century under the rule of Gian Gastone, with his draconian reform of Florentine feasts and their “confessionalization.” From the 1530s, the first dukes, Alessandro I and Cosimo I, both avid players of ball games, engaged in an appropriation of calcio, transforming this republican, ritual, and popular competition into a political spectacle associated with official Medici festivals. However, this politicization ante litteram of a sport was also linked to a process of legitimizing Florentine nobility (Boutier 2010; Klapisch Zuber 2003, 2004). Tuscan elites had some difficulty entering into European aristocracy; since they came from a co-opted oligarchy, they were a sort of “imperfect” nobility whose pre-eminence was, during the fifteenth century, principally economic. Already in the 1470s, the sources indicate that the calcianti belonged to the most important dynasties of the city (Medici, Strozzi, Tornabuoni, etc.). Because young people aged between 18 and 25 could not hold any institutional or official office, their social and political notoriety as well as that of their lineage was assured also by their sportive exploits. It is not therefore surprising that calcio formed part of the representative images of Medici politics when Duke Cosimo I took up the project of decorating the Palazzo Vecchio in the 1550s. As the calcio depicted by Giovanni Stradano was set in an unusual and non-official site, Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the fresco may be making allusion to a game played for the marriage of Alfonso II d’Este and Lucrezia Medici, the daughter of the duke. The Diario fiorentino (dal 252 al 1596) by Agostino Lapini recounts that for these festivities two calcio games were organized. The “official” one, on Piazza Santa Croce, was played between two teams formed entirely of courtiers; the second took place on Piazza Santa Maria Novella: through spite, the young nobles excluded from the first calcio organized a second match called the calcio de’ vagliati, on August 2. Lapini highlights the two teams’ elegant attire, gold and red for the one and silver for the other, as well as the number of players— thirty per team. This information allows us to identify the match as a calcio a livrea, distinct from an ordinary one (calcio diviso, played by two teams of twenty-seven players); as Giovanni de’ Bardi explains (Bardi, 1580), the rules were identical, but in the calcio a livrea, apart from the twenty-seven players,

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there were ground judges (maestri del campo) named by the prince and who represented the teams, and game judges (maestri del calcio). The scene painted by Stradano represents a scrimmage in the center of the field, players gesticulating, entering into the action and chasing the ball. Having said that, because of its emplacement high up on the frieze and the synthetic character of the composition and pictorial manner, the depiction of the action remains very generic and the players anonymous. A second example presenting analogous characteristics is a fresco painted around 1545–50 in the Château d’Oiron (Deux-Sevres, France). Duke of Roannez and grand écuyer of Charles IX, Claude Gouffier assigned the decoration of his castle to Noël Jallier, one of the painters active at Fontainbleau. Situated on the ground floor of the monumental stairway, the scene in question (Figure 8.8) shows gentlemen playing with passion a game of soule, while in the background two other figures on horseback are practicing the bague on the esplanade above a terraced garden. Quite exceptional is the fact that great formal attention is given to depicting the action of the game and dynamic bodies. Launched by one of the players who is running to the right, the ball rebounds in the center where the other players are following its flight to grab it; they are falling forward or backwards, raising their arms, or trying to avoid their adversaries attempts to trip them. Visual productions of northern Europe in the seventeenth century gave greater importance to expressing the movements of a sportive body; however, the image of physical leisure practices often also conveyed a metaphorical sense (Weemans 2012). The latter is explicitly political in a few of the drawings by Adriaen van Venne, in the album (1625–6) now at the British Museum, probably given to the Stadhouder Frederick Henry of Orange by the Bohemian King Frederick V (Royalton-Kisch 1988) (Figure 8.9). Crowned in 1619 but deposed by Ferdinand

FIGURE 8.8: Noël Jallier (attributed to), Soule game (mid-sixteenth century). Frescoes, Château d’Oiron.

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FIGURE 8.9: Adriaen van de Venne, Pall mall players. Watercolors, black chalk, silver on paper, from his Album (1620–6). London, The British Museum, cat. 1978,0624.42.30.

II, the latter sought refuge in The Hague. Frederick Henry and Frederick V found themselves caught between two conflicts, on the one hand the Eighty Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Spanish Monarchy, and on the other the Thirty Years’ War. During the long years of exile, the two men shared the same political aim—curb Habsburg power in Europe—around the same religious controversy—decide between two Dutch Calvinist movements, the Remonstrants and the Counter-Remonstrants. The political line running through all of van Venne’s album is equally present in the drawings that describe the leisure activities of commoners and the bourgeoisie as well as the sportive pastimes of the exiled king and the Stadhouder. The latter play a variety of pall-mall, the aim of which is to strike the ball towards a target that, in the drawing, corresponds to the post represented next to the bell-tower of the Kloosterkerk in The Hague. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the church was known for being the headquarters of the Counter-Remonstrants, of whom the king of Bohemia as well as van Venne were fervent supporters, unlike the hesitant Frederic-Henry, who in 1625 had even sought a rapprochement with the Remonstrants. Not only the religious building but also the action of the game are thus symbolic of the two players’ political and religious stances; in fact, in the image one can see the king preparing to hit a well-placed shot towards the Kloosterkerk, while the Stadhouder has a pose that seems hesitant, timorous, and almost fearful.

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A somewhat different allegorical significance is that shown in an engraving by Nicolas De Son, active in Reims at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Figure 8.10). While some indulge in swimming in a pool visible at the left of the composition, in the foreground some people are playing lawn bowling in the shade of a large oak, symbol of a Golden Age retranscribed into the universe of civilities of the seventeenth century. Iconographical motifs, codified especially in Dutch and German visual culture, this time carry the metaphorical connotation: first of all, in the foreground almost in the middle, the presence of a paunchy and poorly dressed man mixing with the nobles who are playing hints at the inconvenience (and even the possibility) of social promiscuity created by leisure activities. Then there is the recurring association of carnal love and games crystallized in the gesture of the lady who, to the right of the engraving, has placed her hand on a gentleman’s shoulder. Other elements, too, contribute to making the apparent harmony of the scene complex and ambiguous: turned towards the fence on the right at the back, a man is urinating. This scatological motif, present from the Middle Ages in northern visual culture, echoes the dog defecating just near the trunk of the large oak tree which dominates the scene. Already in the Biblical book of Proverbs, the animal is used to signify promiscuity and corrupt sexuality, but it is associated more generally, as in the Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, with sin or with avarice. While in the literature concerning games this latter vice is related to cheaters and those betting money, in this image the vicious opposite of leisure practices may be signified by the presence of a person wrapped up in a large coat (accompanied by a dog, he is wearing a wide-brimmed hat, his turned-up coat partially hides his face). Mysteriously, he is off to one side, at the edge of the bowling green at the foot of the pavilion; through this iconography one can recognize the figure of the thug, the spy, the fraudster.5 These metaphorical elements doubtless play the role of indicators pointing to moral and social corruption as well as to the dangers of leisure pleasures condemned by political, legal, and religious powers. Furthermore, in this subtle and attentive observation of bourgeois and noble ways of life, these same elements also serve to guide the gaze in an image that is ironic about the forms of this updated, new Golden Age. In fact, the same figure can also be found in a miniature by Adriaen van Venne (Getty Museum, Los Angeles) (Figure 8.11) which shows, in the alley of a park, a ball game between two teams of three players. One of them has just hit the ball, sending it towards an adversary who, diagonally from him, is preparing to hit it back, while, on the other side, his teammate is watching. The game is taking place in front of a public where once again nobles, bourgeois, lower-class city dwellers, and peasants mix in an atmosphere of idleness. The attention given to the social mixing and to the verisimilitude of the bodies in action, while arising from a naturalist register, still gives an allegorically and politically oriented image of the game. As in other works by the painter, there

