Abstract
The game of chess was among those forms of entertainment whose practical role in socializing and educating aristocratic society across medieval Europe was depicted in various works of literature, handbooks, and philosophical treatises.1 However, some men of letters and lawmakers, who wrote statutes about board games and games of chance, did not always consider games favourable activities. Apart from the admiration and approval of chess, tables (also known as tabula, an early version of backgammon), and dice by some secular authors, other voices were also raised—and they were not isolated—in criticism of these activities as idle pastimes. Dissatisfaction with—and even downright condemnation of—the game of chess and other games was occasionally expressed by authors of epic poems and books of instruction, but most especially by the representatives of ecclesiastical authorities in their treatises, synod statutes, and other church rules and regulations. Yet despite the vast amount of criticism against games, clergy, preachers, and other ecclesiastics often enjoyed playing games and even occasionally used them as teaching tools in their sermons. Given the widespread appeal of chess, tables, and games of chance across the social strata throughout the later Middle Ages, why did these popular pastimes—seemingly more than hunting, dancing, and other recreational activities—encounter such serious opposition, particularly among ecclesiastics?2
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Richard G. Eales’s “The Game of Chess: An Aspect of Medieval Knightly Culture,” in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood. Papers from the First and Second Strawberry Hill Conferences, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1986)
Robert Bubczyk, Gry na szachownicy w kulturze dworskiej i rycerskiej średniowiecznej Anglii na tle europejskim [Board Games in Courtly and Knightly Culture of Medieval England in the European Context] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2009).
Harold J. R. Murray’s A History of Chess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913)
Richard Eales’s Chess: The History of a Game (New York: Facts of File, 1985)
David Shenk, The Immortal Game: A History of Chess (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
Murray provides a discussion of tables in “The Medieval Games of Tables,” Medium Aevum, 10.2 (1941): 57-69.
Murray, A History of Board Games other than Chess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952).
Robert of Brunnes, Handlyng Synne, ed. F.J. Furnivall (London: 1862), p. 34.
Ratis Raving and other Moral and Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. by J. Rawson Lumby (London: 1870), lines 1112-1745 and 1243-48.
Petrus Alfonsi, De disciplina clericalis, ed. E. Hermes, trans. P. R. Quarrie (Berkeley, CA: 1977), pp. 114-15.
See The King’s Mirror (Speculum Regale-Konungs Skuggsjá), ed. and trans. L. M. Larson (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1917), pp. 6-57 and 83.
Wojciech Iwańczak, “Jak grano w szachy w średniowiecznych Czechach?” [How Was Chess Played in Medieval Bohemia?], in Ludzie, Kościót, wierzenia. Studia z dziejów kultury i społecze stwa Europy rodkowej [People, the Church, Beliefs. A Study of the History of Culture and Society in Central Europe], ed. Wojciech Iwańczak and Stefan Krzysztof Kuczyński (Warsaw: Wydawn DiG, 2001), pp. 461-62.
Pavel Židek, Józef Muczkowski, “Pavel Židek,” Tygodnik Ilustrowany 7 (1863), pp. 49-50.
M. L. Colker, “The Lure of Women, Hunting, Chess, and Tennis: A Vision,” Speculum 59 (1984): 104-105 [103-05].
Helena M. Gamer “The Earliest Evidence of Chess in Western Literature: The Einsiedeln Verses,” Speculum 29.4 (1954): 734-50.
Marilyn Yalom’s Birth of a Chess Queen: A History (New York: HarperCollins, 2004)
Mark N. Taylor’s chapter “How Did the Queen Go Mad?,” in Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: A Fundamental Thought Paradigm of the Premodern World, ed. Daniel O’Sullivan (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 169-83.
Daniel O’Sullivan, “Changing the Rules in and of Medieval Chess Allegories,” in Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: A Fundamental Thought Paradigm of the Premodern World, ed. Daniel O’Sullivan (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 201 and 207 [199-220].
See Petri Damiani Monachi Ordinis S. Benedicti Epistolarum Libri Octo, ed. S. Cramoisy, Book I, letter 10 (Paris: 1610), pp. 44-45.
For the ‘anatomy’ of gambling with dice and its condemnation by the Church throughout the Middle Ages, see Rhiannon Purdie, “Dice Games and the Blasphemy of Prediction,” in Medieval Futures. Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages, ed. J. A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei (Cambridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 167-84. Purdie explores why different medieval societies gambled and analyzes a number of reasons for the condemnation of this activity by the Church, which included acts of blasphemy, an irresponsible loss of money, physical violence, endemic cheating, violent swearing, and so on. She notes that the game of dice is included as a successor of pagan divination.
Jacques Le Goff, cwiat średniowiecznej wyobracni [The World of Medieval Imagination], trans. into Polish by M. Radożycka-Paoletti, (Warsaw: Nowa Marianna, 1997), p. 253.
