INTERNATIONAL GATHERINGS.
European Gymnastic Federations 215
The Modern Olympic Games 216
Congresses for the Promotion of Physical Education 224
PART II. UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF THE JAHN GYMNASTICS INTO AMERICA.
Early Life of Follen and Beck, in Germany and Switzerland 227
They Settle in Northampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts 232
The First School Gymnasium in the United States, at Round Hill 233
The First College Gymnasium in the United States, at Harvard
University 235
The Boston Gymnasium, the First Public Gymnasium in the United
States 237
Lieber Succeeds Follen at the Boston Gymnasium 238
Later History of Beck, Follen, and Lieber 242
Introduction of Gymnastics in Other Schools and Colleges 244
CHAPTER XXII.
THE “NEW GYMNASTICS” OF DIO LEWIS.
Early Life of Lewis—Becomes Popular Lecturer 251
Introduces His “New Gymnastics” in and about Boston 255
The Normal Institute for Physical Education 256
Lewis’s Writings 259
School for Girls, at Lexington and Spy Pond 261
Later Life 262
CHAPTER XXIII.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
In the Period of 1830 264
In the Eighteen-fifties 264
Harvard, Yale, and Amherst Build Gymnasia 268
Amherst Establishes a Professorship of Hygiene and Physical
Education 272
Other Colleges in the Eighteen-sixties and -seventies 274
The Land-grant Act of 1862, and Military Training 276
Beginning of Rowing, Baseball, Football, and Track Athletics 277
Dr. Sargent at Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard University 279
Progress since 1880 284
CHAPTER XXIV.
GERMAN-AMERICAN GYMNASTIC SOCIETIES AND THE NORTH AMERICAN
TURNERBUND.
Early History, up to the Close of the Civil War 290
The Period 1865-1886 295
George Brosius, and the Milwaukee Normal School of Gymnastics 296
The Year 1886 a Turning Point 301
Carl Betz, and German Gymnastics in American Schools 302
Recent History of the Turnerbund and Its Normal School 306
CHAPTER XXV.
PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS.
Robert J. Roberts and His Work 309
Luther H. Gulick at the Springfield (Mass.) Training School 312
The Chicago and Lake Geneva Training School 318
Recent History of Physical Training in the Associations 319
CHAPTER XXVI.
SWEDISH SCHOOL GYMNASTICS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Posse, and the Introduction of Swedish Gymnastics in the Boston
Schools 322
Dr. Hartwell’s Contribution to Physical Education in America 326
The Work of Nissen, Enebuske, Bolin, and Others 331
Swedish Gymnastics at the Woman’s College and the Bryn Mawr School
in Baltimore 335
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. STATEWIDE PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
Sand Piles and Outdoor Gymnasia in Boston 337
Chicago Small Parks and Playgrounds 342
Status of the Playground Movement in 1916 347
Legislation Favoring Statewide Physical Education 348
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.
Dio Lewis 352
The North American Turnerbund 352
Dr. Sargent, at the Private Gymnasium and the Harvard Summer School 352
The Anderson Normal School of Gymnastics, and the Chautauqua Summer
School 353
The Young Men’s Christian Association Colleges 355
The Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, and the Posse Gymnasium 356
Teacher’s Courses in Colleges and Universities 357
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
PART I
EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
THE GREEKS.
Man’s earliest endeavor to perfect the body, discipline the mind, and
mold the character of the young by means of selected forms of physical
activity and special regimen could doubtless be traced back to a
prehistoric age. The study of ancient customs of China and India, Egypt,
Babylonia and Assyria, the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the Persians,
and the Hebrews might also yield some curious facts. But if one’s
purpose is to follow the evolution of modern forms of physical education
in Europe and America and to note the significant contributions and
modifications introduced at various stages, it is sufficient to begin
with Greece as it was in the century and a half whose middle point is the
year of Salamis and Thermopylæ (480 B.C.). There we find “gymnastics”
generally adopted as a necessary part of education, provision everywhere
made for the exercise of youths and grown men in establishments supported
and administered by the state, great national festivals at which the
chief attractions were contests in physical prowess, and at a later day
sculptors able to reproduce from the types presented to them in the
gymnasia ideal human figures which have never been excelled in beauty.
Several things must be borne in mind when one thinks of Greece in the
period of the Persian Wars. It was not a nation in the modern sense of
a political unit with a central government and circumscribed territory,
but a group of independent states and cities in European Greece, on
the islands of the Ægean Sea, along the west coast of Asia Minor, and
wherever else the Greek language was spoken by persons who felt the tie
of a common descent, common religious beliefs, and common customs.
These customs, furthermore, were not uniform. For example, education
embraced two subjects of instruction and training, gymnastics and
“music.” The former reached primarily the body and the will; the latter,
which included literary studies as well as music in the narrower sense,
affected the intellect and the emotions. Sparta, surrounded by an
unfriendly and subject people, was little more than an organized camp,
in which self-preservation required a form of training designed to mold
every citizen into the best possible weapon of defense. Individual
welfare was therefore strictly subordinated to that of the community.
Education was viewed as a function of the state, and physical hardihood,
skilful use of weapons, self-reliant courage, and iron discipline
were developed by a type of education which was chiefly gymnastic and
military. Literary training was neglected, and music, in the form of
religious and patriotic hymns, war songs, and ballads recounting the
deeds of heroes, was valued solely for its stimulating effects. At
Athens, on the other hand, we find a much broader type of education,
which came more and more to dominate the practice of her sister states
and cities. Complete and harmonious development of the individual was the
object sought, and the schools were private affairs, over which the state
exercised nothing more than police supervision. Gymnastics was hardly
less essential than at Sparta, but literary training occupied a prominent
place, and music was esteemed for its refining influence on character and
its contribution to social enjoyment.
A third point to be noted is that whatever may be said of Greek education
applies to free citizens only, and hence takes no account of slaves and
the foreign-born, who made up possibly as much as three-fourths of the
total population—at least in the case of the larger cities. And even
within these limits it is usually boys alone for whom provision was made.
Turning first to physical education at Sparta, the earlier type, we find
that the state began its efforts to secure a sound body of citizens by
carefully regulating the life of the women, and formed an exception to
the statement just made in that it prescribed for girls a course of
gymnastic exercise. There was need of vigorous mothers for the sturdy
race which public welfare demanded. As a further precaution, the new-born
infant was brought before a council of old men, whose decision whether
or not he should be raised was based upon his physical condition and
promise, and was final. The first six years were passed in the home,
but at the age of seven the boy was taken away from his parents, to be
placed in public quarters. Here he slept and ate in company with a large
number of other boys, and shared with them a common discipline at the
hands of state officials who shaped every detail with reference to his
future career as a citizen-warrior. He spent the night in a room open to
the sky, without the luxury of bedclothes, on a pallet of hay or straw,
exchanged when he was older for one of rushes which he had gathered
himself along the river banks. He went summer and winter clad in a single
scanty garment, unshod, bare-headed and with close-cropped hair. The
food, of the plainest sort, was hardly sufficient to satisfy the cravings
of hunger. The amount might be eked out by theft, however, but with the
understanding that anyone so indiscreet or maladroit as to be detected in
the act would receive prompt and severe punishment. Indeed, the rod and
lash were freely applied, by public officers or by any offended citizen,
upon the least provocation, and as a necessary part of the regular
discipline, since it accustomed the future soldier to the endurance of
pain. There were even what might be considered periodical tests of this
capacity to endure, for at one of the annual festivals the flogging of
youths was an essential feature, often carried to the drawing of blood,
it is said. Like the Indian under torture, the victim was expected to
give no signs of suffering.
For the gymnastic instruction which occupied the greater part of their
time the boys were arranged in squads or “packs” according to age,
and these in turn were combined into companies. Each division had its
young leader, chosen on the score of ability and longer experience,
but all were subject to the direction of special state officers. The
course of training included practice in wrestling, running, jumping,
throwing the javelin and the discus, marching in time to music, together
with other military exercises, swimming in the Eurotas, riding on
horseback, hunting, and certain rough games. There was also practice in
choral dances, for use on religious occasions, and in the war dance,
representing the movements of attack and defense. This latter, the
so-called Pyrrhic dance, was sometimes executed in armor, and by whole
companies moving together in rhythm to the accompaniment of music.
Occasional public exhibitions and contests acted as incentives to
improvement and furnished opportunity to test it, satisfying at the same
time the general fondness for such displays.
With the advent of his eighteenth year the youth left the common training
quarters of the boys and entered upon a second stage of discipline.
During the next two years his preparation took more and more the form of
scouting in outlying districts of the state, and might involve actual
warfare. His understanding had been matured meanwhile by constant
intercourse with grown men in the affairs of daily public life.
Not much is known of the training imposed upon the Spartan girls; but
it included both gymnastics and music, and among the exercises practised
were running, jumping, throwing the spear and the discus, dancing,
swimming, and even wrestling.
In Athens, as at Sparta, weak, deformed or sickly infants were sometimes
put out of the way (“exposed”), but in this case the decision rested
with the father. Here, too, the first six years were spent at home,
under the charge of the women of the household. The play of childhood
took most often the form of active exercise and games, and in the list
of amusements, under the thin disguise of strange names, we discover
many varieties which have survived to the present day with undiminished
popularity: The small box of metal or wood containing stones which
rattled when it was shaken; hobby-horses, swinging and seesaw, walking on
stilts, trundling hoops, kite-flying; spinning tops, whipping the humming
top, and a game resembling our peg-top, but played with sharpened sticks;
shooting or tossing smooth stones or nuts and the like, as in some of
our modern games with marbles; tossing up and catching jackstones, in
the shape of pebbles or small bones; making flat stones skip along
the surface of the water, various exercises and games with balls,
hide-and-seek, blindman’s buff, games like our drop-the-handkerchief, and
others in which sides were chosen and one side then chased its opponents
in the attempt to make them prisoners. Besides a share in the less
violent of these sports, the little girls had, of course, their dolls,
made of clay or wax and sometimes painted. They seldom left the women’s
quarters, but acquired there whatever training was considered necessary
for their later life.
