Versus De Scachis
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

(Latin: "Verses on Chess"), also known as the ''Einsiedeln Poem'' in some literature, is the title given to a 10th-century
Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
poem about
chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...
. It is the first known European text to provide a technical description of chess for didactic purposes and it is considered a fundamental document to understand the development of chess in Europe.


Background

It was found on two manuscripts (Codex Einsidlensis 365 and 319) from
Einsiedeln Abbey Einsiedeln Abbey () is a Catholic monastery administered by the Benedictine Order in the village of Einsiedeln, Switzerland. The Abbey of Einsiedeln is one of the most important baroque monastic sites and the largest place of pilgrimage in Swit ...
Library (where they are also currently preserved) located in
Einsiedeln Einsiedeln () is a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality and Districts of Switzerland#Schwyz, district in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland known for its monastery, the Benedictine Einsiedeln Abbey, established in the 10th century. Histor ...
,
Canton of Schwyz The canton of Schwyz ( ; ; ; ) is a Cantons of Switzerland, canton in central Switzerland between the Swiss Alps, Alps in the south, Lake Lucerne to the west and Lake Zürich in the north, centred on and named after the town of Schwyz. It is one ...
, Switzerland and it was dated to about AD 1000. The dating of the document makes the poem the earliest known reference to chess in a European text, as well as the earliest known document to mention the chess
queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...
(called in Latin), and the first reference to a bicolor board with dark and light colors (a pattern that was absent from boards in precursors such as Indian ''
chaturanga Chaturanga (, , ) is an Traditional games of India, ancient Indian Strategy game, strategy board game. It is first known from India around the seventh century AD. While there is some uncertainty, the prevailing view among chess historians is t ...
'' and Perso-Arabic ''
shatranj Shatranj (, ; from Middle Persian ) is an old form of chess, as played in the Sasanian Empire. Its origins lie in the South Asian game of chaturanga. Modern chess gradually developed from this game, as it was introduced to Europe by contacts in ...
'', both of which were single-color and were divided only by horizontal and vertical lines). The poem occupies both written sides of a sheet, and was only extracted in 1839 by the then abbey archivist Gall Morel (1803–1872) who combined it together with other loose sheets to form a composite volume, catalogued in the abbey archives as "Einsiedeln 365". In 1877, professor and classical philologist Hermann Hagen (1844–1898) made the verses accessible to the general public in his medieval poetry compilation . In 1913, the English
chess historian This is a list of chess historians. Chess historians * Yuri Averbakh * Henry Bird * Ricardo Calvo (October 22, 1943 – September 26, 2002) * Hiram Cox * G. H. Diggle * David Vincent Hooper *Willard Fiske *Professor Duncan Forbes * Jeremy Gaige ...
H. J. R. Murray (1868–1955) translated, printed, and interpreted the verses. However, it was not until 1954 that historian H.M. Gamer drew attention to their extraordinary historical importance. There exists, in addition, an early medieval copy (though not of the Codex Einsidlensis 365) of lines 65 to 98 with a somewhat more classical orthography, which is dated to 997 AD and is also preserved in the Einsiedeln Abbey Library. The title of is from Codex Einsidlensis 365. The poem most likely dates to the 10th century. Gamer (1954) argues that the text in Codex Einsidlensis 365 might date to shortly before AD 1000, and the one in Codex Einsidlensis 319 dates to about the same time, or possibly to a few years after AD 1000. The text in Codex Einsidlensis 319 is incomplete, and entitled .


Content

The poem itself consists of 98 lines in
elegiac couplet The elegiac couplet or elegiac distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in L ...
s and written in Medieval Latin. The first ten verses justify the game as mental recreation, in which there is no malice (), no perjurious fraud, and no physical risk (), underlining also the advantage of playing without dice. Thus, the poem begins by expressing praise for the game of chess as a unique game that did not require gambling or dice. According to some chess historians, this initial statement was made in order to oppose common religious disapproval of
games of chance A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, numbered balls, or in the case ...
that involved gambling. In the next ten verses the alternative coloring of the squares on the board is mentioned for the first time, not yet in general use but used by some players () as a simple yet advantageous invention to better calculate the moves, besides giving players the ability to discover, more easily, mistakes or false moves. Between verses 21-44 the two sides, red and white (), are described, together with the pieces. The movement of the pieces as well as the main regulatory conditions of the game are near identical to ''shatranj'' (Perso-Arabic chess), except for the pawn-promotion rule. From the poetic descriptions of the pieces and their movements, it can be interpreted that the movements differ from modern chess and can be summarized as follows: * (king): It can move to any adjacent square. Unlike other pieces, it can never be captured, but when it's under attack and surrounded so that it can no longer move, the game comes to an end. * (queen): It can move only to a diagonal adjacent square, making it the second weakest piece. * or (meaning "count" or "aged one", today’s bishop): It can move diagonally to the third square of its original color. * (knight): It can move two steps in one direction and one to the side, so that it always ends on a different color. * or ("rook" or "marquis", respectively): It can move in a straight direction as far as the player wishes. * or ("soldier", today's pawn): It can only move to the square in front of it and captures another piece diagonally on an adjacent square of the same color, making it the weakest piece. If it reaches the eighth row then it's allowed to move like the queen but only if the original queen is out of the board. According to chess historian H. J. R. Murray:
The most striking feature of this rather tedious poem is its freedom from Arabic terminology. The words ''check'' and ''mate'' are not used, and it is only the name of the game, ''scachi'', in the title, and the word ''rochus'' that show that the writer is dealing with a game that is not of European invention. The nomenclature of the game is drawn from that of the state, and not from that of the army.


See also

*
History of chess The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1,500 years to its earliest known predecessor, called chaturanga, in History of India, India; its prehistory is the subject of speculation. From India it spread to Sassanian Empire, Persia, where i ...
* Chess in early literature *''
Scachs d'amor ''Scachs d'amor'' (, meaning "Chess of Love"), whose complete title is ''Hobra intitulada scachs d'amor feta per don Francí de Castellví e Narcis Vinyoles e mossén Fenollar'', is the name of a poem written by Francesc de Castellví, Bernat Fe ...
'', a 15th-century
Valencian Valencian can refer to: * Something related to the Valencian Community ( Valencian Country) in Spain * Something related to the city of Valencia * Something related to the province of Valencia in Spain * Something related to the old Kingdom of ...
poem containing the earliest documented chess game with the modern rules (i.e. queen and bishop movements)


Notes


References

* Hermann Hagen (1877). ''Carmina medii aevi maximam partem inedita'', Bern, pp. 137–141. * H. J. R. Murray (1913). ''
A History of Chess ''A History of Chess'' is a book written by H. J. R. Murray (1868–1955) and published in 1913. Details Murray's aim is threefold: to present as complete a record as is possible of the varieties of chess that exist or have existed in differen ...
'', (Oxford University Press) * Helena M. Gamer, "The Earliest Evidence of Chess in Western Literature: The Einsiedeln Verses," ''Speculum'', Vol. 29, No. 4. (October 1954), pp. 734–750. *


External links


Versus de Scachis: When Chess Reached Europe
Analysis and English prose translation of the poem by Peter Hulse. {{chess History of chess Poems about chess Medieval chess Medieval Latin poetry 10th-century poems 10th-century books in Latin 10th-century writers in Latin