As I look at one of my medieval chess sets (this one is based on a 14th century German set) I am reminded of the symbolic meaning of chess in the middle ages. In modern chess we are separated by centuries from the reality behind the pieces--castles, knights, bishops, queens and kings, footsoldiers (pawns), they are just elements from myths to us. For someone living in the Middle Ages, however, it was a reflection of society. Castles represented security, property, power. Knights defended their masters. Bishops served the church but were also beholden to secular lords. Kings and queens demanded loyalty yet they often lacked the absolute power we think they had. Pawns, of course, were at the bottom of the heap and did the dirty work of war and paid the highest price.The myth we have is that medieval society was stable with such a stratified social order in place. It was anything but stable, though. Certainly there were periods of stability in particular corners of Christendom but never was medieval Europe completely stable. War was constant, economic stresses could suddenly loom large and cause great instability, and disease could cause massive disruption. Borders of kingdoms, duchies and baronies moved back and forth depending who was in the king’s favor or who had won a recent battle with a neighboring realm.
In medieval chess image was everything. It was a game of strategy but it also reflected the ideals of the medieval mind. Just as every human society does, they longed for stability and security, always an elusive quality in human existence. I can imagine that the nobility who used chess sets such as this imagined themselves as the masters of the universe, commanding the loyalty of millions, but in reality they were always struggling for control of what they thought was theirs.