The school age for the boy began with his seventh year. Custom required
that each son of a free citizen should be given instruction in gymnastics
and music, but beyond keeping an eye on the morals of teachers and the
conduct of their charges the state did not concern itself with education.
It rested with the parent alone to decide how much schooling his boy
should receive, and the schools were in all cases private institutions,
supported by the fees of pupils. The status of the teacher was not an
exalted one—the pay was small, and the position was often the last resort
of the unsuccessful. We may be certain, therefore, that the results
of education, even at Athens, too often fell far short of the exalted
ideal cherished by many of her foremost citizens. The general features
of the system are sufficiently clear, but many details of instruction,
including the amount of time devoted to different branches, and the age
at which they were begun, remain to be discovered. The literary training
comprised reading and committing to memory selections from the poets,
especially Homer and Hesiod, writing, and the elements of arithmetic. For
musical training there was practice not only in singing selections from
the great lyric poets, but also in the use of stringed instruments—the
seven-stringed lyre, or the later cithara—as an accompaniment to the
voice. The flute, as an instrument for ordinary use, was held in less
esteem.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Scene in a Palæstra.]
Games and gymnastics, however, seem to have occupied the larger part of
the boy’s time. The private school where these were practised was known
as a _palæstra_, a name derived from the Greek word for wrestling. The
exercises must have been given out of doors originally, and whatever
structures were used for them in later times can hardly have contained
more than an open court for wrestling, with one or more small rooms
adjoining, where clothing might be laid aside or put on and where oil
and sand were kept, and some provision for bathing in case there was
no stream close at hand. No clothing of any sort was worn during the
exercises. These seem to have included most of the forms practised in
later life—running, the broad jump with and without weights in the
hands, throwing the javelin and the discus for distance, and above
all, wrestling, besides the rudiments of boxing, and a form of the
_pancratium_, a struggle which combined certain features of both boxing
and wrestling with others of its own.[1] Mention is also made of simple
exercises to develop correct carriage and a graceful step in walking, and
it is said that the art of swimming was early acquired, and that games,
especially those in which the ball was used, were by no means forgotten.
Dancing, at least in its more advanced forms, was not a regular subject
of instruction at Athens, but was left to choral bands which received
special training for their appearance before the public on festal
occasions.
Upon reaching the age of eighteen the youth, now known as an _ephebe_,
passed under state control for a two-year period of discipline comparable
to the enforced military service in modern continental Europe. He first
took a solemn oath of allegiance, and was then sent to join the garrisons
at the neighboring harbor of the Piræus, for training in the use of
weapons and the performance of a soldier’s duties. At the end of the
first year he received from the state a shield and spear, and might now
be employed at other garrison ports or as a frontier patrol. Hunting
afforded additional preparation for active warfare. Meanwhile the former
gymnastic exercises were continued, but for these, instead of visiting
the palæstra, he now joined the grown men in the city gymnasia. The
ephebes were conspicuous figures in the numerous local festivals held at
Athens, taking part in processions like that represented on the frieze
of the Parthenon, and in various athletic events. Aside from this later
gymnastic and military training there was no higher education in Greece
until the rise of the sophists, or professional lecturers on rhetoric and
philosophy, after the middle of the fifth century before Christ.
The Greek _gymnasium_, unlike the palæstra, was intended for ephebes
and for grown men who had finished their schooling. It was a state
institution maintained at public expense and administered by public
magistrates and other functionaries. Structures of this sort began to
be built, or, more properly, laid out, as early as the sixth or seventh
century before Christ, and by the end of the fifth century B.C. there
was probably no important Greek town, at home or in the colonies, that
did not possess at least one of them. Almost any open spot would serve
the purpose at the start, but, as population increased and civilization
advanced, buildings of special design became necessary, and these grew
in size and splendor with the addition of new features from time to
time. Exact information with regard to the different parts and their
arrangement is almost wholly lacking for the period under review.
Descriptions which have come down to us, and the remains discovered at
Olympia, Delphi, and other places belong to later centuries. The same
general plan seems to have been followed, however, but with considerable
variation in details. Originally, we may suppose, as in the case of the
palæstra, there was only an open space for wrestling, running, and the
other exercises, and surrounding or adjoining this covered colonnades,
into which various rooms opened. The essential features at a later stage
seem to have included, besides this spacious court or course and its
colonnades, a room where clothing might be taken off and left, others
for the oil with which visitors rubbed the body before exercising, and
for the dust or fine sand with which the wrestlers were then sprinkled,
and some sort of baths, either basins set on high supports, or running
water issuing from outlets under which one might stand, as in a modern
shower-bath. Before washing himself the gymnast removed the oil, sand,
and dirt from his body with a scraper of metal, bone, or reed, hollowed
out somewhat like a spoon and furnished with a handle, but concave
along one edge. Some provision was usually made for playing at ball
and for running under cover, in addition to the open spaces intended
for wrestling, running, and throwing the discus and the javelin. The
whole might be enclosed in spacious grounds, as was the case with the
three ancient gymnasia outside the walls of Athens, and these were laid
out like public parks, shaded with trees and planted with shrubs and
flowering plants, watered by streams or fountains, and further adorned
with statues of favorite gods, legendary heroes, and eminent citizens.
The position of general superintendent of the gymnasium was one of great
dignity. Other officials were charged with enforcing good order and
decorous behavior, and there was a variety of trainers and servants who
gave assistance in one way or another. Like the boys in the palæstra,
those who were about to exercise stripped themselves entirely naked
before commencing—a practice which must have stimulated each to make
himself an object worth beholding, and gave to the sculptor unparalleled
opportunities for study of the human body in action and repose. Among
the favorite occupations were running, wrestling, the broad jump with
stone or metal weights in the hands, throwing the heavy stone or metal
discus for distance, and throwing the javelin by means of a leather
thong wound about it near the center and ending in a loop for one or two
fingers. The javelins commonly used in practice were blunt rods about
a man’s height in length, and thrown for distance more often than at a
mark. A combination of these five exercises, known as the _pentathlon_,
or five-fold contest, furnished a popular form of gymnastic competition.
Another exceedingly popular sport was boxing, with the knuckles protected
by long, thin, leather thongs wrapped about the hand and wrist, and there
was also the _pancratium_, a sort of rough-and-tumble fight reduced to
orderly form. In this the hands were left bare, and the struggle was
continued until one of the contestants acknowledged himself defeated.
Besides answering the original purpose for which they were laid out,
the gymnasia came to be more and more the centers of Greek social and
intellectual life, a gathering place of citizens for conversation and
amusement which combined some of the features of a modern clubhouse with
those of a city park. Philosophers and rhetoricians found a general
audience or met their special pupils there, and thus it happened that
each of the three great gymnasia at Athens became associated with a
particular school of philosophy—the _Academy_, on the banks of the river
Cephissus about a mile to the northwest of the city walls, with Plato,
whose followers assembled in a small garden which he owned within the
enclosure, and were therefore dubbed the “Academic sect;” the _Lyceum_
with Aristotle, whose favorite walk was here, whence he and his disciples
were known as “Peripatetics;” and the _Cynosarges_ with the school of
the Cynics, or followers of Antisthenes, who frequented that spot. It
is these later and secondary uses of the gymnasium that alone give
significance to such modern words as the German _gymnasium_ and the
French _lycée_ (secondary schools), and to our own “academy” and “lyceum.”
The most striking illustration of the important place accorded to
physical training among the Greeks is found in their great national
festivals. The very beginnings of recorded history show that in every
town there were periodic religious festivals, where sacrifices to some
hero or divinity were followed by feasting, dancing, choral songs to
the accompaniment of the lyre or the flute, and exhibitions of bodily
agility, strength, and skill in the form of competitive exercises.
Gradually, in the case of certain localities, the importance and
attractiveness of the festival increased and the circle from which
visitors were drawn grew wider, until four of them, all in or near
the Peloponnesus, finally developed into national occasions—first and
foremost of the number, and as far back as the end of the eighth or very
early in the seventh century before Christ, that held at Olympia, and
in the first half of the sixth century before Christ three others, the
Pythia, the Nemea, and the Isthmia. During three centuries in particular,
from 600 to 300 B.C., the service they rendered as common centers of
interest, binding together the politically distinct members of the Greek
race in the parent land and in the far-scattered colonies that dotted the
borders of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, was of the greatest value.
Olympia lies in a plain near the western limits of the Peloponnesus,
about ten miles from the Ionian Sea. The sacred enclosure, some ten acres
in extent, contained a grove in the center of which stood a great altar
to Zeus, and near it his temple, wherein was a wonderful statue of the
god in ivory and gold, the most famous work of Phidias and one of the
greatest triumphs of Greek sculpture. Besides other temples, there were
numerous altars, votive offerings, statues of gods, heroes, and victors
in the games, and treasure houses erected by cities which had sent
gifts to the shrine. Just outside the enclosure, to the east, were the
stadium and the hippodrome. The stadium, to which most of the contests
seem to have been transferred after the middle of the fifth century
B.C., was at first merely a stretch of level ground overlooked from the
north by spectators who stood or sat on the slope of the Hill of Cronus.
Afterwards an artificial embankment was raised along the opposite side
and straight across the ends of a parallelogram, completely enclosing it,
so that 40,000 persons or more might find standing-room, but no permanent
seats. Modern excavations have allowed exact measurements of the race
course, from the starting to the finish line, and it is found to be just
192.27 m., or a trifle over 210 yards in length. No trace remains of the
neighboring hippodrome, intended for chariot races, but it is supposed
to have resembled the stadium in general plan, although much longer. A
gymnasium, to the northwest of the enclosure, belongs to a much later
date.
