The way in which the game of chess was able to so easily immerse itself into Medieval European society between 1100 and 1500 C.E. has fascinated historians for many years. In his anthology Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, Daniel O’Sullivan explores the relationship chess had with European culture during the Middle Ages. He makes the argument that while notions of war and civic hierarchy lend themselves to the immersion of chess in literature, so do the basic social structures that underlied Medieval Europe. Chess was immersed into literature and poetry about war, courtly tradition, love, lust, government, politics and even just the basic way in which European citizens interacted on a daily basis within their particular castes of the Medieval societies in which the works were created (4.) O’Sullivans anthology places a series of essays on chess in Medieval literature into several broad sections, the two which I will talk about include “Chess, Morality, and Politics” and “Women On and Off the Chessboard.” While each section provides a distinct set of essays as their titles suggest, each section draws on the same principle and common argument, that chess became unlike any other game during the Middle Ages, inextricably bound and immersed into the societal structures of Medieval Europe. Each essay within the book links back to this same common theme.
The first part of the anthology contains a series of essays related to morality and chess. The first, Chess in Medieval German Literature:A Mirror of Social-Historical and Cultural, Religious, Ethical, and Moral Conditions does a great job outlining the themes of the rest of the section. The author of this essay, Albrecht Classen –a professor in German studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson– starts off the series by discussing how chess is portrayed throughout numerous different literary works in Medieval European society in a number of ways. In works involving chess and love, Classen argues that while some works involve the actual metaphorical portrayal of love immersed within the game, or the act of wooing and erotic fantasy, others draw a comparison between the grueling nature of the game and the grueling nature of courtly love making (26.) He also argues the same about war. In literary works that intertwine chess with the realities of war, the frustrating and tactical nature of the game becomes intermixed with that of war –the strategic operations, the layout of the battlefield, the dividing classes of soldiers become allegorically infused with the nature of the chess board. An example Classen gives of his argument is drawn from Hugo von Trimburg’s work Renner,
“This world is like a deceptive image,
because it has, like the chess game
kings and a queen,
rooks, knights, bishops, pawns:
In this way God plays a fool’s game
with us, if you are able to notice that” (35.)
Trimburg’s work is a perfect example of how chess can be portrayed as an allegory to Medieval society as a whole as Cassan argues. This argument is expanded on throughout the rest of the section. Olle Firm in his essay Making Chess Politically and Socially Relevant, argues that the work Schacktavelslek –a German reworking of Jacobus de Cessolis work Liber de Ludo Scaccorum– develops this idea that chess can be used as an allegory to show individuals and groups how to live virtuously. It is a parallel to society, and has rules just as society does (46.) This idea –as noted in the text– is derived from Thomas Aquinas’s idea of moral goodness and the common good. Moral virtue and “goodness” were both important philosophies that defined Medieval European society. Firm expands on Emile Durkheim’s idea of anomie, or the breakdown of social order and common norms caused by bad rulers. Durkheim stated that, “just as the game [chess] has its own rules which have to be cleverly used so as to not lose the game, so within the kingdom the rules of reason must be followed to promote good morals and strengthen the law” (53.) Chess in Medieval culture was used in literary work to display the moral virtues of society, with an emphasis placed on wisdom, logic, cleverness and reason just as the way in which Medieval society was laid out under social classes and caste systems of order. This, as argued throughout the anthology, is one of the major reasons that chess was able to immerse itself fundamentally within European society, and transform into the later game we know it as today. The next two sections of the book further expand on this idea.
The second section of the anthology focuses on the role of women in Medieval society and the portrayal of women in chess. One of the essays Medieval Chess, Perceval’s Education, and a Dialectic of Misogyny by Jenny Adams focuses on the role women had in Medieval society in relation to education. She discusses how chess was used as a form of education in the Middle Ages however, while chess captures the essence of education –learning reason, logic, strategy, etc– it was only used in the education of boys and is shown predominantly as a male prerogative in literary work involving chess games and education. Another essay in this section that I found most interesting –while considering Marilyn Yalom’s Birth of the Chess Queen– is How Did the Queen Go Mad? by Mark Taylor. In his essay, Taylor takes into account Harrold Murray’s book The History of Chess written in 1913 –a work which continues to be a major influence for the analysis of chess throughout history– and explores the idea of how the chess Queen developed her modern movement on the chessboard, which he describes –as the title dictates– as “going mad” (169.) He argues that the queen gained it’s modern movement gradually throughout history, as the Queen in European society did as well. Queen Isabella of Castile –also discussed in Yalom’s work– greatly influenced the dynamic phenomenon that occurred with the chess Queen. This section ties into the greater scope of the anthology with how heavily the game of chess became intertwined with Europe.
Throughout the collection, the essays engage the reader in various discussions about the relationship of chess to Medieval society and culture. The anthology is put together in a way that is mindful of the influences of chess in Medieval society through literature and societal norms and customs. The essays swirl around from ones that relate to chess and the morality of love, war, religion, life at court, to those that involve the evolution of women within the game and outside the game.
* I found all of the essays in the book really interesting because I am fascinated by how chess is portrayed throughout Medieval literature, which I will delve deeper into on my final paper.