force—not simply because people loved the game, but also because it served a function. “There was a
demand
for a game like chess from its earliest appearance,” suggests Richard Eales, “a demand sufficient to change it from an oriental curiosity into a regular feature of noble and courtly life.”
The proof is in how thoroughly chess became woven into the fabric—and literally tiled onto the floor—of Christian medieval European society. In the twelfth century a mosaic artist laying the floor of the San Savino Basilica in Piacenza, Italy (about forty-five miles southeast of Milan), used tiny black and white tiles to illustrate a dramatic philosophical divide. In the lower left corner he depicted a dice game in progress; in the lower right-hand panel he conjured a chess scene—probably chess instruction rather than an actual game.
Mosaic floor in San Savino Basilica
Notice the correct number of squares on the board, and the differentiation of the pieces. Such a detailed, familiar chess landscape rendered at such an early date demonstrates how quickly the game had become embedded into the European medieval consciousness. And in a house of worship, no less. There was no explicitly religious iconography in the mosaic, but its church setting was no accident. The panels presented a sharp moral sermon about one of mankind’s great existential choices in the Middle Ages. The dice game, explained art historian William Tronzo, “represents the state of man’s life in which he commits himself to the unstable forces of the world. Captivated by them, life becomes lawless and chaotic.
“On the right [where chess is located], man orders his world with intelligences and virtue and imbues it with law and harmony.”
For moralists of the day, dice and chess nicely symbolized these opposing choices—just as it had for the earlier Islamic historian al-Mas’udi. Dice, the older game, represented a consciousness resigned to a world dominated by fate; chess stood for the new empowerment, the idea of making one’s way in the world based on one’s own effort and ability. The juxtaposition even became embedded into twelfth-century Italian law, which prohibited dice but allowed chess because the game depended “on one’s own talents. One is not entrusted to the powers of fortune.”
Implanting chess into basilica floors and even into legal doctrine, though, was just a prelude. One century later, a monk from the nearby coastal city of Genoa produced what would become by far the most influential chess book of all time. Whereas San Savino’s mosaic never left the ground and was probably meant to be seen by only a few hundred pairs of eyes, the text penned by Dominican monk Jacobus de Cessolis in the halls of San Domenico Basilica, about one hundred miles away from San Savino, traveled great distances. Shortly after its inception around 1300, Cessolis’s potent work spread far beyond Italy, having an impact on all of Europe as virtually no other piece of writing in the Middle Ages did. As if carried by an interpretive wind, the Latin manuscript was eventually transformed into eighteen separate versions and translated into Italian, French, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Czech. “No other work of medieval times was so much copied,” concluded Harold Murray. “Its popularity…must have almost rivaled that of the Bible itself.”
A chess book almost as popular as the Bible? Obviously Cessolis was speaking to something much greater than a board game. And so suggests the book title:
Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium ac popularium sive super ludo scacchorum
(The book of the morals of men and the duties of nobles and commoners—or, On the game of chess). The work was actually a collection of sermons about how each person should act in society. Cessolis was concerned with nothing less than the clarification and refinement of social norms. In chess, he found a superb model, a near-literal miniaturization of
demand
for a game like chess from its earliest appearance,” suggests Richard Eales, “a demand sufficient to change it from an oriental curiosity into a regular feature of noble and courtly life.”
The proof is in how thoroughly chess became woven into the fabric—and literally tiled onto the floor—of Christian medieval European society. In the twelfth century a mosaic artist laying the floor of the San Savino Basilica in Piacenza, Italy (about forty-five miles southeast of Milan), used tiny black and white tiles to illustrate a dramatic philosophical divide. In the lower left corner he depicted a dice game in progress; in the lower right-hand panel he conjured a chess scene—probably chess instruction rather than an actual game.
Mosaic floor in San Savino Basilica
Notice the correct number of squares on the board, and the differentiation of the pieces. Such a detailed, familiar chess landscape rendered at such an early date demonstrates how quickly the game had become embedded into the European medieval consciousness. And in a house of worship, no less. There was no explicitly religious iconography in the mosaic, but its church setting was no accident. The panels presented a sharp moral sermon about one of mankind’s great existential choices in the Middle Ages. The dice game, explained art historian William Tronzo, “represents the state of man’s life in which he commits himself to the unstable forces of the world. Captivated by them, life becomes lawless and chaotic.
“On the right [where chess is located], man orders his world with intelligences and virtue and imbues it with law and harmony.”
For moralists of the day, dice and chess nicely symbolized these opposing choices—just as it had for the earlier Islamic historian al-Mas’udi. Dice, the older game, represented a consciousness resigned to a world dominated by fate; chess stood for the new empowerment, the idea of making one’s way in the world based on one’s own effort and ability. The juxtaposition even became embedded into twelfth-century Italian law, which prohibited dice but allowed chess because the game depended “on one’s own talents. One is not entrusted to the powers of fortune.”
Implanting chess into basilica floors and even into legal doctrine, though, was just a prelude. One century later, a monk from the nearby coastal city of Genoa produced what would become by far the most influential chess book of all time. Whereas San Savino’s mosaic never left the ground and was probably meant to be seen by only a few hundred pairs of eyes, the text penned by Dominican monk Jacobus de Cessolis in the halls of San Domenico Basilica, about one hundred miles away from San Savino, traveled great distances. Shortly after its inception around 1300, Cessolis’s potent work spread far beyond Italy, having an impact on all of Europe as virtually no other piece of writing in the Middle Ages did. As if carried by an interpretive wind, the Latin manuscript was eventually transformed into eighteen separate versions and translated into Italian, French, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Czech. “No other work of medieval times was so much copied,” concluded Harold Murray. “Its popularity…must have almost rivaled that of the Bible itself.”
A chess book almost as popular as the Bible? Obviously Cessolis was speaking to something much greater than a board game. And so suggests the book title:
Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium ac popularium sive super ludo scacchorum
(The book of the morals of men and the duties of nobles and commoners—or, On the game of chess). The work was actually a collection of sermons about how each person should act in society. Cessolis was concerned with nothing less than the clarification and refinement of social norms. In chess, he found a superb model, a near-literal miniaturization of
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