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FIGURE 8.10: Nicolas de Son, Games in a park (c. 1625–37). Engravings. London, The British Museum.

emerges a vision of a harmonious society and the political pacification of the States of Holland. At the margins of the composition, the pile of clothing that the players have removed signals a metamorphosis of the social body into a hedonist body and a shift from the ostentation of clothing signs to the ostentation of a sportive body. A clue from the order of the narrative, the pile of clothing is above all a sign of the abandon of the “habitus” in the Maussian sense of the term. And once again, the image points to the risks that free time and hedonistic leisure could lead to: on the field one of the players is missing. Still wearing his hat, this player is off to one side near the fountain and, with a wooden brassard around his arm, is speaking to a person, the iconography of which is once again that of the thug and the fraudster. The equivocal exchange may make allusion to non-institutionalized gambling linked to all forms of games, especially in public spaces, considered one of the curses of early modern society. As well, as highlighted above, the presence of a couple caught in amorous frolics in the foreground reveal the metaphoric use of sportive games and the association of ludic body/erotic body (McClelland 2002a). The man is nibbling the woman’s ear, whose sexual appetite is indicated by the lute she is holding back to front; this instrument, both in early modern images and in literature, served as an erotic metaphor, as its neck was a visual allusion to a phallus, while at the same time, in Dutch the term luit (lute) was a slang word for the female sex (Zecher 2000).

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FIGURE 8.11: Adriaen van de Venne, A ball game in a Palace’s park (c. 1614). Oil on panel. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, cat. 83.PB.364.2.

One also finds the same pile of clothing and the same sexual allusions that take much more technical forms both in a miniature by Hans Bol (Games in the park, 1589, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) and in an engraving by the atelier of Crispijn de Passe (Figure 8.12), where the image of blowing up the ball becomes a visual metaphor for the sexual act, as hinted at by the inscription which accompanies the latter image: “Ecce tumescentem follem quae caussa tumoris? Cum spiritu infusus liquor / Wiltu den Ballon schlagen gschwind, Must sehen das du habest Wind.” (This is the tumescent ball, what caused the swelling? The fluid infused with by the air.) In the Latin verses, the word game between tumescentem, liquor, and spiritus—which means at the same time air, vital breath, and ardor—is explicit enough. The pun of the image and of the inscription becomes much more explicit in the legend that accompanied the engraving when it was integrated into the Énigme joyeuse pour les bons esprits (A joyful enigma for clever minds, Paris, c. 1615).6 Visual stimuli, the equivocal exchanges, the significant details titillate the curiosity of the observer while also alerting them to the criminogenic potentials of games within the cities. Unlike games of chance, sportive games were not condemned in the early modern period as such, but because of the violence and illicit conduct that such competitive practices might engender (Crouzet-Pavan

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FIGURE 8.12: Crispijn de Passe the Elder (school of), Playing a ball game (c. 1600–37). Engraving. Getty.

1993; Belmas 2006; Scott Baker 2016). The visual patterns elaborated by the artists thus make physical games an agent to cause the political, the moral, and the erotic elements of the image to converge. And in this—need it be underlined?—these representations forge a mental world not so foreign to that which characterized the relation between sports and images from the end of the nineteenth century.

NEW WORLD’S ATHLETIC BODIES Other stereotypes and/or forms of idealization emerge as well when European sportive culture meets the leisure and ritual practices of the New World: the Conquista led to the construction of a new representation of the Other and as well of the Other as player. One can understand this process by observing the codex by the German sculptor and medal maker Christof Weiditz (Fenech Kroke 2015–16).7 Conceived as a model for an unpublished costume-book, this album counts 154 drawings which list the costumes of the inhabitants of Charles V’s Empire; among them, on thirteen leaves, Amerindians. These are the first such images of this type produced in Europe; in fact, unlike the Amerindians of Albrecht Dürer or of Hans Burgkmair—imagined on the basis of textual descriptions—Weiditz’s figures were the result of direct observation. In 1528 Weiditz undertook a voyage, following Charles V’s, through the Empire. It was in Toledo, probably in 1529, that he saw a group of Amerindians, the Totonacs,

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whom Hernan Cortès had brought to Europe from New Spain. Research has shown that they were not slaves but nobles, indeed from Montezuma’s family; however, they were also presented to the emperor as attractions, as players and jugglers giving a show in front of the imperial court. As part of the entertainment, the Amerindians were presented as specimens and their Otherness indicated by markers already conventional at that time, such as their nudity and the attire of feathers. However, in the drawings, Weiditz focusses on and exploits another of these markers representing the Otherness of Amerindians, their games and, among them, a pre-Hispanic ball game, ritual and secular, called tlachtli, ullamaliztli, and batey (Figure 8.13). The historians (Pietro Martire, Motolinia, and Durán) of the Conquista all underline with a certain surprised amusement that the ball was projected by the players’ buttocks and hips. The aim of the players was to shoot the ball through a stone circle fixed to the walls along the field. However, points could also be gained if the opposing team did not manage to touch the ball or if the ball touched other parts of their bodies. The European sources wrote at length of the players’ dexterity and the strangeness of their movements, which they must have found particularly surprising. This type of physical performance underlined the high spirits of the people, their dexterity, force, diligence, thus displaying their economic utility—a fact to be reflected on in the sixteenth century, in the framework of debates about slavery in New Spain. This stereotype already permeated mentalities when Weiditz drew their powerful bodies, the tensions of their arms and legs and the firmness of their muscles. Amerigo Vespucci, in a letter to Pier Soderini, recalled “la gentile disposizione” and “la bella statura” of the Amerindian bodies: “hanno i corpi ben formati, e di modo fatti a proporzione, che possono meritatamente essere detti proporzionati” (they have well-formed bodies, and so proportionately made, that they can deservedly be called proportionate). He adds that they were people to whom effort came easy. Later, in the Monarchia Indiana Juan de Torquemada wrote: Like us, these Indian peoples played a ball game, though different from the one we play. The place where it was played is called Tlachco, which is, as we would say, a ball court. They made the ball from the gum of a tree that grows in hot countries . . . From this ulli they made their balls, which although they are heavy and hard on the hands, were very suitable for the way they played the game. The balls bounced and rebounded so lightly, just as if they were inflated, and even better because they did not need to blow them up; nor did they play for chases [as in real tennis]. but only to win, as in the game of chueca, by striking the front wall with the ball . . . The rulers and chief citizens went back and forth from town to town and took good players with them to play against other teams. And they played this game with as much and even more diligence than our athletes do. —1615, ch. XII, Bk 14; trans. J. McClelland

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FIGURE 8.13: Christoph Weiditz, Amerindian ball game (1529). Watercolor and black chalk. From Der Trachtenbuch. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Hs. 22474, Digital Bibliothek, http://dlib.gnm.de/item/Hs22474/1.

