A guide to the history of physical education — John Shaqi
A guide to the history of physical educationLeonard, Fred Eugene
History
A guide to the history of physical education
Leonard, Fred Eugene
Physical education and training; Physical education and training -- History
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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