The festival was held at intervals of four years, at the time of the
second or third full moon after the summer solstice, coming therefore
in the late summer. During the lunar month in which it occurred a truce
of the god was observed throughout Greece. For an armed force to set
foot on the soil of the district of Elis within that period, or for
anyone to do violence to travellers on their way to or from Olympia,
was considered sacrilege. Heralds were sent to announce the coming
celebration through all the states of Greece and to carry the news to the
Greek colonies which had been established on the islands of the Ægean
Sea, in southwestern Italy and Sicily, and along the shores of the Black
Sea and the coast of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Gaul, and Spain. From the
whole of this wide area deputations and private citizens made their way
to the sacred spot. It was essentially a Greek gathering, though many
foreigners were doubtless present in the throng, and except the priestess
of Demeter, who occupied a conspicuous seat in the stadium, no women were
allowed to view the exercises.
In the games which followed the sacrifices on the altar of Zeus none but
free-born Greek citizens, of pure Hellenic descent and untainted by civil
or religious crime, were allowed to have a share. Each contestant had
passed through a long period of preliminary training, the last thirty
days of which were spent in the gymnasia at Elis, thirty miles away to
the northwest, or in later years the one at Olympia itself. Originally a
single day had sufficed for the festival, but from time to time, as the
occasion grew in importance, new features were added until finally the
program required five days for its completion. Interest centered chiefly
on the competitive exercises, which consumed the greater part of the
time. The list of these varied in the course of years, with the addition
or dropping out of one item or another, but in general they included the
foot race—a single course (210 yards), or down and back, or back and
forth a number of times, or a race in armor; the pentathlon; wrestling;
boxing and the pancratium; races between men on horseback; and the
chariot race, commonly with four horses, less frequently with two. As far
back as the seventh century B.C. separate contests for boys in running,
the pentathlon, wrestling, and boxing were introduced.
So much importance was attached to the games in the popular mind, and the
fame of the winner spread so widely over the Hellenic world, that to wear
the victor’s wreath on such an occasion became one of the highest honors
a Greek could covet. At first the prizes offered possessed intrinsic
value; but as victory became more and more a sufficient recompense
in itself, they were restricted to the simple crown of sacred wild
olive, placed upon the brow of the successful athlete. There were other
rewards than this, however. In recognition of the honor done to them the
citizens of the victor’s town sometimes received him with extraordinary
demonstrations. It might be that, clad in purple, he entered the gates
in a chariot drawn by white horses, and made his way through singing
and cheering throngs to hang his wreath as an offering in the principal
temple. We even hear of city walls torn down to make a passage, as though
where such a citizen dwelt there was no need of other defense. The
choral ode which greeted him might have been composed for the occasion
by lyric poets like Pindar and Bacchylides.[2] His statue would be set
up in the home city, or placed within the sacred enclosure at Olympia.
He was perhaps granted a seat of honor in the theater, and provided with
board at the public table for the rest of his life. Solon, at Athens, is
said to have offered five hundred drachmæ to an Olympian victor, and one
hundred in the case of other national festivals.
At Olympia the gymnastic competitions were the only ones. There were many
among the visitors, however, who did not fail to take advantage of the
great crowds to advance some private interest. Historians, philosophers
and rhetoricians, poets, painters, and sculptors found listeners and
patrons. The occasion was also one of commercial interchange, like the
great fairs of the middle ages, or the religious gatherings at Mecca and
Medina. To other proofs of the wide influence exerted by the games are to
be added the facts that the length of the race course in the stadium at
Olympia was adopted as the standard unit for measuring distances, and
that in the third century before Christ Greek historians began generally
to employ as a unit of time the Olympiad, or four-year period including
one celebration and extending to the next, designating each by the name
of the victor in the foot-race at its particular festival. The first
recorded Olympic festival was held in 776 B.C., and they were not finally
abolished till 394 A.D.—a period of 293 Olympiads.
Next to the Olympic festival in importance was the _Pythia_, in honor of
Apollo, celebrated near the famous shrine of the god at Delphi, a few
miles north of the Corinthian Gulf. It was quadrennial, like its greater
rival, falling in the third year of each Olympiad. In the case of the
two remaining national festivals the contests took place at intervals of
only two years. The _Nemea_, in honor of Zeus, was held in Argolis, in
a valley near Cleonæ where there was a grove containing a temple of the
god. The _Isthmia_ was celebrated on the isthmus of Corinth, in a grove
of pines sacred to Poseidon. They fell in the second and fourth years of
the Olympiad, one occurring in the summer and the other in the following
spring. A general truce of the gods was observed during the progress of
all three of these festivals. Unlike the Olympia, they added musical
and literary competitions to the usual gymnastic contests and chariot
races. The victor’s reward, at first substantial, was afterwards reduced
to a wreath of sacred laurel at the Pythia, and to one of wild celery
(“parsley”) at the Nemea and the Isthmia, replaced at the latter by one
of pine in later times.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
General works in English which will be found of value are J. B. Bury’s
“History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great,” E. A. Gardner’s
“Handbook of Greek Sculpture,” T. G. Tucker’s “Life in Ancient Athens,”
and K. J. Freeman’s “Schools of Hellas,” all four published in London
by Macmillan & Co. Freeman’s chapter on Physical Education is the least
satisfactory in his book, largely because of failure to distinguish
between conditions at different periods, and taken alone would prove
quite misleading.
The following special works are indispensable, and contain ample
references to the older literature: E. N. Gardiner’s “Greek Athletic
Sports and Festivals” (London, Macmillan & Co., 1910), and Julius
Jüthner’s “Philostratos über Gymnastik” (Leipzig and Berlin, B. G.
Teubner, 1909) and “Über antike Turngeräthe” (Vienna, Alfred Holder,
1896).
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For details regarding each of these exercises the reader is referred
to Part II of E. N. Gardiner’s “Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals,” and
Julius Jüthner’s “Über antike Turngeräthe.”
[2] For English translations see Ernest Myers, “The Extant Odes of
Pindar” (London, Macmillan & Co.), or Sir John Sandys, “The Odes of
Pindar,” in the Loeb Classical Library (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons);
and Sir Richard C. Jebb’s “Bacchylides” (Cambridge, England, The
University Press). Pindar’s forty-four “Odes of Victory” include fourteen
in honor of Olympian winners, twelve Pythian, eleven Nemean, and seven
Isthmian. Of the thirteen odes of Bacchylides four are Olympian, two are
Pythian, three Isthmian, three Nemean, and one relates to a Thessalian
festival.
CHAPTER II.
THE ROMANS.
The year 400 B.C. may be taken as marking roughly the close of the two or
three centuries which witnessed the gradual development and culmination
of physical training in Greece. Meanwhile a people differing widely from
the cultured, reflective, beauty-loving Athenian in character and ideals
had been establishing itself on the banks of the Tiber, and was already
beginning to display a military prowess and a genius for organization
that were to make Rome mistress of Italy within the next hundred and
fifty years, extend its sway over the Mediterranean states in another
century, and finally achieve world empire. The early Roman possessed
some traits in common with the Spartan. He was first of all a man of
affairs, intensely practical, and interested in things whose usefulness
was apparent. A stranger to the Greek passion for beauty, he considered
vague and worthless the notion of harmonious development as something
desirable for its own sake. Education should fit a man for his work in
the world. It was to make of him a good citizen and a capable soldier,
ready to play his part in public life. Bodily exercise was desirable only
as it gave robust health and prepared for military service. Music was
an unprofitable art, and anything more than the rudiments of literary
training was unnecessary. Until the time of the later emperors the state
did not concern itself in any way with education, but left it altogether
in the parents’ hands.
So long as Roman education was free from foreign influence, _i.e._,
down to the middle of the third century B.C., it was given in the home
and by the parents. Schools, if they existed at all, were few and
relatively unimportant. In free intercourse with his father and mother
the boy received moral and religious instruction and became acquainted
with ancestral traditions, mastered the rudiments of reading, writing,
and counting, and acquired experience in the care of the estate and the
management of a household. Among his games, exercises with the ball
were especially popular, but even his childish sports must have felt
the influence of the military career that awaited him. As he approached
the age when he must be enrolled among the citizens and assume a man’s
obligations, both civil and military, companionship with his father on
the streets and in the forum completed the necessary preparation for
public life. Now, too, he met with other young men for military exercises
on the Field of Mars, which lay between the Tiber and the foot of the
city hills. They practised running, jumping, throwing, and the use of
weapons, and learned to swim in the neighboring stream.
During the larger part of the period of conquest which terminated in
universal empire, and until the Roman army was reorganized as a mercenary
body of professional troops under Caius Marius, about a hundred years
before the beginning of the Christian era, every citizen except those
of the lowest class was liable to military service between the ages
seventeen and sixty. The older men (forty-seven to sixty years) acted
as home guards or did garrison duty only, except in times of emergency,
but the younger legionary might be called out for from sixteen to twenty
campaigns in the field, unless earlier disabled by honorable wounds.
Army life, therefore, became an educational factor of the first rank.
Under the earlier (Servian) plan of enrolment citizens above a certain
minimum property rating were grouped in five classes according to wealth,
beginning with the richest, and if chosen served without pay and also
furnished their own equipment and rations. The first class was protected
by helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, and fought with long lance and
sword. The second and third were not so completely armed, but with the
first constituted the heavy infantry, arranged in three parallel lines
for battle. The fourth and fifth wore no defensive armor, but were
supplied with lances and javelins, or other light weapons. Each “legion”
contained twenty centuries of the first class, five each of the second,
third and fourth, and seven of the fifth—a total of three thousand heavy
and twelve hundred light infantry, to which three hundred horsemen were
added. The latter, who rode without saddle or stirrups, played only a
minor part in the wars of the Republic. Soldiers were called out in the
spring, and disbanded at the close of the summer campaign.