Weiditz noted on one of his drawings: “Auf Soliche manier spielen die Indianer mit ainem aufgeblassenen bal mit dem Hindern On die Hend an zue Rieren auf der Erdt” (The Indians play this way with an inflated ball with their buttocks without raising their hands from the ground). While the artist was unaware that it was a solid rubber ball, he did capture the action perfectly: crouched, with his weight on his bent right leg, the first player has just launched the ball while his adversary is preparing to react. The artist accented the tension of their muscles, their bodies’ concentration and readiness. The game demanded force, agility, mastery and above all, from the European point of view, a repertoire of unusual gestures. Their strangeness so captured Weiditz’s imagination that he drew an excessive and unnatural torsion of the head, turned almost 180 degrees. The Amerindian “sportive” gestures led to an image of the Other foreign to European models of behavior: their unusual way of moving their legs, hips, and hands raised the question of posture. In early modern Europe, someone considered uncivilized was someone with a posture without composure, an expression of moral disarray or of imbalanced complexion. Thus the Indian players were seen to have inappropriate movements: the Other is not simply a

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“playing” body, but a body that plays savagely (to say it with Arcangeli 2010a, when he writes about dance and alterity). It is obvious that, in the performance of 1529, these overseas sportive games had lost their context; their ritual value was erased for the benefit of an exhibition of exotica and the ability of the Other to produce astonishment. An ability which should be seen with the view of the Indian less as an individual “other” than as a body that plays “differently,” conferring on the way of playing a representativeness that expresses its Otherness. This is why, from the sixteenth century, such performances were repeated throughout Europe: in 1526 an Amerindian ball game was played in Seville, another during Elizabeth de Valois’ entry into Toledo in 1561, and ten years later for that of Anne of Austria in Burgos. It should be noted that in the thirteen folios where Weiditz drew Indians, seven featured their games. From here, these drawings made Amerindian ludic practices a reliable topos of Otherness, up to the shows of “the savages” sportive competitions during the Olympic Games of 1904, in Saint Louis.8

GESTURES AND RULES: TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND TECHNIQUES OF THE GAME The appearance of early modern homo sportivus in images should be associated, from the fifteenth century, to the process of normalization of ludic and bodily techniques in a specific ludic literature (Bascetta 1978). In many of these treatises the illustrations visualize the textual content shaping visually new norms about games. Among these texts, those consecrated to fencing as a sportive practice exploit—a first—the images’ potential (Castagnaro 2009–10; Anglo 2011). In the 1410s the manuscript of De Arte luctandi by Fiore dei Liberi (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 11269) mixes technical instructions and images of fencing positions. With the passage to printed books, this tendency is emphasized: the Opera Nova dell’arte delle armi (Modena, 1536) by Achille Marozzo appears, in fact, with very significant iconographic apparatus. While in the first edition the eighty-three engravings are unsuitable in transcribing gestures (because of the technique, the fencers’ complex clothing and reuse of plates), the 1568 edition, with its copper engravings, presents a much more effective visual system. Symptomatic of the role given to images in fixing techniques is the Trattato di scienza d’armi (Rome, 1553) by Camillo Agrippa: not only do the engravings present movements on the basis of geometric schemes; not only are the fencers now nude figures in order to describe with precision the gestures; but also, for the first time, different positions are depicted on the same page in order to visualize their deployment. A posture is sometimes shown from the front, the side, and sometimes from three-quarters while geometric lines illustrate the path of the sword in

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space. More interesting perhaps, in the engravings of the second section (chs X–XIII) four fencing figures structure the composition: in reality it is one couple of fencers, split in order to present their position at the beginning and end of the attack. This choice was not so much dictated by concerns of economy but rather to give an image of the temporality and spatiality of movements (Figure 1.1). The same thing is to be found in the treatise on acrobatics by Tuccaro, in which the woodcuts are characterized by two types of composition: first, a single acrobat is depicted at the initial moment of the jump; then, in a second illustration, in the intermediate or final phase. These images are inserted in relation to the description of the movement presented in the text. Secondly, in a second type of image, the acrobat is presented, in one plate, at different moments of the same exercise (Figure 0.3). Two remarks should be made concerning this literature and its iconographic apparatus. First, the sportive practice here is the object of a “diversion”: as the images generate and accompany the rise of new methods of leisure, these treatises participate in fashioning the representation of the early modern sportive body as a “performing” body, physically as well as socially. Indeed, taking the examples cited above, fencing supersedes the art of war, while acrobatics is disassociated from the practices of the street performer—a figure at the margins of medieval and early modern societies. Secondly, postures, movements of arms and hands, placing of the feet, handling of the instruments are consigned in the images in a way that, disassociated from the text, the reader can grasp (intuitively) the techniques of the body. Learning these could only be done efficiently through long hours of practice, with methodical repetition aiming at achieving the skill which comes with automatisms, as an embodied knowledge (Descola [2011] 2017). But the difference between reading how to place one’s body and seeing it, even just in an image, is enormous! The corporal knowledge is in fact difficult to objectify in language, always constructed in a sequence of sentences. Subject to analysis, the ludic action thus imposes its deconstruction, reconstruction, and modelization. Images’ agency assure the decryption of bodily and ludic techniques, as soon as they constitute a specific stage in the process of learning the gestures by the body of the reader-viewer. In searching to capture and to measure the movement, images break it down in a theoretic abstraction that paradoxically stops it. In short, the visual apparatus of this sportive literature allowed, on the one hand, physical games to be disassociated from the practices to which they were related (war or spectacles); on the other hand, they allowed, through their analytical breakdown and instantaneous visibility, viewers to study and grasp movements, gestures, sequences in space as well as time. The potentials of imagery were exploited to meet the demands of an incipient sportive literature

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and its readers. New technical means of visualizing movements and sport have always gone well together; without going as far as the 3D modeling that today’s technology allows, one can think of photography, which in the nineteenth century allowed the study of the movements of animals and humans partaking in sport, among other things. However, unlike the chronophotography and graphics by Marey and the plates by Muybridge which analyze an action at as many moments as there are shots, engravings in early modern treatises capture a limited number of moments, but sufficient to synthesize intuitively the development of a gesture (Tortajada 2008). Other preoccupations emerge in the six illustrations of Trattato del giuoco della palla by Scaino. The work examines, distinguishes, and compares ball games, contributing to establishing, in Europe, the specific feature of the ball games as pallone, palla al bracciale, pall-mall, jeu de paume and also, as mentioned before, the palla da scanno. Accompanying the explanations (II, 11–12) on the nature of the leather to make the balls, on their inflating, weight, and diameter, the first two engravings present palla al bracciale and palla da scanno equipment: they show the balls, the pumps to inflate them, and the paddles with their dimensions, finishing, and grooves indicated. The four other illustrations focus on the courts: the first depicts the jeu de paume of the Louvre Palace while the other three are plans for courts for courte paume, for gioco di paletta (wooden paddle), for jeu de paume played with the hand and the paddle. Codifying playing area dimensions is also part of the Discorso sopra il giuoco del calcio fiorentino (An essay on Florentine calcio, Florence 1580) by Giovanni de’ Bardi, with its sole engraving showing a game on the Piazza Santa Croce, a place traditionally dedicated to sport (among other ludic and spectacular practices). On the ground, two teams of twenty-seven players are represented in movement in front of spectators placed behind barriers. Including an alphanumerical system in the image makes it less a narration and more a model indicating roles and placing of players in a composition that remains naturalist-descriptive (Figure 8.14). However, in the 1673 edition of the same treatise and then in the Memorie del calcio fiorentino (1688) by Pietro Bini, a variant of this composition presents the players static in the initial “theoretical” positioning. In a second illustration, this composition becomes a scheme with a caption giving the set dimensions of the grounds, the placing and role of the players (Bredekamp [1993] 2006). The images of these ludic techniques play on their visuality and establish a regime of communication that accompanies and/or replaces that of the text. Because of this, they are an expression of a normativity that cannot simply be understood as a visual translation of the rules. They transmit not only information and knowledge but are effective because they produce norms relative to corporal and social practices in individual and social life.

