A Guide to the History of Physical Education

THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.

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.