Various modifications had been introduced before the conquest of Italy
was completed. The state assumed the cost of field expenses, and age
rather than wealth became the basis of division into groups. The
youngest troops now formed the light-armed centuries, and the older and
more experienced men were distributed among the three successive lines
which were to withstand the heavy shock of battle. The short, two-edged
sword for thrusting had become the favorite weapon. The enemy was first
attacked with a shower of light javelins, which might easily transfix a
shield and render it useless, and then the sword was used for personal
combat at close quarters. The soldier’s clothing consisted of nothing but
a woolen tunic which did not reach his knees, hob-nailed sandals, and a
cloak or hooded cape. His ration was usually wheat, served out once a
month or oftener at the rate of about a bushel a month per man, ground
in hand mills as needed and made into cakes or porridge. Barley might be
substituted, and meat was an accessory, if issued at all. The average
day’s march was fifteen miles, preferably accomplished in the morning
hours. Whatever the climate or the condition of the roads, the legionary
carried, besides his clothing, armor and weapons, a supply of wheat
sufficient for two weeks or more, a pot for cooking, several long stakes
for the palisade about the nightly camp, and perhaps intrenching tools
or other implements—a total estimated by Colonel Dodge at something more
than eighty-five pounds, or considerably over half his own weight. The
camp site must then be fortified by means of a ditch, mound, and palisade
extending entirely around it.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—Roman soldier, on the march.]
For such a strenuous life the recruit was prepared and the veteran
kept fit by a training to the severity of which the name of the army
(_exercitus_) bears witness. There was steady drill in marching forward
and to the rear, or by either flank, in wheeling, changing from line to
column and back again, and taking open or close orders. Practice marches
of twenty miles or so were executed under full equipment and at the
regular rate of four miles an hour, or with forced marching at five miles
an hour. They were made to run, jump, climb, swim, hurl the javelin, and
fight with swords against posts set firmly in the ground, taking care
through all the movements of attack and defense to keep the body covered
with the shield. The operation of intrenching camp, and of attacking or
defending it, was rehearsed. In peace times there might be employment
on public works, such as roads, canals, bridges, fortifications,
amphitheaters, or aqueducts.
It was not until the third century before Christ that the influence
of Greek literature, philosophy, and art began to be felt in Rome,
introduced through contact with Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, by
Greek slaves, and by Romans who had sojourned in Greece. But the new
culture awakened such interest and spread with such rapidity that by
the time Greece had become a Roman province, soon after the middle of
the succeeding century, it had profoundly modified the scheme of Roman
education, except on the side of physical training. The boy’s earliest
instruction, received at home or in a private school, still included
reading, writing, and reckoning. He was afterwards sent to a secondary
school, where the chief subject of study was the writings of favorite
Greek and Latin poets, and the practical end sought was accuracy and
facility in the use of the two languages. To these a little music and
applied geometry might be added. Young men who were looking forward to
public life received further preparation in schools of rhetoric. These
taught the art of effective speaking, as needed in the law courts, before
a popular assembly, or in the senate. The home life of the boy had thus
lost its earlier place as chief factor in education, and the old training
for domestic, political, and religious duties had been replaced by one
essentially grammatical and oratorical.
Military service, meanwhile, had ceased to perform its part in national
discipline, for during the last century of the Republic it was committed
to mercenary troops, and these developed into a standing army under the
Empire. While the Greek gymnastics was introduced to some extent among
the Romans of the upper class, it never acquired a hold upon the popular
mind or entered as an important factor into education in the fosterland.
Its pedagogical aim had become obscured, and the great national games
which once exhibited its most perfect product had fallen into ill
repute. The Roman nature lacked that intense love of competition which
was so characteristic of the Greek. The exercises of the palæstra and
the gymnasium, an inexhaustible mine of subjects for the painters of
red-figured Greek vases in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.,
were nothing more than idle amusements to a people bent upon world
conquest. They were disgusted at the nakedness of the performers, which
had been the inspiration of sculptors like Myron, Phidias, Polycletus,
Praxiteles, and Lysippus; and the sight of young athletes contending in
generous rivalry in such events as made up the pentathlon could have
aroused little interest in a generation accustomed to the thrills of the
circus and the amphitheater.
The Greek national festivals, too, were in the last stages of decline.
The better class of citizens no longer appeared as contestants, for
the religious character of the celebrations had largely disappeared,
boxing and the pancratium had become the favorite exercises, prizes
more valuable than the wreath had been substituted, trickery and
falsehood were less uncommon, and a class of professional athletes had
been developed, whose members were usually of low birth and looked
upon with little favor. They submitted themselves to an irksome and
exacting routine which set them apart from the rest of mankind, left
no time for other occupations, and made them virtual slaves of their
trainers. Numerous attempts by Roman emperors to revive the glory of the
ancient games, and to imitate them on Italian soil, met with no enduring
success.[3]
A structure quite as typical of its time and habitat as the Greek
gymnasium of the Periclean age was the public bath, or _therma_, found in
Rome and in every important provincial town in the days of the Empire.
Both made provision for exercise, and contained a system of baths;
though in the thermæ the baths occupied a greater part of the space, and
the rooms and courts for exercise were fewer and smaller. Both added
seats and walks and places of meeting and conversation for visitors,
were lavishly decorated with objects of art, and were frequented by
rhetoricians, poets, and philosophers, as well as by the common populace.
Although the various forms of Greek gymnastics were introduced and
occasionally practised at the baths, that which seems to have been most
popular, and which gave the name to one of the halls or courts (the
_sphæristerium_) was play with various sorts of ball, filled with air,
feathers, or hair. Other exercises were movements of the arms with
dumb-bells in the hands, and fencing with wooden swords against a post,
as practised by the soldiers. Besides the large public baths, such as
those of Caracalla and Diocletian, almost every private house of any size
possessed its own sphæristerium, where light exercises, and especially
games with the ball, were engaged in as a preliminary to the bath. All
such exercises were taken at the whim of the bather, and only as a means
of recreation or to heighten the enjoyment of the bath and meal which
followed it. The resemblance to the Greek gymnasium, though at first
striking, is therefore much less real than apparent, and the effect of
the institution on Roman life was to favor its decay.
Between the pan-Hellenic festivals celebrated in the stadium and
hippodrome at Olympia in the time of Pericles, and those public
spectacles which crowded the amphitheater and circus of the degenerate
Roman world during the first centuries of the Christian era, a greater
contrast can be drawn. The chariot races of the Circus Maximus and the
gladiatorial combats, the contests of men with beasts, or those of
beasts with one another in the Coliseum, reveal the changed type of
civilization, and also mark the last stages of athletic professionalism.
The charioteer and the gladiator were either prisoners of war, slaves,
condemned criminals, or freedmen who adopted the calling from choice.
They were trained in special schools, and unless the property of private
citizens, were commonly let out by their owners to any person who desired
their services.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
General works: Besides the standard dictionaries and handbooks of
classical antiquities, the “Companion to Latin Studies” edited by J. E.
Sandys (Cambridge, England, at the University Press. See especially the
sections on Education and the Roman Army), and T. G. Tucker’s “Life in
the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul” (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1911).
On Roman education: S. S. Laurie’s “Historical Survey of Pre-Christian
Education” (second edition. London and New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.,
1900. Pp. 301-411 are devoted to the Romans), and A. S. Wilkins’ “Roman
Education” (Cambridge, England, at the University Press, 1905).
On the Roman army: Col. T. A. Dodge’s “Hannibal: A History of the Art
of War among the Carthaginians and Romans down to the Battle of Pydna,
168 B.C.” (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891), and his
“Caesar: A History of the Art of War among the Romans down to the End of
the Roman Empire” (Boston and New York, as above, 1892).
FOOTNOTES:
[3] For details of this period of decline consult chapter eight
(Athletics under the Romans) in E. N. Gardiner’s “Greek Athletic Sports
and Festivals.”
CHAPTER III.
THE TEUTONIC INVADERS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The Germans as we meet them in the pages of Caesar and Tacitus[4] are
a race of sturdy, blue-eyed giants, who dwell in a land of forest and
swamp. Their straggling villages consist of low, thatched, dirt-floored
huts of rough timber, and in spite of the harsh climate they go about
scantily clad in skin mantles or garments of coarse linen. Small fields
of barley and perhaps other grains are tilled by the women, but flocks
and herds form the chief support of the family, and these, with wild
animals taken in the chase, supply the greater portion of their food.
For drink there was a crude beer, made without hops. Next to warfare,
hunting was the favorite occupation, and for this the surrounding forests
yielded the aurochs or bison, the wild boar, elk, and bear, besides packs
of predatory wolves and numerous lesser animals. Arms were a token of
the freeman’s position and dignity, and were carried constantly. Only
a few could equip themselves with breastplate and helmet, and iron for
swords was scarce, but each man had a shield, and short, sharp spears
for thrusting or throwing. Their cavalry rode without saddles. A public
spectacle much in demand was a dance of naked youths in the midst of
drawn swords and upturned spears. Swimming and horsemanship furnished
other means of active exercise in time of peace.
With such a people the training of the young could not fail to be a hardy
one. Since there was no written language, and the only records were those
handed down in ancient songs, formal instruction was unknown. While the
girls busied themselves with domestic duties, the boys early learned
the arts of the chase and the use of weapons. Hunting and warfare were
their chief school-masters. At maturity the youth was publicly equipped
with shield and spear in the periodical assembly, as a sign of admission
to the rights of citizenship. It was the custom of young men to attach
themselves to favorite chiefs, who vied with each other in the number and
quality of such followers. These promised loyalty in peace and war, and
received in turn horses, arms, and food.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—Northern warrior of about 300 A.D.]
Among the Northmen of the viking age we find a somewhat more advanced
type of civilization, but hunting, fighting, and vigorous sports in the
open air are still the chief delight of men. Hawking was a favorite
pastime, and the northern falcons were famous throughout Europe. Coats
of chain mail, helmets, swords, and battle axes are added to the earlier
shield and spear, at least in the case of chieftains, and we hear of
bows and arrows, clubs, and slings. A variety of popular exercises were
also practised, which survived throughout the Middle Ages. They included
wrestling, foot races, broad and high jumping, putting the stone, hurling
the spear, throwing with knives, racing on snowshoes or skees, and
several games of ball.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to follow with certainty the
particular changes wrought in portions of the Roman Empire which were
occupied by the Teutonic invaders. In general, lines of communication
were interrupted, the foundations of new and independent nationalities
were laid, and city life became less dominant. There was also an
admixture of sturdy barbarian stock with native populations, though the
latter seem in most cases to have gradually absorbed the conquerors.
