Tractatus de ludo scachorum

Chess was one of the most common games in the Middle Ages, a part of the daily life of courts and cities. Although the game probably originated in India in the sixth century CE, it quickly spread throughout Persia and subsequently, as a product of trade between Muslims and Christians beginning in the tenth century, throughout Europe. In the passage from East to West, the game of chess was subjected to variations and changes because Europeans did not completely understand the rules or the meaning of the different pieces. Medieval documents report this transition, confusingly describing both the pieces and their movements on the chessboard. Even though it was initially disapproved and censured by the Catholic Church (eleventh and twelfth centuries), the game was eventually accepted in the Christian world, becoming an important element in chivalric education, offering a moment of leisure and learning in the courtly culture. The Church’s disapproval was finally mitigated at the end of the thirteenth century with the publication of Jacobus de Cessolis’s Libellus de moribus hominum et officiis nobelium ac popularium super ludo scachorum, which offered an allegorical and moral approach to the game that replaced its recreational use. The work became an immediate best seller, specifically intended to guide princes and rulers through chess strategies and to represent different social classes (each pawn being associated with a profession) that should work together for the benefit of an organized society. Medieval literature registers the success, diffusion, and circulation of the game, which is mentioned in texts throughout Europe, including those by Chrétien de Troyes and Jean de Meun in France, Wace and Chaucer in England, Petrus Alphonsi in the Iberian Peninsula, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, and the Carmina Burana in the German area. Roberto Pesce, in the introduction to his critical edition of Paulinus of Venice’s Tractatus de ludo scachorum (Treatise on the Chess Game), exhaustively summarizes the history of chess in the Middle Ages, offering ample bibliographical coordinates for the reader to examine in depth different aspects of the game of chess.In this context, Paulinus of Venice. (ca 1270–1344) wrote the Tractatus de ludo scachorum, which describes in eight chapters the origins, rules, and allegorical and symbolical meaning of chess. The text is clearly divided into two parts. The first part is close to Jacobus de Cessolis’s treatise, in which Paulinus recounts the story of a tyrant who becomes a good king through learning how to play the game. Recalling the Aristotelian political ideal of aggregation from the individual to the state, missing in Jacobus’s Libellus, Paulinus examines the value and meaning of each pawn, with its own virtues and vices, and its movements on the chessboard, portraying its moral qualities and roles in society. The author does not follow the source material passively but creates an allegorical world closer to his own, changing the meaning and attributes of some of the pawns. This is clearly the case of the merchant pawn, which resembled a figure of a docked boat, probably a reference to Paulinus’s Venetian origins. The second part of the book is more original because it offers the reader political and military advice gleaned from the strategy of the game. The different moves represent those of an army on the battlefield. The specific strategies the player should follow to win are linked not only to classical literature but also to contemporary examples from Christian and Muslim war strategies.The critical edition of Paulinus of Venice’s Tractatus de ludo scachorum by Roberto Pesce is an important contribution to the field of Medieval Studies because it offers a new text to scholars and, for the first time, an in-depth study of the work of an important author often mentioned but little studied, since most of his work is unpublished. In the introduction, Pesce covers the life and works of Paulinus with ample documentation, proposing an irrefutable redating of some writings. Regarding the Tractatus de ludo scachorum, the editor examines style, sources, and date of composition and accurately describes the manuscript tradition, reattributing one codex of the Tractatus to Paulinus, erroneously attributed to Jacobus de Cessolis. In footnote 48 on page 48, he also reattributes to Paulinus another manuscript, wrongly attributed to Paulinus of Nola. In the central part of the introduction, Pesce addresses the complex problem of autography in the examined codices, applying clear criteria and establishing the first stemma codicum of a complex tradition: the seven manuscripts considered in the edition are convincingly divided into three different stages of writing. The relation among them is explicitly detailed, guiding the reader through the different phases of writing. Furthermore, the rich critical apparatus helps us have a better understanding of the sources used by the author in the writing process. Finally, the translation into modern Italian makes the text available not only to specialists, but also to a broader audience.In conclusion, this volume will be welcomed by the community of Medieval scholars. As a medievalist myself, I hope this critical edition will be followed by the publication of more works by Paulinus, an author long considered one of the main sources for Venetian chronicles (see Andreas Dandolo’s Chronica per extensum descripta), a source for several of Boccaccio’s works, and one of the fathers of modern geography

Ancient history · Eleventh · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Middle Ages · Political science · Recreation · Sociology · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law · Philosophy