Chequered history

I picture a medieval priest, hunched over a desk with bells clanging in his ears. He is on a deadline – tomorrow is Sunday and his congregation have heard enough sermons about the spiritual value of threshing. The leatherbound book in front of him, Summa collationum, sive communiloquium, is his source of inspiration. It’s a recent edition of a book written some 200 years earlier by a Franciscan monk, John of Wales (Johannes Gallensis), who died c. 1285. One section, known as ‘The Innocent Morality’, presents chess as an extended allegory for life. The priest pores over the Latin: ‘The world resembles a chessboard, which is chequered white and black on account of the twofold state of life and death, of grace and sin.’ A stirring thought. Our man prefers backgammon, but knows chess will carry more rhetorical weight. He recalls the noble in the next town whose wife had her portrait done with a chessboard.