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FIGURE 8.14: Giovanni de’ Bardi, Discorso sopra ’l giuoco del calcio (Florence [1580] 1615).

DID EARLY MODERN MEN ALREADY PRACTICE SPORTS? While early modern visual culture contributed to a renewal of ludic norms and practices, they also provide some elements to respond to the question: could one be “sportive” before the eighteenth century (McClelland 2009)? Those that hold that ancient exercise games are activities which cannot be assimilated in sport should perhaps examine more carefully certain visual representations. Some of the ten small engravings with scenes from life in Florence surrounding a map of the city after Stefano Buonsignori (c. 1630) depict sport competitions both specialized and organized. One shows a wrestling tournament where two pairs of athletes confront each other in a raised ring set in the courtyard of a palace (Figure 8.15); the spectators surround the podium or watch from windows. In a second vignette there is a boat race on the Arno which has brought together a much more diverse public along the banks and on the bridges. These subjects have a representative value of the social and civic life of the city, linked perhaps to princely festivals, if one can believe the Medici standards waving in certain scenes. The ritual or official tenor of these sportive competitions is absent, on the other hand, in the Wrestlers that Michael Sweerts

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painted in 1658 in Rome (Figure 8.16): contrasting light, the frightened gesture of the man raising his arms and fleeing, suggest the dramatic tension of a brawl. However, the scene presents two athletes during a wrestling tournament where nothing is improvised: one the one hand, the fact that the organization and supervision of the meeting is assured by a jury, the members of which, wearing black hats, can be seen at a table in the background; and on the other, through the presence of commoner spectators, some of whom are in the stands. While two of the wrestlers are competing body to body, a third is undressing to enter into the competition. Between the latter and the two other competitors, a fourth athlete is kneeling before the jury (to receive the prize for his victory?). The dramatic tone that the artist injects into the scene suggest the tension that usually animates a tournament, but perhaps also that the sportive competitions in public were the object, in Rome as elsewhere, of politics aiming at a limitation or control in order to avoid disorder and violence (Fenech Kroke 2016). The textual sources are rich in this regard, but they also preserve the memory, already in the sixteenth century, of professional athletes hired specifically for their physical skills and their performance in meetings that saw competition between neighborhoods or even cities. Thus, if sport is defined by the professionalism of its actors, by organized practice and competitions, and by

FIGURE 8.15: Stefano Buonsignori (after), Wrestling match in Florence (1627–36). Engraving. London, The British Museum, cat. 1888,0612.67.

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FIGURE 8.16: Michael Sweerts, Roman Wrestlers (c. 1648–50). Oil on canvas. Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, cat. 2496.

the development of a dedicated economy, early modern exercise games are then certainly sports, in line with the principle and despite any exceptional cases. This hypothesis is less a categorical, theoretical affirmation than a provocation addressed to those for whom these images are uniquely aesthetic objects rather than what they also are—that is, sources of a specific regime of expression which actively contribute to the comprehension of cultural phenomena. Giving forms to practices, remodeling the tastes and clothing, influencing thus not only ways of life and behavior but also the values that one assigns to the latter: the images of early modern ludic-sportive games thus do not have only an informative, aesthetic and in certain cases injunctive function, they are also normative in that they contributed to fashioning and renewing both the conception of time, the body, the ways of the sociability and the practices that the societies of the Ancien Régime began to see as preferable, even desirable. The “fruitful ambivalence” (Camille 2003: 276) of these images reveals the complexity of the emergence of the sportive body as a social, cultural, and political marker, a complexity which bears witness to the slow process of formation and stabilization of that which is “free time.” As a result, the relation between images and sportive culture concerns principally the intelligence of what this time signified for the societies of the Ancien Régime in the construction

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of the notion itself of “sport”: sport which, as culture and as practice, did not suddenly make its appearance in nineteenth-century England.

Notes 1. In both cases it is a badminton racket. In the case of the portrait de Charles IX the racket may, however, have been added later. 2. This is the case, for example of the Illustrissimi Wirtenbergici ducalis novi collegii (1608–09) engraved by Ludwig Diztinger after the drawings of J. Ch. Neyffer or of the Academia sive speculum vitæ scolasticæ by Crispijn de Passe (1612, Johannes Janssonius). 3. Typical of the productions of the rue Montorgueil in Paris, two copies of the album still survive: a complete one at the Morgan Library (PML 83633) and an incomplete one at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. According to Thierry Depaulis, the date (1587) of the series now in Paris (Ea 79 Rés/63) may be fictitious, as may be as well the role of Guillaume Le Bé. See Depaulis and Parlebas 2017, in particular 105–46. 4. BNF, Estampes et Photographie, inv. Reserve OA-39-4 and Reserve OA-17-FOL. 5. In the 1613 edition of his Iconologia, Cesare Ripa applied this form to the personification of the spy (Spia, II, 254). 6. “Ie le vy qu’il tenoit entre ses deux genoux/Quelqu’une bien parée et passablement belle/ Laquelle il l’embrassoit d’une manière telle /Qu’il luy faisoit monstrer son trou à tout le coup./Un autre ce pendant qui le voit, que sans poux,/ Sans haleine, & sans vent, sans cesse elle chancelle,/ S’approche, & se choquant brusquement avec elle/ Faict qu’il tient le dessus, & elle le dessoubs. Après entre ses mains un long chose il empoigne qu’il luy met dans le ventre, & hastant la besongne, pousse tant et souvent que grosse elle devint.”(I saw him holding between his knees someone/thing very trim and rather attractive, whom/which he was embracing in such as way as to cause her/it to thereby display her/its orifice. Meanwhile, another seeing her/it totter lifeless, breathless, and without air, approaches and bumps her/it in such as way that he is on top and she/it underneath. He then seizes a long thing with his hands and puts it into her/its belly, then hastening to the task he thrusts so much and so often that she/it became pregnant/full) [trans. J. McClelland], Enigme joyeuse pour les bons esprits, 1624: 43. The French plays on the ambiguities between grammatical and sexual gender to create the humor. 7. Der Trachtenbuch, 1529, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Hs. 22.494, 4°. See the two facsimiles by Hampe (1927) and by Casado Soto (2001), Briesemeister 2006, McKenzie Satterfield 2007. 8. See, among others, Carlson 1989; Delsahut 2008, 2011a2011b.

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226

CONTRIBUTORS

Alessandro Arcangeli teaches early modern, Renaissance, and cultural history at the University of Verona. He is the author of a reference book on historiography and method (Cultural History: A Concise Introduction, London 2012) and of specialist studies of attitudes towards dance (with particular emphasis on cultural exchange) and play (Recreation in the Renaissance, Basingstoke 2003). Passions and dreams offered some of his recent research topics. He is co-editor of collective volumes (including A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age, with M. Tamm) and book series (among others, “Cultures of Play,” Amsterdam), as well as member of editorial boards (such as that of the journal Ludica). Élisabeth Belmas is professor emeritus of modern history at the University Paris 13, member of the IRIS laboratory (UMR8156-U997) and coordinator of the theme “Construction and dissemination of medical knowledge” of the axis “Health, society” at MSH Paris-North. She is also Secretary General of GIS “Jeu et Sociétés.” Her research focusses on the history of play in early modern French society (“Les échanges ludiques entre la France et l’Espagne,” in E. Roulet [ed.], Conquistadors, négriers, inquisteurs, Paris 2018; “Tricheurs et tricheries au jeu au XVIIIe siècle. La figure du chevalier d’industrie,” in Droits, 2017) and the history of health and illness (with co-edited volumes on the historical epidemiology of soldiers at the Hôtel des Invalides, 2018, and on funerals in early and late modernity, 2017). Matteo Casini is lecturer of Renaissance and Mediterranean history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His specialty has been the history of rituals and festivals in the Italian and Venetian Renaissance. He has published essays in many Italian and international journals and proceedings, and the book Political 227