Roman forces put an end to Vandal dominion in Africa in 533. Neither
Vandals nor Suevi were numerous enough in Spain to exert a greater
influence than that of bands of roving plunderers, and the Spanish
kingdom of the Visigoths fell before the Mohammedan invasion of 711. In
Italy, also, Gothic power was broken in 533, and the Lombard kingdom
which followed came to an end with Charlemagne’s conquest in 774. West
Goths and Burgundians in Gaul were overcome by the Franks, who seem
themselves to have lost little by little their distinctive national
traits and been merged in the earlier Gallo-Roman population. The Normans
of the tenth century met a similar fate. In the case of England, where
the Teutonic element gained the ascendant, one would like to trace the
British fondness for fox hunting, shooting, horse racing, yachting,
rowing, games like football and cricket, lawn tennis and golf, and the
falconry and archery of an earlier period, to the surviving influence of
Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman ancestors; but actual demonstration of
any such connection could hardly be expected.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Edward Gibbon, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,”
chapter nine (The State of Germany till the Invasion of the Barbarians,
in the Time of the Emperor Decius).
Francis B. Gummere, “Germanic Origins: A Study in Primitive Culture.” New
York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.
Karl Weinhold, “Altnordisches Leben.” Berlin, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung,
1856.
Paul B. Du Chaillu, “The Viking Age: The Early History, Manners, and
Customs of the Ancestors of the English-speaking Nations, Illustrated
from the Antiquities Discovered in Mounds, Cairns, and Bogs, as well as
from the Ancient Sagas and Eddas.” New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1889.
C. F. Kerry, “The Vikings in Western Christendom, A.D. 789 to A.D. 888.”
London, T. Fisher Unwin, and New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1891.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Caesar, the _Gallic War_, especially book six, chapters 21-28;
Tacitus, _Germania_, published in 98 A.D.
CHAPTER IV.
ASCETICISM IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
No sooner had the Teutonic tribes overrun Romanized Europe than they
began to yield, in turn, to the proselyting activities of the young and
lusty Christian Church. And with it came the doctrine of _asceticism_,
which left its mark on education for a thousand years and more, and
tended to counteract, in a measure, the invigorating effect of the
barbarian strain.
The Hindu fakir, the Christian saint of the desert, and the Mohammedan
dervish are different expressions of a belief which at some time or other
has prevailed among a very large proportion of the human race. It has
been one of the fundamental ideas of the oriental religions that evil
inheres in matter, while mind or spirit is essentially divine and pure.
According to this view, the flesh and the spirit wage perpetual warfare
on each other; the body is not a useful servant, but an enemy, and to
be resisted therefore at every point and struck down whenever its head
is raised. The ideal life is one of solitude, contemplation, and strict
abstinence from sensual indulgence in any form. Asceticism has thus been
an important factor in the ancient religions of China, Tibet, Siam,
India, and Persia, and very early in the Christian Era, or before its
dawn, this principle had found its way into Syria and Egypt, and through
the Alexandrian schools of philosophy into southern Europe. Brought
into contact with Christianity, it helped to prepare the way for the
movement now under consideration, and in like manner gave its impress to
Mohammedanism at a later period.
But in the case of the early Christians, living for the most part in
cities and brought into close and daily contact with all the abominations
of the decadent pagan society of the Empire, a violent reaction from the
prevailing luxury and sensual self-indulgence was inevitable. Men of deep
religious feeling desired to escape contamination from such worldliness,
and it is not strange if in protest against its excesses they sometimes
carried their stern self-restraint so far as to deny themselves the
common comforts of life and decline to gratify those cravings of the body
which are innocent and natural. The healthy appetites and impulses of the
normal man are not to be eradicated without a struggle, however, and the
constant discomfort which resulted from unsatisfied desires they viewed
as insubordination. This in turn led to belief in the innate depravity
of human nature. To subdue the rebellious flesh they resorted to renewed
and more severe privations, or punished it with self-inflicted tortures.
Mortification of the body acquired the dignity of a religious exercise,
while the idea of pleasure came to be closely associated with that of
vice.
A third cause of the outbreak of asceticism is found in the persecution
to which many converts of the growing church were subjected. This soon
kindled an intense religious enthusiasm which welcomed martyrdom and
glorified the sufferings that attended it. The liberated soul, it was
taught, entered at once into eternal blessedness. Pain and torment came
thus to be considered meritorious of themselves, and the direct road to
salvation; and after the persecutions ceased, the self-torture of the
ascetic took their place as a means and measure of human excellence.
When once the movement to the deserts was started, the desire to escape
from the burdens imposed by corrupt government, from social disorders,
and later from the wretchedness that followed the invasions of barbarian
hordes from the North, helped to crowd the ranks of the hermits and swell
the numbers gathered into monastic communities.
It was in the latter half of the third century that the first Christian
hermits fled to the deserts of Egypt, where natural caverns, or caves
easily hewn out of the rock, supplied the only shelter necessary in such
a climate, and a grove of date palms with a spring close by it solved
the problem of sustenance without labor. But the movement did not gather
much headway until the early part of the next century, when Anthony’s
career had given dignity to the solitary life and made it widely popular.
At the time of his death, in 365, the deserts on either side of the Nile
from the Cataracts to the Delta were dotted with the retreats of hermits,
and it is said that Pachomius, who was the first to gather his disciples
into organized communities and formulate a monastic rule, had no fewer
than 7000 monks under his authority. By the fifth century the numbers
had increased to 100,000 in Egypt alone, and the practice had extended
into Syria and Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia, parts of Asia Minor, and
Italy, whence it soon reached the whole of Western Europe.
The greatest extravagances are found among the Eastern “saints of the
desert,” accounts of whose austerities were collected by wandering
pilgrims and excited the admiration of all Christendom. Some dwelt
in deserted dens of wild beasts, in tombs and dried-up wells, on the
summit of narrow columns, or spent days in the midst of thorn bushes.
Others never lay down during months and even years, or they slept naked
in swamps, exposed to the stings of insects. Many abstained from food
altogether for long periods, or restricted themselves to quantities too
small to relieve the pangs of hunger. Bodily cleanliness was frequently
abjured, and a long list of strange penances was devised.[5]
Severe self-torture was less common in the Western monasteries,
especially after the earlier code had been supplanted by a new one
drafted (529) by Benedict of Nursia, founder of the order that bears his
name. This is distinguished by the absence of any severe austerities, and
substitutes manual labor in place of contemplation and penance. But the
conception of supreme excellence was much the same in the West and in the
East. Asceticism became a part of the accepted teaching of the Church
and the practice of a large proportion of her leaders and adherents. Of
Simeon Stylites, the famous Syrian monk of the fifth century, we read
that “from every quarter pilgrims of every degree thronged to do him
homage. A crowd of prelates followed him to the grave. A brilliant star
is said to have shown miraculously over his pillar; the general voice of
mankind pronounced him to be the highest model of a Christian saint.”
The physical effects of the ascetic life upon the individual must have
been disastrous as a rule. Not only did it lead to broken health,
such as embittered the lives of some of the greatest among the Church
Fathers, but long-continued austerities and overwrought emotions produced
a disordered nervous system, and supplied all the conditions for
hallucination. Lecky has also called attention to certain moral qualities
that suffered from the prevailing conception of excellence. “What may be
called a strong animal nature,” he says, “a nature, that is, in which the
passions are in vigorous, and at the same time healthy action, is that in
which we should most naturally expect to find ... good humor, frankness,
generosity, active courage, sanguine energy, buoyancy of temper. (These)
are much more rarely found either in natures that are essentially feeble
or effeminate, or in natures that have been artificially emasculated by
penances, distorted from their original tendency, and habitually held
under severe control.”
Among the people at large the physical consequences of the prevailing
doctrine were hardly less pernicious. It justified the personal and
public uncleanliness and the neglect of simple sanitary precautions to
which they were already prone enough, and thus became to some extent
accountable for the unprecedented succession of plagues which decimated
the population of Europe again and again throughout the Middle Ages.
None of these widespread epidemics suggested sanitary improvement, but
they were regarded as “visitations,” and attributed to the wrath of God,
or to the malice of Satan. It is not unlikely that such phenomena,
even, as the dancing mania, the processions of Flagellants, trials of
innocence, and the persecutions of Jews and witches depend in part upon
the fact that communities and nations, no less than individuals, lacking
real physical hardihood, were often crazed by nervous excitement, and
impelled by an overstimulated emotional nature fell an easy prey to weird
delusions and morbid fancies, of which a series of moral epidemics was
the natural result.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
W. E. H. Lecky, “History of European Morals from Augustine to
Charlemagne” (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1869), =2=, pp. 107 ff.
I. Gregory Smith, “Christian Monasticism from the Fourth to the Ninth
Centuries of the Christian Era.” London, A. D. Innes & Co., 1892.
Abbot Gasquet, “English Monastic Life.” London, Methuen & Co., 1904.
Contains illustrations, maps, and plans.
Herbert B. Workman, “The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal from the
Earliest Times Down to the Coming of the Friars.” London, Charles H.
Kelly, 1913.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Lecky gives a striking series of examples in his History of European
Morals, vol. =2=, pp. 114-119.
CHAPTER V.
MONASTERY AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.
In the cities of Northern Italy the dying out of the old Roman schools,
as a result of internal decay and the inroads of the Teutonic barbarians,
was not followed by the complete extinction of the race of lay teachers,
and here, and throughout southern Europe generally, education therefore
never became exclusively ecclesiastical; but in transalpine Europe, from
the sixth till the twelfth century, the Benedictine monasteries were the
chief if not the only seats of learning, and education was almost wholly
in the hands of monks of that order. There were schools attached to the
cathedrals, also, but they drew their teachers from the monasteries and
seldom rose to more than local importance until in the course of the
twelfth century intellectual activity was gradually transferred to them
and they became the germ out of which the universities of the Middle
Ages developed. The reform legislation of Charles the Great fixed this
intimate relation between the Church and education by requiring that
every monastery and every cathedral throughout his broad empire should
have its school. The origin of these institutions is to be found in the
need of educated ecclesiastics, and the earliest scholars were candidates
for admission to the Benedictine order, or for the priesthood; but about
the beginning of the ninth century “exterior schools” began to be added,
open to boys who were intended for secular callings.