John Ashton, The History of Gambling in England, (London: Singing Tree Press, 1899), p.13.
Les statuts synodaux français du XIIIe siècle [The French Synod Statutes of the Thirteenth Century] trans. O. Pontal, 4 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1971), 1:82.
Dokumenty soborów powszechnych [Documents of General Councils], ed. and trans. Arkadiusz Baron and Henryk Pietras, 3 vols. (Krakov: Wydawnictwo WAM, 2003), 2: 254-55
Józef Fijałek, cycie i obyczaje kleru w Polsce średniowiecznej na tle ustawodawstwa synodalnego [Life and Habits of the Clergy in Medieval Poland in the Context of Synod Legislation], ed. A. Nowakowski, (Krakov: Universitas, 1997), pp. 39-40
William. J. Dohar and John Shinners, Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), pp. 21-22.
See Registrum Epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham Archiepiscopis Cantuariensis, Rolls Series, ed. Ch. T. Martin, 3 vols. (London: Longman, 1882), 1: 77.
M. S. Giuseppi, “The Wardrobe and Household Accounts of Bogo de Clare, A.D. 1284-1286,” Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity 70 (1920): 1-56
Michael Altschul, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares 1217-1314 (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 176-87.
For a discussion of early combinatorics, in which Donald Knuth displays a table of Wibold’s fifty-six dice combinations, see Art of Computer Programming: Generating All Tress, History of Combinatorial Genertion, 4 vols (NJ: Pearson, 2006), 4:55-56.
See London, The British Library MS Harley 4894, fol. 183v. This sermon was printed by Gerald Robert Owst in Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), pp. 363 and 443-44
John Wycliffe, “How the Office of Curates Is Ordained of God,” in The English Works of Wyclif, ed. F. D. Matthew, (London: EETS, 1880), p. 152.
John Wycliffe, “The Order of Priesthood,” in The English Works of Wyclif, ed. F. D. Matthew (London: EETS, 1880), p. 168.
Ecclesiastical Records of England, Ireland, and Scotland, from Fifth Century till the Reformation, ed. Richard Hart (Cambridge, MA: MacMillan and Barclay, 1846), p. 115.
August Bielowski, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, Joanis de Czarnkow Chronikon Polonorum, ed. J. Szlachtowski, 6 vols. (Lwów: Akademia Umiejętności, 1872), 2:652.
Józef Szymański, “Uwagi o organizacji archidiakonatu polskiego” [Remarks on the Organization of the Archdeaconry in Poland], Roczniki Teologiczno-Kanoniczne 6.3 (1959-1960), 46-47
Hieronim Eugeniusz Wyczawski, Przygotowanie do studiów w archiwach kościelnych [Preparations for the Study in Church Archives], (Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: Wydawnictwo Calvarianum, 1989), p. 153.
See Concilia Poloniae, Synody diecezji płockiej i ich statuty [Synods of the Płock Diocese and Their Statutes], 10 vols. (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie, 1952), 6:226-31 (statute no. 20).
Najdawniejsze statuty synodalne archidiecezji gniecniecskiej [The Earliest Synod Statutes of the Gniezno Archdiocese], ed. Władysław Abraham (Krakov: Akademia Umiejętności, 1920), p. 26.
Statuty synodalne wielucsko-kaliskie Mikołaja Trąby z r. 1420 [The Kalisz-Wieluń Synod Statutes of Mikołaj Trąba from 1420], ed. Jan Fijałek and Adam Vetulani (Kraków, 1951), p. 64 (statute no. 14) and p. 83 (statute no. 24).
For information on other bans see: Jerzy Wolny, “Materiały do historii wagantów w Polsce średniowiecznej” [Materials for the History of Goliards in Medieval Poland], Biuletyn Biblioteki Jagiellocskiej 19 (1969): pp. 73-89
Jeffrey Richard, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1994), p.122.
Jean Verdon, Przyjemności średniowiecza [Pleasures of the Middle Ages], trans. into Polish Jan Maria Kłoczowski (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen, 1998), p. 114.
See Harold J. R. Murray, “The Alfons Manuscript,” British Chess Magazine (1910): 229-35
Olivia R. Constable, “Chess and Courtly Culture in Medieval Castile: The Libro de ajedrez of Alfonso X el Sabio,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 82 (2007): 301-47
Sonja Musser Golladay, “Los Libros de Acedrex Dados E Tablas: Historical, Artistic and Metaphysical Dimensions of Alfonso X’s Book of Games,” PhD diss. (University of Arizona, 2007).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Serina Patterson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bubczyk, R. (2015). “Ludus Inhonestus Et Illicitus?” Chess, Games, and the Church in Medieval Europe. In: Patterson, S. (eds) Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137497529_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137497529_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56148-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49752-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)