Recreation in the Renaissance

The Medical Discourse 29
iconographic programme, they may express the wish to celebrate, with
public rejoicing and display, the successful reinstatement of order and
harmony after a cataclysm. Within a few years, however, the hope for
a new age for the Este dynasty was to be frustrated: Alfonso did not
manage to father a legitimate heir, and – while the family maintained
the rule of Modena – the Papal State took over Ferrara in 1598. The
Castle frescoes remain thus as the document of a cultural dream at the
waning of the Italian Renaissance. 18
As the reference to Guarino will suggest, as well as a revival of ancient
gymnastics, Renaissance humanism was responsible for a renewal of the
classical tradition of education (as represented by Plutarch’s treatise On
the Education of Children). In this context play and physical education
had a very significant role. 19 This is particularly true in the case of
Richard Mulcaster (1530–1611), Headmaster of Merchants Taylor
School in Elizabethan London, the author of Positions, Wherin Those
Primitive Circumstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for the Training
up of Children, Either for Skill in Their Booke, Or Healthe in Their Bodie.
A third of the book deals with physical exercise, the diversity of which
is explored in a series of specific chapters. 20 Mulcaster’s deep interest
constitutes a striking precedent of the role played by English public
schools in the invention of modern sport.
Antiquarianism and humanist education were not the whole story,
however, and the century spanning from the mid-sixteenth to the midseventeenth
saw a rise of medical texts from which reference to modern
practice was not wanting. Not surprisingly, given the importance of a
variety of forms of dance in contemporary society, a number of French
writers pay particular attention to that pastime. In a commentary on
dietetics based on the list of the nonnaturals and published in the
1550s, Jérôme de Monteux mentions dancing first in a list of the exercises
which are beneficial to specific parts of the body (in this case,
together with walking and running, to the legs: ‘le marcher, le courir,
et la dance exercent fort les jambes’); later, more extensively, while commenting
on a passage from Plato. The Greek philosopher had recommended
two forms of exercise as the most appropriate for the literate
(a narrower audience on which there will be more to say later): wrestling
and dancing. According to Monteux, they both have the positive benefit
of attracting the blood and spirits towards the surface of the body, after
intensive intellectual effort had driven them deep inside. Against Plato,