ABSTRACT
Norbert Elias (1897-1990) is often cited as the pre-eminent theorist of sport. His grand theory situates the rise, development and continuing attraction of sport in the wider context of what he called the civilizing process, which began in the middle ages, that is the period of European history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (fifth century) to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In Elias’s conception, the civilizing process started in the later part of the period, between 1100 and 1453, which was when separate kingdoms began to emerge and the growth of trade and urban life changed the social landscape utterly. Both the church and monarchies grew in power and, from the fifteenth century, there was an increase in interest in the arts, literature and scholarship.
