While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
- Swimming was celebrated in ancient Rome but fell out of favor throughout Europe’s Dark Ages.
- English theologian Everard Digby wrote the first modern swimming manual, De Arte Natandi, in 1587.
- Digby’s manual described and illustrated a variety of aquatic stunts that he had developed (e.g., “ringing the bells,” “the leap of the goat”).
- Historian Vicki Valosik claims, “In providing instructions for these aquatic ‘refinements,’ Digby hoped to revive swimming—a once revered skill that had all but died out during Europe’s Dark Ages—and elevate it from a crude, mechanical function of the hands and feet to an artful science.”