The course of study, intended to prepare the way for a proper
understanding of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Church
Fathers, was everywhere limited to the so-called seven liberal arts.
These included the fundamental _trivium_—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic
or logic—and the less important _quadrivium_—music, arithmetic, geometry,
and astronomy. It was the world to come for which men were trained;
theological doctrines and religious interests absorbed human thought,
and the present world was deemed unworthy of attention. So long as the
spirit of asceticism remained in the ascendant there could be no such
thing as physical training in schools conducted by the Church. The
soul was the one object of solicitude, and the body was regarded with
contempt. Uncleanliness and physical neglect were not incompatible with
intellectual eminence. The monastic discipline in all its severity
was an essential part of school life. Other forms of punishment were
common, but the rod was the favorite instrument; it was used on the least
occasion, and sometimes periodically, “as a kind of general atonement
for sins past and possible.” Even the humane Alcuin, Master of Charles
the Great’s Palace School at Aix (782-796), would have a separate master
for every class “that the boys may not run about in idleness or occupy
themselves in silly play.” Their lessons were to furnish them all the
play and diversion needed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
S. S. Laurie, “The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, with a
Survey of Mediæval Education.” New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1887.
A. F. West, “Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools.” New York,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.
Any standard history of education, such as F. P. Graves, “A History of
Education during the Middle Ages and the Transition to Modern Times” (New
York, The Macmillan Co.).
CHAPTER VI.
CHIVALRY.
Chivalry, or the body of law and custom relating to knighthood, prevailed
almost universally throughout western Europe between the eleventh and
sixteenth centuries. Its usages were international, and in its ideal of
war, religion and gallantry was summed up the whole duty of the gentleman
of that age. The system can be traced in part to various customs of
the ancient Germans, developed later under the influence of feudalism;
but its final form was not received until the time of the Crusades
(1096-1270), when the Church, in order to further her own designs,
adopted and modified its practices. It was in large measure the inroads
of Mohammedan warriors in Christian territory and their profanation of
the Holy City which led to a substitution of military Christianity for
the ascetic ideal cherished hitherto, and caused war with the infidels
to be pronounced a religious duty and the battlefield a direct road to
salvation. This union of chivalry with religion—the consecration of
military prowess to the service of the Church—is typified in the three
orders of soldier monks, the Hospitallers, the Templars, and the Teutonic
Knights, which had their origin in the twelfth century. The hermit of
early Catholic legends had thus been displaced as a popular hero by the
king and the knight who figure in the romances of Arthur and of Charles
the Great. The decline of chivalry as a military system began soon after
the last crusade (1270), and in the fifteenth century became complete;
for the introduction of gunpowder in warfare, with the increased
importance attached to infantry and artillery, made the arms and armor
of the knight of no avail and lessened the opportunities for personal
distinction on the field. At the same time the growing centralization
of power in the hands of the sovereign was rapidly destroying the
independence of the nobility of lesser rank.
The early training of a knight bore no resemblance to the ascetic type
seen in the monastery and cathedral schools. Although the boy intended
for such a career was sometimes brought up at home, it was the common
custom to send him away, at the age of seven or soon after, to the
court or castle of some nobleman, in whose household, among other young
attendants of gentle birth, he might learn the principles, acquire the
breeding, and become proficient in the practices of chivalry. As a
_page_ he was expected to render to his master and mistress personal
service of all sorts, even the most humble and domestic, waiting on
them at the table, carrying messages, following them to the chase or
camp, and in visits to neighboring castles. Meanwhile, under the tuition
of the ladies, he was mastering the rudiments of reading and writing,
together with the rules of courteous behavior and the first principles
of gallantry. He gained some familiarity with Latin and French, the
universal languages, tried his hand at playing the harp and in games
of chess and backgammon, picked up many facts of history, learned much
of heraldry, and became acquainted with the songs and poetry of the
troubadours. But the principal part of his training was carried on
outdoors, where he was already imitating grown men in his play, learning
the business of a _squire_, and seeking to prove himself worthy of
advancement to that rank.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—Knight Templar (Gasquet).]
Promotion to this second grade did not come until after the age of
fourteen, though it is probable that the change from page to squire
was not a sudden one. The personal service to his lord became more
responsible in its nature, and thus led to a more dignified position in
the household; but vigorous sports and martial exercises, in which he had
already made some progress as a page, now occupied his time increasingly.
Instruction in dancing was a part of his discipline in polished manners.
He was early taught how to train a falcon and handle him in hawking, and
in the pursuit of the stag and wild boar found occasion for the display
of greater skill and daring. Running, jumping, wrestling, swimming,
climbing ropes and poles and ladders, hurling stones, casting the spear,
shooting with the bow and cross-bow, wielding the battle-axe, and
fencing, at first with dull wooden swords, helped to harden his body and
give mastery of its powers for future need. The most essential exercise,
however, was horsemanship, including the adroit use of shield and lance,
and the ability to endure the weight and overcome the hindrance of full
armor. There was practice in leaping into the saddle without the help
of stirrups, dismounting quickly, and reaching down to pick up objects
from the ground. Tilting at the ring or quintain, or afterwards with a
living opponent, developed a firm seat and the skill required to govern
the galloping charger with the legs alone while one received and parried
a thrust with the shield upon his left arm, and with the right guided
the lance so as to lift his antagonist from the saddle, if possible, by
striking him squarely in the throat or upon the center of his shield.
The young squire also followed his master to the field, sharing with
him all the dangers and privations of a military career. He helped him
to adjust and fasten the numerous pieces that composed his armor, after
taking care that these were in perfect condition, assisted him to mount,
held extra horses, supplied fresh lances as they were needed, raised
him if unseated, attended to his wounds, received and guarded whatever
prisoners were taken, sought to release him if he were taken captive,
or bore away his dead body to give it proper burial. After this long
apprenticeship, in case he had proved his fitness for the dignity and
possessed the means to support so costly a profession, the squire who
had reached the age of twenty-one might hope to take the final step.
By a blow upon the shoulder with the flat of a sword some knight or
noble ended his tedious years of waiting and admitted him to the great
brotherhood of chivalry.
A public spectacle no less brilliant and fascinating than the
pan-Hellenic games or the gladiatorial shows of the Roman world, and
equally characteristic of their age, were the tournaments common all
over Christendom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Originally
the rough trials of strength and skill that were a natural occurrence
whenever knights met at leisure, they were little by little modified and
regulated until they became the chief pastime of nobles and gentlemen,
a school of war in times of peace, where the young contestant not only
displayed but developed his personal bravery, presence of mind, and
ability to find at once the right means of attack and defense, the field
in which he often won his first laurels or attracted the attention and
interest of influential men. After the decline of chivalry as a military
system tournaments lost their value as an image of war, and became more
and more a means of mere amusement and an occasion for display, though
they did not pass entirely out of fashion until toward the close of the
sixteenth century.
In tournaments proper groups of combatants on each side fought together
with lance and sword in a miniature cavalry battle; while in the joust,
which was far more frequent although it also formed a part of many
tournaments, two horsemen only met each other, with lance and shield,
sometimes continuing the combat on foot with swords after one of them
had been unseated. The contestants, in both cases, appeared in full
armor, and commonly, but not always, the swords were blunt and the lances
tipped with flat or slightly toothed plates of metal; but injuries,
nevertheless, were not infrequent, and heavy falls or suffocation from
heat and dust, or serious wounds when the lance struck fair and did not
split cost many a life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Paul Lacroix, “Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages and at the
Period of the Renaissance.” London, Chapman and Hall, 1874.
Léon Gautier, “La Chevalerie.” Paris, 1883.
Alwin Schultz, “Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger.” Leipzig, S.
Herzel, 1879 and 1880 (second edition, 1889).
Julius Bintz, “Die Leibesübungen des Mittelalters.” Gütersloh, C.
Bertelsmann, 1880.
F. Warre-Cornish, “Chivalry.” London, Swan Sonnenschein, and New York,
The Macmillan Co., 1901.
CHAPTER VII.
THE UNIVERSITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
A succession of influences operating in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries had widened the scope of human interests and produced a vague
longing after knowledge which was not to be satisfied by the traditional
teaching of the schools. Along with the demand for a different type and
more advanced grade of instruction, there arose here and there famous
lecturers, such as Abelard (1079-1142) at Paris, who gathered about
themselves great numbers of disciples. Centers were thus created to which
other teachers and their followers were attracted, and this in turn
led to an informal association of masters and pupils, out of which the
medieval university developed. The complete university came at length to
include four departments—theology, law, medicine, and philosophy or the
arts. Certain texts were thought to contain explicitly or implicitly the
sum of ascertainable secular truth, just as the Bible and the writings
of Church Fathers held all religious truth; and this was to be extracted
by prescribed methods of reasoning, with no fresh resort to the facts of
observation and experience. Instead of seeking new harvests, the typical
schoolmen of that day were content with the continual threshing over of
old straw.
As regards treatment of the body, the influence of asceticism was
still supreme. Provision for lawful amusements was rarely made in the
university statutes, which appear frequently to regard harmless attempts
at pleasure with more hostility than they display toward actual vice
and crime. The sports of chivalry—hunting and hawking, jousts and
tournaments—were not considered seemly for the student, even if he had
the means to indulge in them. Dancing was seldom countenanced in any
form. “Playing with a ball or bat” is sometimes found included in the
list of “insolent” games, and other prohibitions make mention of “profane
games, immodest runnings, and horrid shoutings.” The ideal student would
appear to be the one who denied himself all recreation and amusement; but
we may be sure that no such suppression of animal spirits was possible
for the average full-blooded young man of that age. In the absence of
any authorized outlet they found vent in drinking, gambling, and grosser
forms of vice, in street brawls and rough practical joking, and not
infrequently in violent outbreaks of organized lawlessness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
S. S. Laurie, “The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, with a
Survey of Mediæval Education.” New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1887.
