Recreation in the Renaissance

The Medical Discourse 23
book addressed a specific social group: the literate – Lat. studiosi (an
aspect of his work on which more will be said below). 13
Ancient and modern forms of exercise
If we now abandon the specific quest for the best sport of all, it is worth
noticing that Holling’s walking, Fonseca’s dancing and Ranzow’s
hunting had long been physicians’ examples for appropriate exercise.
For example, an influential medieval medical text which included
consideration of a selection of pastimes was the Taqwim al-Sihha, an
Arabic work by Ibn Butlan, an eleventh-century Christian physician
from Baghdad. The book consisted in a series of synoptic tables, which
provided the reader with an accessible assessment of the health
implications of a variety of dietary choices. While foodstuffs are its
main subject, the environment and what would now be called lifestyle
provide interesting additional material for some of the tables. For each
topic, the text provides a definition of its nature, benefits, damages,
remedies, and suitability to particular temperaments, age groups,
seasons and regions. 14
A number of codices of the Tacuini (or Theatrum) sanitatis were
illuminated by fifteenth-century Italian workshops. They contain an
abridged version of Ibn Butlan’s text, which, along with foodstuffs,
could be found assessing the hygienic implications of hunting on the
ground, moderate play with a ball, wrestling, rest, horse-riding, motion,
light exercise, singing, and dancing and music-making. Their images are
simple – in one of the manuscripts held at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
in Vienna, they are left as colourless, sketched line drawings
(Figure 3.1). But it may well be true that it is exactly by their
portrayal of only that which is essential that they are an effective means
of communication and best fulfil their purpose. Both men and women
appear represented in them, according to the gender destination which
is regarded as appropriate to each form of exercise.
In spite of a series of modern adaptations, the sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century literature I have been quoting was firmly rooted in
the classical tradition, to the extent that it often borrowed examples
that were quite old-fashioned. Ranzow was aware of the lesson of
Xenophon, and quotes directly from his treatise on hunting. A specific
ancient flavour transpires from examples referring to gymnastics.
Among the Renaissance literate, humanism had stimulated detailed
interest in all aspects of life at the time of classical antiquity, including