What Kind Of Sports Where There During The Time Of The Middle Ages/early Modern Europe?
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I know allot of sports and recreation was banned by the church and the common class/peasants were discouraged and prohibited from sporting activity.
What where some of sports and recreational activity nobles, clergy (monks) and common people participated in.
In ‘Life in a Medieval Village’ Frances and Joseph Gies write:
‘many of the games enjoyed by the villagers were played alike by children, adolescents, and adults, and endured into modern times, blind man’s buff, prisoner’s base, bowling. Young and old played checkers, chess, backgammon, and most popular of all, dice. Sports included football, wrestling, swimming, fishing, archery, and aform of tennis played with hand coverings instead of rackets. The Luttrell Psalter (c1340) portrays a number of mysterious games involving sticks and balls and apparatus of various kinds, remote ancestors of modern team sports. Bull-baiting and cockfighting were popular spectator sports.’
For the upper classes hunting and falconry were popular sports, they were not just sporting activities but were also an important source of food. Much time and skill went into the training of falcons, and favourite falcons were treated as pets and kept in the house.
Tournaments were organised by lords and princes for their own entertainment and that of their friends, and to show off their wealth. Th eprincipal feature was a mock battle between groups of knights from different regions. There were also prizes for different categories of prowess.
And dancing and music of course were popular with people of all classes. People of all classes would play musical instruments, peasant houses that have been excavated have been found to contain musical instruments.
Seasonal festivites provided a round of holidays for rich and poor alike, with Christmas being the longest festival, lasting thirteen days from Christmas Day to Epiphany (January 6th), when, as in a description of 12th century London “every man’s house, as also their parish churches, was decked with holly, ivy, bay, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green.” Other important festive occasions were Easter, May Day, Pentecost, Lammas, and Michaelmas.
In the early modern period, most of the same sports and games continued to be popular. Football matches were often very violent, with many men on both sides, often degenerating into a fight. Sir Thomas Elyot wrote of a fotball match he witnessed as “a beastly fury and extreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurt, and consequently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded.”
Tennis became very popular in the 16th century, but was generallyr egarded as a sport for th eupper classes. Not always though. The popularity of tennis in England wsa noted by Estienne Perlin, a French cleric who visited England, commenting on what a wealthy nation England was he said “..for here you may commonly see artisans, such as hatters or joiners, play at tennis for a crown, which is not seen elsewhere, particularly on a working day. . .’
Bowling was still extremely popular, and there were bowling alleys everywhere, from royal palaces to the less salubrious parts of London. Some people worried about bowling because it caused gambling. John Stow complained of the decline in popularity of archery because it caused people to “creepe into bowling Allies and ordinarie dicing houses, nearer home, where they have roome enough to hazard their money at unlawful games. . . .”
Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621, described suitable winter pastimes as follows: “cardes, tables and dice, shovelboard, chesse-play, the philosopher’s game, small trunks, shuttle-cock, balliards, musicke, masks, singing, dancing, yulegames, frolicks, jests, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, merry tales. . . ”
‘Balliards’ or billiards is another old game. The French King Louis XI, who died in 1483, had a type of billiard table, while the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots, complained that hers was taken away from her before she was executed.
Another form of indoor entertainment was ‘clash’ or ‘pins’. This was the type of bowling in which skittles are knocked down by a ball, like modern ten-pin bowling. thomas Elyot thought it far too low class a game for anyone of social standing, although why isn’t really clear.
Card games are first mentioned in Europe in the fourteenth century. In Spain they are refered to in 1371 and they are first described in detaili in Switzerland in 1377. In 1376 they were causing such problems in Florence that the city elders prohibited the playing of ‘a certain game called naibbbe’, naibbe being an early word for cards.
The first certain English reference to card-playing comes in a letter of the Paston family in November 1459. The letter is from John Paston to his wife Margaret. She has asked her husband what entertainments a recently widowed neighbour is going to allow in her house over christmas. He replied that altough ‘lowde dysports’ such as dancing, would not be allowed, chess, tables (backgammon), and cards would be permitted.
Anything that would have been found at a Tournament.
Jousting, Sword on foot, Axe on foot… etc.