A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance by Alessandro Arcangeli

Author:Alessandro Arcangeli [Arcangeli, Alessandro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350283039
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.1: Races and competitions at the shooting competition camps of Augsburg, 1509. Universitütsbibliothek Erlangen, Cod. B 213, 175v–176r.

Tennis also belonged to the group of games which could be recommended, at least under certain conditions. Forbidden to non-nobles from the fourteenth century onwards in France as in England, it was considered an honest sport that prepared the nobility for military life. The French kings’ passion for the jeu de paume is well known: Charles IX thought it “one of the most honest, dignified and salubrious exercises” for princes and gentlemen and believed it to be played as much as or more than any other sport in all the cities of the realm, especially Paris (Boucher 1992: 21). Indeed, it was in France that the appetite for it was the most remarkable: the French were born with a racket in hand, exclaimed the English traveler, Robert Dallington at the end of the sixteenth century, adding that the kingdom had more jeux de paume than churches (Dallington [1598] 1604: 147–9).

This sport spilled out of its initially aristocratic precincts into all urban areas. In Paris, purpose-built roofed courts increased dramatically in number in the course of the sixteenth century, responding to the demand of a diverse audience of aristocrats, artisans, and students (Jaser 2016a). If it is difficult to count with certainty just how many there were (at least seventy tennis courts can be localized between 1300 and 1600), their rapid proliferation concerned the corporation of master paumiers—who had the monopoly of this lucrative game—as much as it did the authorities: the Parlement of Paris forbade the building of new courts in the city and its environs in 1551, 1579, and 1599 (Belmas 1982: 31–3). After the Wars of Religion, the Bureau de la Ville and the Parlement intended to strictly monitor the reconstruction of courts destroyed during the troubles; while they supported the building of a “palmail” court (“pall-mall” was a variety of croquet, as “pallamaglio”) between the gates of Saint-Honoré and Saint-Denis, they opposed the construction of a new jeu de paume in 1602, despite the fact that it had the backing of the king (Registre des délibérations 1883–90: XII, 182; XIII, 481).

The rise of ball games in cities showed how the rapid expansion of a sport could set the authorities new challenges in terms of preserving the public and social order, while, at the same time, helping to institutionalize sporting activities by establishing permanent venues, which in turn contributed to the “sportification” of these activities (Behringer 2016: 39–47). These new and often land-hungry installations posed problems of land use and availability, just at a time when cities were expanding and bursting out of their medieval confines. Behind the question of land control lay that of asserting political authority over public order and behavior. Already by Henry VIII’s time in England, a system of royal licenses for tennis courts or bowling alleys allowed the authorities to set the rules of commercial venues and to control their number in London and its surrounding area.

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