228

CONTRIBUTORS

Festivals in Florence and Venice in the Renaissance (Venice, 1996). He was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, Harvard University, and University of Florence (Florence, Italy), the Folger Shakespeare Library and National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), UCLA, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, NJ, and others. Antonella Fenech Kroke is an art historian, researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Centre André Chastel/Sorbonne University. She works on early modern art and visual culture, and more specifically on the representations of ludic practices, on the emergence of notions such as “leisure” and “pastime,” and on the way by which games shape social practices, spaces, and also bodies. She has published books on the Italian Renaissance (Giorgio Vasari. La fabrique de l’allégorie, 2011; Histoire de Florence par la peinture, 2012) and is currently writing on the representations of bodily inversions (Upside down. Corps à contresens, to be published). Christian Jaser is currently a research fellow at the chair of Late Medieval History at Humboldt-University Berlin. In December 2018, he finished his postdoctoral thesis (Habilitationsschrift) on fifteenth-century urban horse racing in Italy and Germany. He held appointments as a doctoral and postdoctoral research fellow at Humboldt-University Berlin and at the Technische Universität Dresden. He obtained several scholarships of the Historisches Kolleg in Munich, of the German Historical Institutes in Rome and Paris and of the EHESS Marseille. His dissertation entitled Ecclesia maledicens. Rituelle und zeremonielle Exkommunikationsformen im Mittelalter was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2013. He co-edited anthologies on medieval and early modern dueling and a forthcoming book on urban contests in Renaissance Europe. Diane Roussel is an assistant professor of history at the University of ParisEst Marne-la-Vallée. She is the author of Violences et passions dans le Paris de la Renaissance (Champ Vallon, 2012). Her current research focusses on the social history of justice (co-editor of Les justices locales et les justiciables. La proximité judiciaire au Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015) and on the settlement of disputes in early modern Europe. She is also working on the everyday life in Paris during the Wars of Religion and the 1590 siege. Angela Schattner is a specialist in the social and cultural history in early modern Britain and Germany, the history of the body, disability, sports, exercise, and leisure. She was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute London (2010–16) and the University of Bremen (2016). She is now an independent historian, researching the history of early modern sports in her spare time while working on recycling the non-recyclable at TerraCycle in her day job. She is the author of Zwischen Familie, Heiler und Fürsorge (Stuttgart 2012) and has

CONTRIBUTORS

229

edited, together with Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture (London 2016). Laurent Turcot, professor at l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada Research Chair in the History of Leisure and Entertainment, is the author of Sports et loisirs, une histoire des origines à nos jours (Paris 2016). Using a range of different sources, such as engravings, paintings, travel guides, books, police reports, architectural plans, and municipal decisions, he is trying to shed light on how leisure and entertainment shape citizens’ identities and define group and individual behavior.

230

INDEX

Headings in italics are the titles of documents or foreign language terms. Page numbers followed by n. refer to notes with their number. account books 98 acrobatics 12–14, 82, 178, 183, 199 adolescents. See youth Agrippa, Camillo 10, 11, 81, 167, 198 Alcocer, Francisco de 124 alehouses 53, 120, 158 sports facilities 16, 58–60 Alfieri, Francesco Ferdinando 10 allegory in art 191–5 Amerindian sports 195–8 amusement 27, 107, 109, 131 Anglicanism 158, 159 annuities 72 antiquity 9, 35, 155–7, 161 gymnastics 109, 168–9, 178–9 sport 111 arbalest 77, 78 archery 35, 161 bows 77, 78 for children 151, 182 competitions 78–80, 94, 115, 142, 145 guilds 14, 78, 114–15 season for 45, 50 training 30, 45, 52, 114–15 women 149 aristocracy. See nobility armeggeria 37–9

armor 65, 166 Ascham, Roger 45, 90, 160–1 astrology 179–80 Auerswald, Fabian von 90 Augsburg 79–80, 92–3 badminton 182 ball games 10, 88, 189, 191–5, 200. See also bowling; calcio; pall-mall (pallamaglio); pallone; soule; tennis Amerindian 196–8 for education 33, 181, 183 equipment 77, 184–5, 200 large-scale games 124–8, 136–7, 153 nobility 49, 75–7, 138–9, 184–5 public spaces 51, 68 rules 91–2 rural areas 136–7 socio-political role 184 urban centers 117, 136–7 women 148, 177 balls 177, 197, 200 manufacture of 64, 66–7 Baluda, Giocondo 10 Bardi, Giovanni de’ 91–2, 137–8, 142, 149, 171, 173, 200 Bassompierre, François de 166 231

232

battles, ritual 124–8, 144. See also bridge battles bear-baiting 60, 159 Beccaruzzi, Francesco 184–5 behavior 90, 183–4 civility 80–1, 83–4, 124, 170, 171, 174 gentlemanlike 123, 137 ludic codes 87–9 self-control 80, 84, 130, 186, 188 sprezzatura 80, 124, 164, 167 Behringer, Wolfgang 56, 88, 90, 133, 139 betting. See gambling The Bible (authorized version) 26 Bicaise, Michel 110 Bini, Pietro 200 body 35 cult of beauty 156–7 humors 183 sportive body 80–3, 161, 181–8, 203 Bol, Hans 194 Bonnetti, Rocco 83, 166 Book of Sports (1617, 1633) 47, 119, 159–60 Bosse, Abraham 186 boules 78, 80, 120, 127 bourgeoisie 136, 153, 191, 192 education 133, 161 jousting 145, 151 bowling 46, 49, 50, 52, 68, 192 alleys 16, 56, 58–60, 117, 160 boxing 52, 159 bridge battles 125, 142, 144, 147, 150, 151 bullfights 20, 40 n.6, 140, 142, 144, 146 Burgundy 132, 142, 145, 163 Byzantium 36, 155 calcio 144, 170–4, 178, 200 benefits of 88 and Medici 54–5, 137, 170, 174, 189–90 prestige 136, 172 public display 25, 49, 149 rules of 91–2, 173–4, 189–90 students 77 violence 124, 142, 170, 173 in winter 51, 170 camp-ball 53 cane games 20 Cardano, Girolamo 168

INDEX

carnival 39, 170, 189 carousels 68, 133 Castiglione, Baldassarre 19–20, 30, 75, 80, 124, 137, 148, 152, 163–4, 167, 175, 185 Catholicism Counter-Reformation 48, 51–2, 110–11, 158 in England 160 Jesuit schools 111, 181 Sundays 113, 118 cavalcades 68 ceremonial sport 148, 152–3. See also pageantry official ceremonies 147 wedding celebrations 96, 137, 140, 145, 147, 189 Charles I (England) 119, 160 Charles V (emperor) 147, 161, 195 Charles V (France) 56, 78, 132 Charles VIII (France) 166 Charles IX (France) 116 cheating 121, 192 children 150–1, 158, 181–3. See also education; schools chivalry decline of 162, 166 games for youths 151 pas d’armes 142 sense of honor 136 sport 30, 36–9, 132–3, 142–3, 145 Christianity 36, 44–5, 152 Catholicism 110–11, 113, 118, 160, 181 Counter-Reformation 48, 51–2, 110–11, 158 Protestantism 47–8, 113, 118–19, 130, 157–61 Puritans 45–8, 111, 119, 158–60 religious wars 4, 191 churchyards 50, 51–3, 119–20 civettinno 178 civility 80–1, 83–4, 124, 170, 171, 174 Classical period. See antiquity cock-fighting 56, 60, 159 Coiano, Bartolomeo da 103 Cointry, Nicolas 69 Cologne, tournaments 99 combat. See martial sports Comenius, Jan Amos 181