Gabriel Compayré, “Abelard and the Origin and Early History of
Universities.” New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.
Hastings Rashdall, “The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages.”
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895.
J. B. Mullinger, article “Universities” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
11th edition.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.
The universities of the Middle Ages had made their contribution to
the intellectual advancement of Europe, but they could not break the
bands of ecclesiastical tyranny that still fettered the human mind. It
required the joint action of other and more potent forces to provide
escape from a conception of the world and the flesh which associated them
with the devil, and to weaken the authority of that theological dogma
which centered the thought and imagination of men for centuries upon
the rewards and punishments of a future state and meanwhile paralyzed
or thwarted every effort to master the resources or investigate the
phenomena of the material universe. Man’s rightful heritage upon this
earth was not yet restored to him. In some way the feeling of personal
dignity and independence must be aroused, the spirit of emulation
provoked, and his powers of achievement challenged as they had never
been before. Among the chief factors in this process of transition
from the medieval to the modern world was the Revival of Learning,
that appreciative study of the Greek and Latin classics and all the
long-neglected records of ancient civilization which supplied the Western
nations with a new ideal of life and culture. The recovered masterpieces
of literature and art excited the passionate admiration of scholars; they
revelled in the free existence of what seemed to them a Golden Age, rich
in such treasures as they had begun already to covet for themselves.
To the Italian “humanists” of the fifteenth century we owe what is still
known as a classical education. The greatest school-master of them all
was Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446), who undertook the training of the
sons of Marquis Gian Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua in 1423. So earnest and
successful was this teacher and so widely did his fame extend that other
pupils were added from time to time, until most of the princely houses
of Italy, together with some in foreign countries, were represented
at the school, to which many in humbler station were also admitted.
Latin, Greek, and classical archeology formed the basis and main body of
instruction. The chief end was to enable pupils to read and understand
the best works of the ancients and to express themselves with elegance
in these foreign languages. It was, in fact, an attempt to train new
citizens of Greece and Rome, and to reproduce for them the life of the
past.
The customs of chivalry had not ceased to shape the early training
of an Italian gentleman, and it was therefore natural that Vittorino
should incorporate in his school some of the characteristic features of
knightly education. The staff of assistants included special teachers
of dancing, riding, fencing, and swimming, and to these exercises were
added wrestling, running and jumping, archery, ball games, hunting and
fishing, and mock battles between two parties, or contests in which one
side sought to storm the castle or surprise the camp of its opponents.
The ample grounds about the villa which had been converted into a
school building were well adapted for such sports, and all the pupils
were required to share in them. Vittorino himself often joined them, it
is said, and occasionally led them on excursions into the surrounding
country, extending as far as Lago di Gardo, Venice, and the Alps. He
insisted on moderation in food and drink, and did not allow weather or
season to interfere too much with life in the open air.
Vittorino had thus succeeded in combining physical with mental training
and bringing them within the reach of every pupil; but outside of
the schools for young noblemen, which continued to exist in various
parts of Europe as late as the eighteenth century, he seems to have
had few, if any, successors in this respect until Basedow opened the
“Philanthropinum” at Dessau in 1774. During the more than three hundred
years that intervene, however, much was written by educational reformers
and others in commendation of bodily exercises and recognition of its
right to a place in the curriculum; and some of these authors, theorists
though they were, occupy an important position in the history of physical
training, as links between the present and the past. Vittorino, indeed,
had only applied in practice the pedagogical principles already outlined
by another Italian humanist, _Pietro Paulo Vergerio_ (1349-1428), in
a brief treatise on education sent to the young Ubertino di Carrara,
whose tutor he had been at the court in Padua. This letter, which was
afterwards printed and passed through many editions, refers repeatedly
to ancient Greeks and Romans, as authorities or by way of illustration,
and devotes two of its chapters to the subject of physical exercise.
_Maffeo Vegio_ (1407-1458), who began life as a scholar and poet but
later entered the service of the Church at Rome and finally joined the
order of Augustinian monks, wrote one of the most notable pedagogical
works of the fifteenth century, and in the chapters relating to physical
training shows in a similar way the influence of his classical studies.
To the same category belong _Enea Silvio Piccolomini_ (1405-1464), better
known as Pope Pius II, who was at one time a secretary at the court of
Emperor Frederick III, and in 1450 prepared a tractate on the subject of
princely education; _Francesco Filelfo_ (1398-1481), who wrote to the
Duchess Regent of Milan, about 1475, suggesting a method of education
suitable for her young son; and _Jacopo Sadoleto_ (1477-1547), humanist
and churchman, friend of Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, and Sturm, and
author of a book (1530) on education which indicates a return to the old
Athenian ideal and type.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—Hieronymus Mercurialis: Title page of first
edition of his _De arte gymnastica_.]
Two other Italian writers are worthy of more extended notice. _Girolamo
Cardano_ (1501-1576) had studied at Pavia and Padua, and traveled in
France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Germany. He obtained his
doctorate in medicine and practised that profession, devoting much of
his time, however, to researches which bore fruit in a long series of
scientific and philosophical works. In his interesting autobiography he
tells of his own early practice in running and jumping, riding, fencing,
and swimming, and elsewhere describes at length a great variety of
ancient and modern feats of strength and skill. His work on the care
of health (_De sanitate tuenda, libri iv_), of which several editions
appeared, contains an independent, systematic, and scientific treatment
of the hygiene of bodily exercise, discussing its value and effects in
general, the physiological classification of exercises into violent or
light, rapid or slow, continuous or interrupted, etc., and the nature and
usefulness of numerous special forms, which belong not only to past ages
but also to contemporary life and customs.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—Hieronymus Mercurialis: Title page of second
edition of his _De arte gymnastica_.]
_Hieronymus Mercurialis_ (1530-1606), a famous physician, and widely
known throughout Europe on account of his medical writings, while he
was still a young man, in the household of Cardinal Alexander Farnese
at Rome, began his literary career with a treatise on the gymnastics
of the ancients (_De arte gymnastica_)[6]—a book which seems to have
enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity and is often cited by more
recent writers. It was first published at Venice in 1569, but at least
three more editions appeared in Venice and one in Paris during his
lifetime, and others after his death, including one in Amsterdam as
late as 1672. Out of his rich store of classical learning—the first
edition contains a list of ninety-six Greek and Latin authors upon whom
he has drawn—Mercurialis seeks to reproduce for his readers the ancient
gymnasia and gymnastic exercises; but in the second half of the volume
he leaves the descriptive and historical and turns to the hygienic and
medical aspects of exercise, as viewed from the critical standpoint of
the physician. Somewhat like Cardano, he first considers the value of
exercise in conditions of health and disease and the general principles
that govern its application, and then takes up the nature and effects of
particular exercises in some detail. According to the title page the work
was not intended for the use of physicians only, but for all who were
interested in the study of archeology or in the preservation of health.[7]
In Germany _Martin Luther_ (1483-1546) realized the recreative and
moral value of bodily exercise, and recommends especially such knightly
sports as fencing and wrestling. The Swiss reformer _Ulrich Zwingli_
(1484-1531), writing on the subject of education in 1524, makes
suggestions regarding diet and clothing, and refers to running, jumping,
hurling stones, wrestling, and fencing as a means of acquiring strength
and skill. He also considers wrestling and fencing a useful preparation
for military service. _Joachim Camerarius_ (1500-1574), who taught in
Nuremberg, Tübingen, and the University of Leipsic, and was the friend
and biographer of Melanchthon, published in 1544 a brief dialogue on
bodily exercise (_Dialogus de gymnasiis_).[8] The author believes that
boys should be encouraged to run, jump, wrestle, fence, and play ball
outdoors, and one of the speakers, after mentioning the gymnastics of
the ancients and the performances of the old Germans, describes to his
companion a model school for the common people in which the teacher
provides for indoor practice in hanging from a bar, climbing a rope,
lifting weights, and matching strength with an opponent in various
ways, and for a number of active games in the open air, some of them
described in the text. Among the most illustrious names in the history
of educational reform is that of _Johann Amos Comenius_ (1592-1671), a
Moravian pastor and teacher who suffered persecution and banishment in
the course of the Thirty Years’ War. In his writings he allots eight
hours of the day to sleep, eight to work, and eight to meals, the care of
the health, exercise of the body, etc. He would have about every school
building a playground, where the boys might run and jump and enjoy their
games, since it is necessary to put the body in motion and allow the mind
to rest. A half hour of recreation is to follow each hour of study. He
would let pupils play to their hearts’ content, but forbids wrestling,
boxing, and swimming as either useless or dangerous.
_Juan Louis Vives_ (1492-1540), a well-known Spanish scholar, born at
Valencia, educated there and in the University of Paris, after 1514 a
resident of Bruges and Louvain, but dividing his time between Flanders
and England in the years 1522 and 1528 as lecturer at Oxford and tutor
in the family of Henry VIII, published several works on education which
contain frequent mention of bodily exercise. He regards it as necessary
for the health of growing boys, and appreciates the recreative value of
games.
The typical figure of the French Renaissance is _François Rabelais_
(1490-1553), monk, physician, and humorist, whose novels _Gargantua_
(1535) and _Pantagruel_ (1533) contain his revolutionary views on
education. The young gentleman Gargantua is provided with an ideal
tutor in the person of Ponocrates. After three hours of lectures in the
morning they spend an hour or so in ball games out-of-doors, followed
by dinner, an hour of music or quiet games, and three more of study in
the afternoon. Now his physical training, the object of which is plainly
to prepare for “the gentleman’s occupation, war,” begins in earnest.
With the author’s habitual exuberance of detail Esquire Gymnast is made
to teach his pupil horsemanship, how to handle the lance while in full
armor, vault on horseback and leap from one horse to another, wield the
battle-axe, handle pike, sword, dagger, and shield, and hunt the bear,
deer, wild boar, and lesser game. He also practises wrestling, running,
broad and high jumping, swimming, rowing and sailing a boat, climbing
ropes, masts, trees and walls, throwing stones, hurling spears, shooting
with bow and cross-bow and with firearms, hanging and travelling sideways
on a pole fixed in two trees, and putting up leaden dumb-bells.[9]
The eminent French essayist _Michel de Montaigne_ (1533-1592), in
discussing at some length the education of children, has comparatively
little to say of their physical training; but his few words on that
subject have been frequently quoted, and will still bear repetition.
