Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/612

Rh 600 CHESS Perhaps we may assume it to be not improbable that the correspondence is genuine ; but the words &quot; rukh &quot; and &quot; pawn &quot; may have been substituted for other terms of - 11 i f comparison originally made use of. As to how chess was introduced into Western and Central Europe nothing is really known. The Spaniards very likely received it from their Moslem conquerors, the Italians not improbably from the Byzantines, and in either case it would pass northwards to France, going on thence to Scandinavia and England. Some say that chess was introduced into Europe at the time of the Crusades, the theory being that the Christian warriors learned to play it at Constantinople. This supposition is negatived by a curious epistle of Cardinal Damianus, bishop of Ostia, to Pope Alexander II. written about 1061 A.D., which, assuming its authenticity, shows that chess was known in Italy before the date of the first crusade. The cardinal, as it seems, had imposed a penance upon a bishop whom he had found diverting himself at chess ; and in his letter to the Pope he repeats the language he had held to the erring prelate, viz., &quot; Was it right, I say, and consistent with thy duty, to sport away thy evenings amidst the vanity of chess, and defile the hand which offers up the body of the Lord, the tongue that mediates between God and man, with the pollution of a sacrilegious game?&quot; Following up the same idea the statutes of the church of Elna, in the 3d vol. of the Councils of Spain, say, &quot; Clerks playing at dice or chess shall be ipso facto excommunicated.&quot; Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris under Philip Augustus, is stated in the Ordonn. des Rois de France, to have forbidden clerks to play the game, and according to the Hist. Eccles. of Fleury, St Louis king of France condemned to a fine all who should play it. Ecclesiastical authorities, however, seem to have differed among themselves upon the question whether chess was or was not a lawful game according to the canons, and Peirino, De Prazlat. chap. 1, holds that it was permissible for ecclesiastics to play thereat. Among those who have taken an unfavourable view of the game may be mentioned John Huss, who, when in prison, deplored his having played at chess, where by he had lost time and risked being subject to violent passions. Among authentic records of the game may be quoted the Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena, in which she relates how her father, the Emperor Alexius, used to divert his mind from the cares of state by playing at chess with his relatives. This emperor died in 1118. Con cerning chess in England there is the usual mingle-mangle of the legendary and the possibly true. Snorre Sturleson relates that as Canute was playing at chess with Earl Ulfr, a quarrel arose, which resulted in the latter upsetting the board, with the further consequence of his being mur dered in church a few days afterwards by Canute s orders. Carlyle, in his recent work, The Early Kings of Norway, repeats this tale, but Van der Linde treats it as a myth ; and certainly the act imputed to the great- minded Dane seems altogether inconsistent with his character. The Ramsey Chronicle relates how Bishop Utheric, coming to &quot;Canute at night upon urgent business, found the monarch and his courtiers recreating themselves at dice and chess. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in this last narra tive; but Canute died about 1035, and the date therefore is suspiciously early. Moreover, allowance must be made .for the ease with which chroniclers turned other games, such as tables, &c., into chess. William the Conqueror, Henry I., John, and Edward I. are variously stated to have played at chess, but such assertions must be taken quantum valeant. Not devoid of plausibility is the allega tion that the Court of Exchequer derives its name from Eschiquier ; though whether, in support of the same idea, we are to believe, as is stated by an old writer, that at the coronation of Richard I. in 1189, six earls and barons carried a chess-board with the royal insignia to represent the said court is another thing. According to Edmonson s Heraldry, twenty-six English families bore chess rooks in their coats of arms. Altogether, strewed about the chronicles and writings of the Middle Ages are many allusions to the game, but the subject cannot be further elucidated here ; though a word or two about the pieces and the changes they have undergone may be worth adding. The king seems always to have had the same move as at present ; but it is said he could formerly be captured. There seems no recorded proof, however, of his ever having been subject to this liability in the real shatranj. His castling privilege is a European invention ; in lieu thereof he formerly leaped two and even three squares, and also to his Kt 2d, which would be a knight s move. Castling dates no further back than the first half of the 16th century. The queen has suffered curious changes in name, sex, and power. In shatranj she was called farz or firz (also farzan, farzin, and farzi), signifying a &quot;counsellor,&quot; &quot;minister, 1 or &quot;general.&quot; This was Latinized into farzia or fercia. The French slightly altered the latter form into fierce, fierge, and as some say, vierge, which, if true, might explain her becoming a female. Another and much more probable account has it that whereas a pawn on reaching an eighth square became a farzin, and not formerly any other piece, which promotion was of the same kind as at draughts (in French, dames}, so she became a dame or queen as in the latter game, and thence dama, donna, &c. There are old Latin manuscripts in which the terms ferzia and regina are used indifferently. The queen formerly moved only one square diagonally, and was consequently the weakest piece on the board. The immense power she now possesses seems to have been conferred upon her so late as about the middle of the 15th century, and there can be little doubt that her investiture therewith arose analogically through the similarity of the powers of promotion possessed alike by the pawns and the common men in draughts. It will be noticed that under the old system the queens could never meet each other, for they operated on diagonals of different colours. The bishop s scope of action was also very limited formerly ; he could only move two squares diagonally, and had no power over the intermediate squares, which he could leap over whether they were occupied or not. One result of the peculiar motion of the bishops was that they could never encounter each other even when running on diagonals of the same colour. This limitation of their powers prevailed in Europe until the 15th century. This piece, according to Forbes, was called among the Persians, pil, an elephant, but the Arabs, not having the letter p in their alphabet, wrote it fil, or with their definite article al-fil, whence alphilus, alfinus, alfiere, the latter being the word used by the Italians ; while the French no doubt get their fol and fou from the same source. The pawns formerly could move only one square at starting ; their powers in this respect were increased about the early part of the 16th century. It was customary for them on arriving at an eighth square to be exchanged only for a farzin (queen), and not any other piece ; therefore, the plurality of queens is not, as some suppose, a new doctrine. The rooks and knights appear to have always had the same powers as at present. As to the chess boards they were formerly uncoloured, and it is not until the 13th century that we hear of checkered boards being used in Europe. MODERN HISTORY OF CHESS. The remarkable, not to say revolutionary, changes which, commencing about the middle of the 15th century, transformed the mediaeval shatranj into our modern chess, took place most probably first in Franco, and thence made their way into Spain,