INDEX

communities 24, 53 large-scale games 124–8, 144 sporting events 113, 115 values 14–15, 31, 61 Compagnie della Calza 147, 151 competitions 7, 31, 64, 89 archery 78–80, 94, 115, 142, 145 crossbows 14–15, 94, 142 fencing 79–80, 99 shooting 49, 54, 78–80, 94, 96, 99, 101, 102, 104, 145–6 wrestling 202–3 for youths 151 condottieri 132, 185 contests. See competitions Corte, Claudio 90, 163 costumes 25, 137, 162, 163, 173 costume books 186, 195 Cotgrave, Randle 26, 27, 40 n.1 Cotswold games 119, 152 Counter-Reformation 48, 51–2, 110–11, 158 course de bague. See tilting at the ring courte paume. See tennis courtly life. See also nobility behavior 150–1, 163–4, 177 culture of 83, 152, 175 games 132 hunting 134, 136 court records 52, 121, 130 courtship 37–8 Covarrubias, Pedro de 31 cricket 50, 60 croquet. See pall-mall (pallamaglio) crossbows 14, 145 competitions 14–15, 94, 142 junior associations 151 crowds 115, 162 control of 55, 57, 89, 99–101, 116, 137, 142, 146 large-scale games 124–7 cultural transfer 26 Dallington, Robert 71, 117, 123 dancing 37–8, 75–7, 113, 161 Christian view of 45 for education 33, 81 Daneau, Lambert 110 Declaration of Sports (1618, 1633) 47, 119, 159–60

233

Delamare, Nicolas 113, 120 De la Palestra 9 Della Casa, Giovanni 168 Dell’Agocchie, Giovanni 10 Digby, Everard 12, 45 Di Grassi, Giacomo 10, 164 discipline 9, 101, 124, 157 dressage 83 Duarte (King) 81 Duchesne, Joseph 110 dueling 29, 39, 136, 142, 148 Dunning, Eric 16–17 education 164. See also schools; training Jesuit 181–2 Protestantism 157–8 role of sport 33–5, 160–1 treatises 44, 80–2, 168 Edward III (England) 78, 114 elderly spectators 53 Elias, Norbert 16–17, 136, 152 Elizabeth I (England) 133, 149, 158 Elyot, Thomas 146, 160, 164, 168 England 4 archery 77, 78, 114 ball games 27, 49, 128, 139, 159 fencing schools 166 Interregnum 47 public sports facilities 59–60, 69 ritual battles 125–6 Stuart England 159–61 tournaments 54 Tudor England 30, 132–3, 149, 158, 160 English language 24–7, 72–3 engravings 13, 186, 192–4, 198 games 173, 181–3, 200–1 illustrating movement 81, 166–7, 198–9 sportsmen 186–8 Enlightenment 36 equestrian games 75–7, 83, 161–3. See also horses; jousting equipment 55, 180, 186. See also weapons ball games 200 manufacture of 64–7 military equipment 64–6 rules 95–6 Erasmus 80, 134, 157, 164, 181 Este family 137, 139, 149, 189 horse racing 105, 115

234

etiquette 80, 123, 134, 161 etymology of sport 23–8 exclusion 61, 132, 137 Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro 168 Feltre, Vittorino da 32, 75, 150, 181 fencing 5, 9–11, 29, 34, 161 competitions 101, 103, 115 geometry of 11, 82, 167, 198–9 guilds 115 rules 94–5, 103–4 schools 79, 83, 94, 99, 103–4, 166 skills 81–2, 83, 136, 164–7, 198–200 status 158, 161, 166, 186 students 76–7, 120–1 festival culture 21 festival days 44, 60, 125 guilds 145 seasonal games 49–50 shift to leisure culture 31–2, 43–4, 130 urban race courses 15 Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) 18, 22 n.13 fighting 51, 52, 60. See also battles; bridge battles battagliole 142, 144 fight books 90 over sport 121–2 Fiore dei Liberi 9–10, 81, 198 firearms 8, 115 harquebus 65, 77, 78, 136, 146, 166 military strategy 165–6, 185 schioppetti 145 fitness. See physical exercise fives 50, 52, 53, 56 Flanders. See Low Countries Florence 163, 201. See also calcio armeggeria 38–9 battles 144, 147 football 137, 148, 151 tournaments 1–3, 145, 161–2 Florio, John 26, 27, 40 n.1 football banning 128, 146 children 151 in churchyards 52 seasonal games 49–50 spectacle 137, 138, 148 urban events 54

INDEX

violence 116, 127–8, 159 in winter 51 foot races 30, 49, 52, 60, 149–50 Forbet, Jean 83–4 France 4, 54 archery 78 fencing masters 10 hunting 133 jeu de paume 116–17, 122–3 jousting 18–19, 68, 145 public sports facilities 59–60, 68, 69, 117, 118 soule 126–7, 136–7, 151, 170, 190 tennis ball manufacture 66–7, 70–1, 95 tennis courts 56, 70–2, 139 weapon manufacture 65–6 Francis I (France) 18, 161 Francis Xavier 158 Frederick II (Emperor) 133 Frederick III (Emperor) 97, 99 Frederick IV (Prince Elector Palatinate) 48 Frederick V (Bohemia) 190–1 Frederick V, Margrave of BrandenburgAnsbach 96 Frederick Henry of Orange 190–1 French language 24–5, 27, 72–3 Galen 32, 75, 83–4, 160, 164, 169, 183 gambling discouragement of 31, 78, 112–13 etymology 25–6, 31 gaming houses 60 morality 110, 120, 130, 192, 193 by nobility 133 sporting events 49, 104–5, 122–3 games 7, 184 children 150 etymology 25–6, 27, 28 games of chance 110, 112–13, 120, 130 large-scale 136–7, 153 lawful 109–10, 112, 118, 121 morality 110–12 unlawful 109–10, 112, 118–23 violence 124–8, 142 gardens 58, 60, 69, 70 Germany 4, 10, 96, 180, 192 Christian education 157–8 gymnastics 179

INDEX

scharlach races 92–3 shooting competitions 101, 102, 115, 149 Gonzaga family 75, 105, 115, 137, 181 horses 140 Grisone, Federigo 90 Gros, Pierre de 141–2 Guarinonius, Hippolytus 133, 139 guilds archers and arbalists 14, 78, 114, 145 equipment manufacture 65–7 fencing 115 sports facilities 58 Guttmann, Allen 7, 28, 87 gymnastics 10, 75, 81 in antiquity 32, 109, 168–9, 178–9 handball 164 harquebus 65, 77, 78, 136, 166 hawking 49, 133–6 health. See also medicine children 160–1 and exercise 32, 44–6, 74, 88, 107, 110 and hunting 30–1, 33 Henry II (France) 18–19, 25 Henry III (France) 134, 147 Henry IV (France) 132 Henry VII (England) 98, 160 Henry VIII (England) 18, 59, 114, 117, 161 fencing guild 115 sporting activities 132–3 Holy Roman Empire shooting competitions 54, 55, 79–80, 115 tournaments 97 honor 38–9, 136, 142–4, 148 horse races crowd control 15 palio races 113, 115, 139–40, 146, 147, 178 rules 92–4, 96, 97–8, 101–2, 104 scharlach races 92–3, 99, 100, 104 urban centers 54–5 horses 90, 161. See also equestrian games for jousting 96 riding skills 33, 38, 81, 83, 124, 133 Huizinga, Johan 87

