ALL ABOUT CHESS

Chess is more than a game of skill-intensive it is a medieval history lesson in miniature.

Have you ever played chess? Did you know that chess is the oldest skill game in the world? But chess is more than just a game of skill. It can tell you much about the way people lived during the Middle Ages. If you look at the way a chessboard is set up, and then examine the pieces and how they are used, you will realize that chess is a history of medieval miniature. The six different pieces on the board representing a cross section of medieval life with its many ceremonies, grandeur, and wars.

Chess was played many centuries ago in China, India and Persia. No one really knows for sure which country it comes from. So, in the eighth century, armies of Arabs known as Moors invaded Persia. Moors learned chess from the Persians. When the Moors later invaded Spain, the soldiers brought the game of chess with them. Soon the Spanish were playing chess, too. From Spain, chess quickly spread throughout Europe.

Europeans gave chess pieces the names we know today, they probably have had problems with pronunciation and spelling the Persian names, so they modernized them to reflect the way they lived. Today, the names are certainly not modern but a thousand years ago, they represented the way in which both ordinary people and persons of rank lived their lives.

The pawns on the board represent serfs, or laborers. There are more of them than any other piece on the board, and often they are sacrificed to save the more valuable pieces. In medieval serfs were considered no more than property of landowners, or household. Life was brutally hard for serfs in this era of history. They worked hard and died young. They were often left unprotected while wars raged around them. They could be traded, used as a distraction, or even sacrificed to allow the landowners to escape harm.

The castle piece on the board at home, or sanctuary, as was a home in the middle Ages. In chess, each side has two castles or rooks, as they are called.

Knight on a chessboard represents the professional soldier of medieval times whose job was to protect persons of rank, and two of them for each page in a chess game. Knights in a chess game is more important than pawns, but less important than bishops, kings or queens. Their purpose in playing chess is to protect the more important pieces, and they can be sacrificed to save those pieces just as peasants can.

There is a bishop in chess game that represents the church. The church was a rich and mighty force in the middle Ages, and religion played a big role in every human life. It is no wonder that a figure representing the concept of religion found its way into the game. A bishop was the name of a priest in the Catholic Church who had risen through the ranks to a more powerful position. I played chess; there are two bishops on each side.

The queen is the only piece on the board during a chess game that represents a woman, and she is the most powerful piece in the game. I played chess; there is only one queen on each side. Many people do not realize that queens in medieval times often held a powerful but precarious, position. The king was often guided by her advice, and in many cases the queen played games of intrigue at court. But kings could set wives aside or even imprison them in nunneries with the approval of the church (and without the queen's approval), and many women schemed merely to hold his seat in court. The machinations of queens working either for or against their kings are well noted in history throughout medieval times, and often she held more power than the king did.

The king is the highest piece on the board, and is so well defended on the chessboard as in medieval life. In medieval times, the surrender would mean the loss of the king of the kingdom to invading armies, and it may mean a change for the worse. It was to everyone's advantage, from the lowest serf to the highest ranking official to keep the king safe from harm. The king is the main but not the most powerful piece in chess. If you do not protect your king, you lose the game.

Next time you set up your chessboard and get ready to play a friendly game or two, think of chess as a history lesson. Pieces on the board is a life form, there is no more, and real life tragedies that occurred during the Middle Ages is now only a game.