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.

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.

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.”