235

humanism 9, 74, 112, 155, 174 morality 168 pedagogy 32, 36, 88, 109, 181 Humphrey, Lawrence 111 hunting 133–6, 149, 161 foxes 16, 136 and health 30–1, 33 season for 49, 73 Tudor England 132–3 views of Puritans 159 hurling 17, 127, 136–7 identity 156–7, 174 group identity 61, 115, 121 Ierni, Franceso d’ 71 inclusion 61, 133, 137 Industrial Revolution 43 inquest reports 50 inventions 8 iocus 24 Isabella of Hapsburg 149 Italian language 24–5, 26–7 Italy 89–90, 163–4, 180. See also Florence; palio races; Venice fencing masters 9–10, 83, 166 jousting 101, 145 tennis courts 56, 139 tournaments 161–2 urban horse races 54, 97–8, 101–2, 105, 113 weapon manufacture 66 Jaillier, Noël 190 James I (England) 59–60, 114, 136, 148 Book of Sports (1617, 1633) 47, 119, 159–60 son’s education 128, 133, 161 jeu de paume. See tennis jousting 1–3, 40, 149. See also tournaments armor 65 death of Henry II 18–19 decline of 175 facilities 67–8, 70 jousts of peace 132 public rituals 37–8, 132–3 rules 94, 96–7, 102–3, 105 social status 30, 145, 161 violence 124, 162

236

judges 100–1. See also referees calcio 190 nobles 146 tournaments 163 jumping 34, 158, 160, 161 competition 80 segregation 148 knights 38, 97. See also jousting; tournaments knightly sports 67, 132, 158, 162–3 training 30, 58, 73, 74 La Broue, Salomon de 81, 163 lances 65, 96, 162, 163 Landucci, Luca 97–8 language of sport 23–8 Lapini, Agostino 189 large-scale games 136–7, 153 Latin 24 Lauze, François de 81 lawful games 109–10, 112, 118, 121 leaping. See jumping Lebé, Guillaume 181, 204 n.3 legislation 31, 108–9, 112–14, 118–20 leisure 17 rise of 28, 31–2, 130 as status 43, 186–7 time for 43–4, 48–9, 193, 203 views of Puritans 158–9 Le Mannier, Germain 181 Leo X (pope) 133, 170 licensed sports facilities 59–60, 69, 117 Liechtenauer, Johannes 81 Ligorio, Pirro 32, 168 literature of complaint 45, 60–1 Livre des Enfants 183 Löffelholz, Martin 97 Louis XII (France) 114 Louis XIV (France) 136 Low Countries 4, 190–3 jousting 54, 145 ritual battles 127 shooting competitions 55, 142 women archers 14–15, 149 lower classes 19, 26, 49–50, 132, 141–4 apprentices 47, 71, 74, 128 armed sports 77–9 festival days 44 large-scale games 124–8

INDEX

as spectators 172 sports facilities 60, 139 visual representation 192–3 Lowe, Roger 46, 50 ludus 24, 25, 31 Luther, Martin 157–8 McClelland, John 6–7, 18–20, 136–7 Manciolino, Antonio 10, 81, 90, 137 marbles 69 Marozzo, Achille 10, 198 martial sports 52, 60, 90, 114. See also fencing; jousting; military training Maximilian I 97, 99 mazzascudo 142, 147 Medici family 137, 148, 162, 174, 201 and calcio 170, 189–90 Lorenzo de’ Medici 98, 105–6, 147, 162, 170 palio races 115 medicine 32–3, 44, 74–5, 166, 169. See also health Classical knowledge 74, 164, 168 Menaguerra, Ponç de 90, 97 Mercuriale, Girolamo 32, 75, 81, 109, 168–70, 178 Meyer, Joachim 81, 167 Milan 163, 177 military equipment 64–6. See also weapons military strategy 166, 185–6 military training 88, 111. See also martial sports jousting 30, 162, 185 use of weapons 30, 77–80, 114–15, 150 mind 32, 157 Montaigne, Michel de 66, 75–6, 79, 147, 166 Monti, Pietro 30 Moody, Joshua 159 morality 45, 75, 107–8, 110–12, 130, 195 Moryson, Fynes 70 movements 83–4 codification of 80–3 visual representation 12–13, 182, 187–8, 190, 198–200 Mulcaster, Richard 33–5, 160–1 Müller, Jansz 180 Native Americans 195–8 naturalism 36

INDEX

Netherlands. See Low Countries Newcome, Henry 46 nobility 149. See also courtly life armed sports 19–20, 30, 79–80, 97 ball games 172, 184–5 chivalry 132–3 education of 75–7, 80–4, 88, 91, 116, 124, 150–1, 160, 181 fencing 83, 136, 166 hunting 133–6 spending records 48–9 sport as attribute 124, 132, 138–9, 174, 185, 186 sporting spaces 56–8, 137 time for leisure 43–4, 46, 60 violence in sport 123–4, 132, 162 Nördlingen 93, 99, 102 Northbrooke, John 111–12 pageantry 132–3, 148. See also ceremonial sport Palatine Princes 48–9 palio races 113, 139–40, 147, 178 rules 93, 100, 102, 104 status 115, 146 palio shooting competition 145–6 palla. See balls pall-mall (pallamaglio) 10, 27, 191, 200 alleys 56–7, 60, 69, 117 and education 181 and health 88, 124, 161 popularity 77, 123, 186–7 rules 91 pallone 49, 56, 137, 200 palmata 177 papacy 133, 146, 168, 170 pas d’armes 30, 142 Passe, Crispin de 194 performance 25–6, 199. See also spectacle; theatre Amerindians 196–8 calcio 25, 172 jousting 132–3 performative reliability 89 pétanque 69 phaininda 169 physical exercise 45–6, 118. See also health role in education 32–3, 160–1, 164, 181–3

237

training 168–9 vigor 17–19 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio 151 Pisa 125, 142, 147, 150, 151 play 6, 7, 87 etymology 25–6 playing fields 53–4 Plemp, Vopiscus Fortunatus 110 Pluvinel, Antoine de 81, 83, 90, 163 political control 3, 17, 88, 146–8, 174 political display 178, 185, 187, 202 in art 190–1, 192–3, 195 calcio 54–5, 189–90 palio races 115 tournaments 132, 162 posture 83, 123 acrobatics 199 Amerindians 197–8 fencing 166, 198–200 power relationships 39, 133, 144, 161 printing press 12, 90, 155, 174 woodcuts 81, 90, 169, 199 private spaces 56–8 prizes 101, 121, 149, 162 professionalism 28, 152, 202–3 jousting 38 tennis 98, 175 property damage 51–2, 68, 119 prostitutes 149–50 Protestantism 47–8, 113, 118–19, 157–61 public display 38, 39, 89, 162, 201. See also spectacle calcio 171, 174 shooting competitions 115 tennis 185 tournaments 132, 162–3 public spaces 51–5, 68, 69, 89, 117 Puritans 45–8, 111, 119, 158–9 Quijada de Reayo, Juan 90 quintain 67, 70, 132, 162, 163 Rabelais, François 75 races. See also horse races boats 51, 201 foot races 30, 49, 52, 60, 149–50 rackets 64, 67 recreation 27, 28 Christian attitude 45–7

