What were violent games in the renaissance?
Football matches could be very violent. There were usually a great many men on both sides, and often the game quickly degenerated into a fight, with the players more interested in kicking each other than in scoring goals. Sir Thomas Elyot described it as “a beastly fury and extreme violence; whereof proceedeth hurt, and consequently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded. . .” Bear and bull baiting were very popular spectator sports. A tethered bear or bull would be set upon by mastiffs (large fierce dogs). In England in the 16th century, famous fighting bears like ‘Harry Hunks’ and ‘The Great Sackerson’ were national heroes, and Paris Garden in Southwark, the centre of the sport, drew immense and noisy crowds every Sunday, so that ‘bear garden’ remains a synonym for a place of disorder. Thomas Platter described a bear-baiting: ‘The theatre is circular, with galleries round the top for the spectators, the ground space down below beneath the clear sky, is unoccupied. In
