"The chessboard is not a place to defeat the other, but to overcome oneself"
The book of customs…
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, at the height of scholastic thought, the Dominican friar Jacobus de Cessolis (fl. c. 1275–1322) composed a work that would forever shape the way chess was understood - not merely as a game but as a symbolic representation of the world: the Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum, better known as The Book of the Customs of Men and the Duties of the Nobles concerning the Game of Chess. This treatise, widely disseminated in manuscripts and vernacular translations throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, transformed chess into a privileged field for ethical, pedagogical and social reflection.
In Cessolis we find, with full justification, the first great philosopher of chess: a thinker who perceived in the sixty-four squares not merely a playful arrangement but an image of the divine and moral order governing human society.
As a Dominican, Jacobus did not regard the game as a mere pastime. On the contrary, he understood that its popularity - cutting across nobles, burghers, and clerics - offered a unique opportunity for the moral edification of Christian society. The structure of chess served him as a didactic foundation for illustrating the hierarchical organisation of feudal order and, simultaneously, the virtuous duties corresponding to each social actor.
In his schema, each piece is a moral figure: the king embodies justice and wise governance; the queen, mercy and protection; the bishops, doctrinal rectitude; the knights, strength and courage; the rooks, the defence of the common good; and the pawns, honest labour, humility and obedience. Each has a role, and the harmony of the game - like that of society - depends upon the just fulfilment of those functions.
Illustration from "Libellus de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium ac popularium super ludo scaccorum"
Jacobus, among the earliest thinkers of chess
Cessolis' thought is imbued with a theological vision of the world: the chessboard is not merely a battlefield but a microcosm governed by providence. The game teaches the value of foresight, prudence, sacrifice, patience and loyalty to duty - cardinal virtues in the medieval Christian worldview. Yet his contribution extends beyond individual morality: he proposes a political philosophy of chess, in which the balance between the estates - nobility, clergy and commoners - depends upon mutual cooperation under just rule. Chess becomes not only a model of conduct but also a model of governance and cosmic order.
In Cessolis' pedagogy, the game becomes an allegorical discourse: the aim is not to teach openings or endgames, but to shape the soul in virtue. Every game may be read as a moral parable; every move, as a decision reflecting the structure of conscience. Victory, in this context, is not the defeat of the opponent but the triumph of order over chaos, of duty over excess. Hence his treatise - translated into French, Castilian, English, German and other languages - served not only as a manual for players but as a mirror for princes, a popular catechism and a civic treatise.
Jacobus de Cessolis was not, therefore, a professional player nor a philosopher in the modern sense. Yet his reading of chess as a matrix of moral, political and spiritual thought places him as the first great systematic thinker of chess in the West. In his hands, the chessboard becomes an allegory of the soul, a theatre of duty, a school of citizenship. The game is not escapism but a symbolic exercise in social virtues; not chance but a pedagogy of order; not entertainment but a rite of civilisation.
The treatise enjoyed enormous circulation across Europe, as the most famous moral text on chess in the Middle Ages. Its popularity, some historians note, rivalled that of the Bible.
The Liber de moribus was the basis for William Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chesse (1474), one of the earliest printed books in English. This demonstrates the substantial cultural impact of Cessolis' work.
Context of chess in the Middle Ages
Although chess was sometimes subject to religious suspicion, the didactic use given to it by Cessolis and other authors endowed it with great value, contributing to its acceptance and dissemination as an educational and moral tool.
Thus, Jacobus de Cessolis did not merely popularise chess: he transformed it into a vehicle for teaching morality and social order, consolidating its status as a game with deep ethical and cultural implications in medieval Europe.
In our own time, his work may seem anachronistic. Yet it legacy endures: it reminds us that chess does not only measure the capacity to calculate, but also the ability to assume a role, to play responsibly, to create harmony through conflict.
References
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