They are found in Book I, Chapter 25, of the _Essays_ (1580). Health and
strength are necessary, he says, for “the soul will be oppressed if not
assisted by the body.... I know very well how much mine groans under
the disadvantage of a body so tender and delicate that eternally leans
and presses upon her.... Our very exercises and recreations, running,
wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing will prove to be
a good part of our study. I would have his outward behavior and mien, and
the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. It
is not a soul, it is not a body, that we are training up; it is a man,
and we ought not to divide him into two parts; and as Plato says, we are
not to fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like
two horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his does he not seem
to allow more time for, and to take more care of, exercises for the body,
and to believe that the mind in a good proportion does her business at
the same time too?... Inure him to heat and cold, to wind and sun, and to
danger that he ought to despise. Wean him from all effeminacy in clothes
and lodging, eating and drinking; accustom him to everything, that he may
not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous
young man.”
An English contemporary of Rabelais, and of Henry VIII, was _Sir Thomas
Elyot_ (1490?-1546), intimate with Sir Thomas More, deeply stirred by the
spirit of the Renaissance, and held in high repute for his scholarship.
“The Boke named the Governour,” published by him in 1531, relates to the
education suitable for a gentleman’s son who is preparing to serve the
commonwealth. It passed through a half-dozen editions within the next
fifty years, and has been recently reprinted in London and New York.
Book I, Chapters 16-22, 26 and 27, comprising more than an eighth of
the entire work, are concerned with physical training, which is treated
under the following heads: “Of sundry forms of exercise necessary for
a gentleman. Exercises whereof cometh both recreation and profit” (here
he mentions the use of dumb-bells of lead or other metal, lifting or
throwing the heavy stone or bar, wrestling, running, swimming, handling
the sword and the battle axe, riding and vaulting.) “The ancient hunting
of Greeks, Romans, and Persians. Dancing. Of other exercises which,
moderately used, be to every estate of man expedient. That shooting
in a long bow (the ‘noble art of archery’) is principal of all other
exercises.”[10] Elyot’s fondness for the classics appears in his very
numerous references to Greek and Roman examples or authorities.
While Mercurialis was writing his _De Arte Gymnastica_ and Montaigne his
_Essays_, _Richard Mulcaster_ (1530?-1611) was doing hard work for scant
pay as Master of the Merchant Taylors’ School in London (1561-1586).
Among other striking points of difference, he stands in pleasant contrast
with his more successful contemporary Sturm, at Strasburg, in his
attitude toward the bodies of the young. His _Positions_, which appeared
in 1581 and was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, deals with the principles
to be observed in the training of children, “either for skill in their
book or health in their body.” A third of the volume is given up to the
physical side of education, and the nature of the contents cannot be
better revealed in brief space than by a partial list of the chapter
headings, slightly altered and condensed: Chapter 4, That exercise must
be joined with the book, as the schooling of the body. 6, The importance
of exercise and physical training (as an agent of health). 7, The order
followed in the present treatment of the subject. 8, Definition and
varieties of exercise (athletics, martial exercises, exercises for
health, etc.). 9, Choice of exercises. 10-15, Of loud speaking, loud
singing, loud and soft reading, much talking and silence, laughing and
weeping, holding the breath. 16-27, Dancing, wrestling, fencing, top
and scourge, walking, running, leaping, swimming, riding, hunting,
shooting (archery), ball games. 28-34, Circumstances to be considered
in exercise, nature and quality of exercise, the bodies which are to
be exercised; place, time, quantity, and manner of exercise. 35, The
training master (the same teacher is to serve for both mind and body). Of
all books on gymnastics, he says in this last chapter, “I know not any
comparable to Hieronymus Mercurialis, a very learned Italian physician
now in our time, which hath taken great pains to sift out of all writers
whatsoever concerneth the whole gymnastical and exercising argument,
whose advice in this question I have myself much used, where he did fit
my purpose.” Mulcaster seems never to have caught the ear of the age in
which he lived, and it is only within the last few decades that he has
been rescued from oblivion and rated at his real worth, as a man far in
advance of his time. His book was reprinted in London in 1888.
Standing at the very end of this period of the Renaissance and the
Reformation is _John Milton_ (1608-1674), whose _Tractate on Education_
(1644), though not of great value in itself, is yet deserving of mention
here because it associates a form of bodily exercise with mental and
moral training. In his model school, intended to bring up gentlemen’s
sons “to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices
both private and public, of peace and war,” he would have the young men,
between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, live together in barracks,
like the Spartan youth. “About an hour and a half ere they eat at noon
should be allowed them for exercise, and due rest afterwards; but the
time for this may be enlarged at pleasure.... The exercise which I
commend first is exact use of their weapon, to guard and to strike safely
with edge or point; this will keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and
well in breath; is also the likeliest means to make them grow large and
tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage.... They
must be also practised in all the locks and gripes of wrestling, wherein
Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug or
grapple, and to close....” About two hours before supper they are to
be called out for their military motions under sky or covert; “first
on foot, then, as their age permits, on horseback, to all the art of
cavalry; that, having in sport, but much exactness, and daily muster,
served out the rudiments of their soldiership ... they may as it were out
of a long war, come forth renowned and perfect commanders in the service
of their country.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
R. H. Quick, “Essays on Educational Reformers.” New York, D. Appleton &
Co., 1890.
F. P. Graves, “A History of Education during the Middle Ages and the
Transition to Modern Times.” New York, The Macmillan Co., 1910.
Foster Watson, “Notices of Some Early English Writers on Education, with
Descriptions, Extracts, and Notes.” In annual Reports of the United
States Commissioner of Education for 1900-01 (I: 861-884), 1902 (I:
481-508), 1903 (I: 319-350), and 1904 (I: 633-701).
W. H. Woodward, “Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance
(1400-1600).” Cambridge (England), at the University Press, 1906.
W. H. Woodward, “Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators: Essays
and Versions.” Cambridge (England), at the University Press, 1897.
Wilhelm Krampe, “Die italienischen Humanisten und ihre Wirksamkeit für
die Wiederbelebung gymnastischer Pädagogik. Ein Beitrag zur allgemeinen
Geschichte der Jugenderziehung und der Leibesübungen.” Breslau, W. G.
Korn, 1895.
O. Richter, “Die Ansichten und Bestrebungen italienischer Humanisten
auf dem Gebiete der Leibeserziehung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Leibesübungen.” In _Monatsschrift für das Turnwesen_ 14 (1895); 98-107,
139-149, 193-200, and 262-270. Berlin, R. Gaertners Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Carl Rossow, “Italienische und deutsche Humanisten und ihre Stellung zu
den Leibesübungen.” Leipzig, C. G. Naumann, 1903.
S. S. Laurie, “John Amos Comenius, Bishop of the Moravians: His Life and
Educational Works.” Cambridge (England), at the University Press, 1895.
M. W. Keatinge, “The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius now for the
first time Englished, with Introductions, Biographical and Historical.”
London, Adam and Charles Black, 1896.
W. S. Monroe, “Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform.” New
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Foster Watson, “Vives: On Education. A Translation of the _De Tradendis
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Cambridge (England), at the University Press, 1913.
Foster Watson, “Vives and the Renascence Education of Women.” New York:
Longmans, Green & Co.; London, Edward Arnold, 1912.
Arthur Tilley, “François Rabelais.” Philadelphia and London, J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1907.
Walter Besant, “Readings in Rabelais.” Edinburgh and London, William
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M. E. Lowndes, “Michel de Montaigne: A Biographical Study.” Cambridge
(England), at the University Press, 1898.
Edward Dowden, “Michel de Montaigne.” Philadelphia and London, J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1905.
L. E. Rector, “Montaigne: The Education of Children. Selected,
Translated, and Annotated.” New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1899.
H. H. S. Croft, “The Boke named The Governour, Devised by Sir Thomas
Elyot, Knight. Edited from the first edition of 1531.” In two volumes.
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Sir Thomas Elyot, “The Boke Named the Governour.” London, J. M. Dent &
Co.; New York, E. P. Dutton & Co. (Foster Watson’s Introduction is dated
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R. H. Quick, “Positions: By Richard Mulcaster, First Headmaster of
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Oscar Browning, “Milton’s Tractate on Education. A Facsimile Reprint from
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FOOTNOTES:
[6] The first edition, dedicated to Cardinal Alexander Farnese, has
the following title-page: “Artis Gymnasticæ apud Antiquos celeberrimæ,
nostris temporibus ignoratæ, Libri Sex. In quibus exercitationum
omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates & quicquid denique ad
corporis humani exercitationes pertinet, diligenter explicatur. Opus
non modo medicis, verum etiam omnibus antiquarum rerum cognoscendarum,
& valetudinis conservandæ studiosis admodum utile. Palæstræ descriptio
ex Vetruvio sub litera B. Auctore Hieronymo Mercuriali Foroliviensi,
Medico & Philosopho. Venetiis, Apud Juntas. MDLXIX.” The second edition,
like the third and the fourth, is illustrated, and dedicated to Emperor
Maximilian II. The title-page is changed to read: “Hieronymi Mercurialis
de arte gymnastica Libri Sex, in quibus exercitationum ... admodum utile
(as in first edition). Secunda editione aucti, & multis figuris ornati.
Ad Maximilianum II. Imperatorem. Venetiis apud Juntas, MDLXXIII.” The
Paris issue of this second edition substitutes the words “Parisiis, Apud
Jacobum du Puys, via Joannis Lateranensis, sub signo Samaritanæ. 1577.”
The third edition (“Tertia editione correctiores, & auctiores facti”)
was published “Venetiis, MDLXXXVII. Apud Juntas,” and the fourth edition
(“Quarta editione correctiores, & auctiores facti”), “Venetiis, apus
Juntas. MDCI.”