238

control of 109, 111–12 social status 131 referees 89, 100, 144. See also judges calcio 173 jeu de paume 121 shooting competitions 101 Reformation 4, 51–2, 157–61, 191 regattas 51, 143–4, 146–7, 149 regulations. See rules religion. See Christianity Renaissance definition of 3–4 experience of sport 17–21 physical culture 15–16 riding. See horses rituals 37–8, 147, 174–5, 178 battles 124–8, 144 of misrule 39 symbolism 161 of tournaments 132, 162–3 Rome 168, 202 rulers 97, 132 education of 161, 181 rules 89–90, 104–5, 118, 163–4 armed sports 79–80, 116 ball games 91–2 fencing 90, 94–5, 103–4, 116–23 horse racing 92–4, 97–8 importance of 14, 105–6, 130 jeu de paume 83–4 shooting competitions 78, 92, 94, 96, 102 sports equipment 95–6 tournaments 96–7, 102–3 visual representation 200 running 77, 159, 161, 181 races 30, 49, 52, 149–50 rural areas 66, 119, 127, 136–7 Sabbatarians 46–8, 111–12, 119, 158–60 Sadeler, Raphaël and Jan 180 Sales, Francis de 110–11 salto. See acrobatics sassaiole. See stone-throwing Savonarola 105–6, 170 Scaino, Antonio 10, 84, 88, 91, 101, 137, 149, 183, 185–6, 200 scanno 184–5 scharlach races 92–3, 99, 100, 104

INDEX

schools 160–1. See also education fencing 79, 83, 94, 99, 103–4, 166 Germany 157–8 Jesuit schools 111 La Casa Giocosa 75, 150, 181 scoring. See rules segregation 148, 150 self-control 80, 84, 130, 186, 188 semiotic square 6, 39–40 sexual allusion 192, 193–4, 195, 204 n.6 Sforza, Francesco 179 Shakespeare, William 67, 167, 185 shooting competition rules 92, 96, 102 competitions 49, 54, 78–80, 99, 101, 104, 145–6, 151 confraternities 145 Siena 144 horse racing 93, 98, 140, 146, 147 Simoncello 134 skittles 120, 181–2 alleys 68, 69 social practice 29, 114 social status 17, 60–1. See also bourgeoisie; lower classes; nobility equality of opportunity 104–5 hierarchy 97, 100, 115, 134, 144, 152, 153 mixing classes 145, 192–3 of players 120, 123, 186, 188 recreation 131 Son, Nicolas de 192 soule 17, 126–7, 136–7, 190 played by youths 151 violence 170 spaces commercial spaces 58–60, 61 for leisure 61 of nobility 56–8, 137 public spaces 51–5, 68, 89 restrictions 68, 119–20 specialization 69–72 Spain 4 fencing masters 83 sporting spectacles 20, 140 spectacle 137. See also performance; public display bull-running 20 semantic field 27–8

INDEX

spectators 53, 70 control of 55, 57, 89, 99–101, 116, 137, 142, 146 spectator sports 25, 30, 132, 161, 162 women as 53, 149 sport 7, 188–95. See also equipment concept of 4–5, 88, 108 cultural aspects 5, 11, 44–8, 114 etymology 23–8 modern 6–7, 43, 87–8, 152 semiotic square 6, 40 treatises on 8–11, 44–7, 90, 109–10 and war 30, 40, 162 sportification 16–17, 21 n.4, 89, 131, 136 sportive body 80–3, 161, 181–8, 203 sports facilities 26–7, 55–6, 67–72 steel manufacture 66 stone-throwing 80, 144, 147, 150 sassaiole 142, 146 youths 151 stoolball 50 Stradano, Giovanni 178, 189 Strasbourg 117–18 Stubbes, Philip 128, 159 students 58, 75, 76–7, 118, 120–1, 139 Sundays 60, 113, 114, 118 football 128 Sabbatarians 46–8, 111–12, 119, 158–60 use of churchyard 50, 52–3 swimming 11–12, 34–5, 192 season for 45, 49, 51 Talhoffer, Hans 10, 81 teams 32, 53, 75, 173, 181 tennis 49, 118, 170, 188–9, 200 for children 151, 182 courte paume 70–2 disputes 121, 122 in England 27, 49, 139, 159 equipment 66–7, 95, 186–7, 200 gambling 122–3 and health 88, 161 played in public 50, 52, 53, 185 professionalism 98 real tennis 18, 84 rules 101, 104–5 skills 83–4

239

social status 116–17, 138–9, 186 women 149 tennis courts England 58–60, 160 tripots (France) 56–7, 66–7, 70–2, 95, 117, 120, 139 theatre 25, 27, 69, 158. See also performance; public display Thibault, Girard 81, 167 Thiers, Jean-Baptiste 111 throwing games 50, 52, 64, 68, 78 tilting at the ring 48, 124, 132, 162, 163 facilities 56, 57, 70 time. See also Sundays appropriate for sport 45–8 restrictions 118–19 wasting 158 Tiptoft, Sir John 103 Torquemada, Juan de 196 Toscani, Giovanni di Francesco 178 tournaments 40. See also jousting crowd control 15, 99 knightly skills 30, 185 organization of 57–8, 162–3, 202 performance 25, 70, 132, 133, 162–3 rules 79, 94, 97, 102–3, 104 social status 132, 161 venues 67–8, 70 training 72–3. See also education military 30, 77–80, 88, 111, 114–15, 150, 162, 185 practical tuition 15 sports 73–7 Trexler, Richard 37–8 tripots. See tennis courts Tuccaro, Arcangelo 12–13, 81, 82–3, 183, 199 Turcq, Paschasius Justus 31 universities 58, 76–7, 159 urban centers 44, 136 competition between 54–5 culture of 14–15 elites 144–6, 152 guilds 58 large-scale games 142 regulation of sports 91–4 sports facilities 54, 57, 58, 68–72

240

Vadi, Filippo 9–10 Valera, Diego de 81 Vegio, Maffeo 74 Venice 68, 163 hunting 134 jousting 145 palio shooting competition 145–6 pallone 137 regattas 143–4, 146–7, 149 wars of the bridges 125, 142, 144, 147, 150 Venne, Adriaen van 190–1, 192 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 74, 88, 181 Verona, Guarino da 32 Vespucci, Amerigo 196 Vienna 100, 133, 139 violence public disorder 54, 124–8, 136–7, 142, 144 reduction of 17, 88, 128, 152, 170–1 sports of nobility 123–4, 132, 162 virility, age of 183–4 visual representation 36, 169 physical movement 12–13, 166–7, 182, 187–8, 190, 198–200 sporting activity 177–80, 188–95, 202–3 sportsmen 183–8 Vives, Juan Luis 181 voice, exercise of 33 walking 34, 75 war 4 and fencing 199 professionalism 166

INDEX

semiotic square 6, 40 and sport 30, 40, 162 standing armies 185 Ward, Samuel 46 water sports 51, 143–4, 146–7, 149, 201. See also swimming weapons 65–6, 81, 115, 164. See also military equipment wedding celebrations bullfights 140 calcio 137, 189 fights 147 tournaments 96, 145 Weiditz, Christof 195–8 winter sports 39, 51, 73, 170 women 14–15, 148–50, 177 ball games 185 chivalry 132 dueling lovers 142, 148 foot races 149–50 as spectators 53 woodcuts 81, 90, 169, 199 work 6 wrestling 9, 52, 201–3 in education 33, 77, 158, 161 in public spaces 51 rulebooks 90 Wynman, Nicolaus 12 youth 16, 183 bad behavior 118, 121 nobility 151 Zoppo, Marco 181, 183

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