Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature

Serina Patterson, Serina Patterson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137497529
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The first-of-its-kind, Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature explores the depth and breadth of games in medieval literature and culture. Chapters span from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and cover England, France, Denmark, Poland, and Spain, re-examining medieval games in diverse social settings such as the church, court, and household.

PART I

SPACES OF PLAY

CHAPTER 1

“LUDUS INHONESTUS ET ILLICITUS?” CHESS, GAMES, AND THE CHURCH IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Robert Bubczyk

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

This chapter investigates how, and further why, representatives of the Catholic Church directed criticism toward chess and other games. While one of the most common criticisms condemned games as sinful activities, others pointed out other negative sides of gaming, such as the loss of money and property through gambling. The attitude of the medieval Church toward games and gamesters is worth studying for several reasons. Firstly, the Church was a centralized and powerful religious institution with mighty bishoprics and dense parochial networks covering most territories of whole countries. The opinions of the Church’s senior dignitaries concerning almost every sphere of everyday life were highly important by the secular authority and, in numerous cases, regarded as binding, not only by the clergy but also by lay members of the society. Secondly, in Europe of the later Middle Ages, including its eastern frontiers, ecclesiastics constituted a relatively significant proportion of the whole community. Thus, any attempt to understand the role games played in European medieval culture must consider the Church’s say on the matter as well.

In the following pages, I provide an overview of ecclesiastical attitudes toward chess and other games across Europe to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between games and the Church. This chapter begins by highlighting the prevailing criticisms toward chess and other games by members of the Church in the later Middle Ages, and later sections of this chapter trace the development of criticism toward chess and other games by ecclesiastics and secular dignitaries across Europe, including an in-depth analysis of attitudes toward games in medieval Poland.

‘Sinful’ Games

Undeniably, the clergy adopted anti-chess attitudes, and this position intensified among the representatives of monastic life. English clergyman Robert Mannyng, often named Mannyng of Brunne, vehemently expressed a disapproval of chess and other table games, for instance. Belonging to the Order of Gilbertines, Robert is known to have spent his life in the monasteries of Sempringham and Sixhills, together with a residency at the Gilbertine priory at Cambridge, St Edmund’s. In his Middle English confessional manual Handlyng Synne (1303), Mannyng cautions his readers to show restraint when playing dice, chess, and tables:

Wyth hasadoure,

Hauntyst tauerne, or were to any pere

To pleye at the ches or at the tablere,

Specially before the noun

Whan Goddys seruyse oghete to be doun,

Hyt ys azens the comaundment

And holy churches asent

Zyf thou be infra sacros.³

[As a gambler,

Who frequents the tavern, or were to any similar place,

To play at chess or at tables,

Especially before noon

When God’s service ought to be done,

It is against the commandment

And the holy Church’s approval

Then you would be violating the sacred.]

Mannyng does not condemn the games completely but argues that one should not pursue such pastimes before noon, as engaging oneself in activities of this kind might lead to losing all track of time and, in consequence, neglecting a morning service in church. His criticism speaks to a common effect of game playing: the power of games to completely absorb players at the expense of one’s daily responsibilities.

The same dangers that might arise from indulging in this sense of immersion were also pointed out by a Scottish author in his fifteenth-century Ratis Raving (also known as Advice from a Father to His Son). Although he acquainted his young reader with board games and games of chance, the writer did not recommend them to his child reader, providing a list of reasons to avoid engaging in this form of entertainment: “Now at the tables, now at the ches, weill oft and feldin at the mes” [Now at tables, now at chess, well often and failing at the mass].⁴ Chess and tables absorbed the mind of the player so completely that, as in Mannyng’s warning above, immersion can lead to becoming engrossed in one’s play and missing mass as a result.

Criticism of chess and other games also appeared in the genre of didactic literature known as specula principis (mirrors of princes). In this particular genre, condemnation of board games was uncommon, and we only have a few isolated known cases. Overwhelmingly, writers used board games as positive pedagogical tools, such as with Thomas Hoccleve’s (ca. 1368–1426) use of Jacobus de Cessolis’ Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium ac popularium super ludo scacchorum [Book of the Morals of Men and the Duties of Nobles and Commoners—or, On the Book of Chess] as a source for his De Regimine Principum [Regiment of Princes]. In contrast, one of those few exceptional passages where we find critical opinion of board games comes from the Scandinavian Peninsula; written during the reign of King Hakon IV (mid-thirteenth century), Konnungs Skuggsjá was composed by an anonymous friar, who was a member of one mendicant order and was closely associated with the Norwegian royal court. The author—speculated to be Ivan Boder, the tutor of young Hakon—stayed at the court of King Inge (1204–1217), Hakon’s predecessor. The content of the work is clearly influenced by Disciplina Clericalis, the popular twelfth-century collection of tales by Petrus Alfonsi, which considered chess to be one of seven knightly skills.⁵ Konnungs Skuggsjá, however, treats chess as a sinful game to be berated alongside gambling, drinking, and other tavern-like fare:

And further, there are certain things which you must beware of and shun like the devil himself: these are drinking, chess, harlots, quarreling, and throwing dice for stakes. For upon such foundations the greatest calamities are built; and unless they strive to avoid these things, few only are able to live without blame or sin.⁶

For this cleric, games of chess and dice (the latter played for stakes) are equally responsible for misfortune and act as a gateway to further sinful behavior.

Another critical view of games in the specula principis genre comes from late medieval Bohemia. In the latter half of the fifteenth century, Pavel Židek, one of the king’s courtiers, wrote such a treatise for the Husite king, George of Kunštát and Poděbrady (1420–1471). Židek was a thoroughly educated clergyman and university lecturer who spent his life in the middle of the Husite religious conflicts in Bohemia. Židek included a scholarly disquisition on diverse games among the numerous pieces of advice he gave to the king in his specula principis, hoping to discourage the monarch from playing any of them. Discussing games in general, Židek argues that the king should never play games for stakes with his subjects because of his privileged social status. If he won, he would show his greed toward the poorer players. On the other hand, if he were defeated, he would suffer a loss in their eyes. Židek’s attitude toward the game of chess, even if the game were not played for stakes, was explicitly negative. The Czech writer perceived this pastime as a boring and time-consuming activity and thus unsuitable for anyone, especially the king.⁷

We also find harsh criticism of chess by the clergy across Europe throughout the later Middle Ages. Another notable example appears in a unique Middle English faux-letter on fol. 161r of Trinity College, Dublin MS 281 (mid-fifteenth century), where the writer, on hearing that a fellow monk may be leaving religious life, records a vision urging the monk to stay with his order. The vision, likely produced in an English monastery in Sheen, county Surrey, pits chess, tables, and other aristocratic pursuits as temptations against the life and values of the church:

And aftyrward I sey manye fendys icome for to brynge ou out of yuore ordyr, and some of hem prof...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Setting Up the Board
• Part I   Spaces of Play
• Part II   Game and Genre
• Afterword: Medieval Ludens
• Notes on Contributors
• Index