Introduction: Cultures of Sport in the Renaissance

Cultural history reconstructs discourses while also paying attention to their medium. Renaissance physical culture was first of all the object of practical and oral transmission (the techniques of the body that could be properly learned only by direct teaching and observation); it also resorted to the production of a variety of manuscript material, and of course ultimately to the novelty of print. However, our familiarity and comparatively easier access to printed sources should not obscure the fact that they represent only part of the scene—even if this is a very characteristic development of the period. On matter of sources, moreover, prescriptive literature can only give a partial account of reality: rich insights can be obtained from the perspective allowed by diaries, letters and account books. One dimension of past experience such ego-documents are known to allow us to retrieve, to some extent, is emotional life—the subject of much ongoing historical research. And sport and play show clear connections with affectivity: the competitive side of games, the anxiety about their outcome, particularly (though not uniquely) if some gain or loss of money may depend on it—all conjured to challenge the emotional balance of our ancestors. The contributions to this volume will also suggest the extent to which gender, social, and age groups defined access and modes of participation to sport in Renaissance Europe. The task of the cultural history of the past, instead, is to attempt to reconstruct the meaning the various forms of cultural practice had for their contemporaries.