Recreation in the Renaissance

54 Recreation in the Renaissance
In total, a far from prohibitionist evaluation. The same Franciscan
master returned to the topic later in his treatise, when discussing the
moral implications of watching, rather than participating, play and
games. He distinguished between two modes of watching (duplex est
inspectio). One is casual and passing (in transitu), does not aim at sinful
pleasures and will never constitute a serious fault. The other, on the
contrary, is deliberate and persistent (inspectio studiosa), and can induce
to mortal sin, particularly if one stops and watches a comic performance
(ioculatio histrionica) or a dancing display made by lewd women (ioculatio
chorealis mulierum lascivarum). 20
Subsequent theological literature built on these foundations, and
developed a detailed discussion of the circumstances (of specific games,
persons, times, places, manners and reasons) which could turn playing
and dancing into a sin. This is the case in the extensive body of
literature that sprang from the canon by which the Fourth Lateran
Council of 1215 prescribed annual confession for all the faithful. During
the following centuries, a vast range of books, of a variety of different
types, were produced for the advice of either the confessors or the penitents;
and they could include detailed discussion of the circumstances
that concerned dance and ludus. By the time of the Reformation, this
corpus had noticeably grown and new publications, now circulating in
print, had become fairly repetitive, apart from the inevitable quarrels
between individual compilers (or competing religious orders).
The most influential pre-Reformation summae for confessors usually
comprised entries on play and games (ludus et iocus), and dance (chorea),
both generally assessed as neutral per se, though seasoned with a number
of caveats. Not atypically, the Dominican Silvestro da Prierio, in the
ludus entry of his Summa Sylvestrina (1515) – a confessional compilation
that enjoyed a wide circulation – could go as far as repeating, on the
grounds of Aquinas, that play in general was not only lawful, but also
virtuous; ten years later, Cardinal Cajetan (see below) could even call
playing for recreation ‘holy’ (licitus et sanctus). On the eve of the Reformation,
the summae showed a tendency to be lenient, to justify and
condone behaviour more often than stigmatize it. Contemporaries were
aware of this orientation: Protestant reformers denounced it as typical
of Catholic low moral standards, while Counter-Reformation theologians
felt embarrassed about it, and produced, in some cases at least,
more binding guidance for the faithful. Among the practices one finds
condemned in this literature is recreational masking, a transgression
that appears aggravated if a lay person dresses up as a monk or a nun. 21
As late as 1686, at the end of the period here under consideration,