[Illustration: _No. 144. An Early Chess-board and Chess-men._]
The chess-boards were naturally large, and were sometimes made of the precious metals, and of other rich materials. In one romance, the chess-board and men are made of crystal; in another, that of “Alexander,” the men are made of sapphires and topazes. A chess-board, preserved in the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, and said to have been the one given by the old man of the mountains (the sheikh of the Hassassins) to St. Louis, is made of rock-crystal, and mounted in silver gilt. In the romances, however, the chess-board is sometimes spoken of as made of _ormier_, or elm. In fact, when the game of chess came into extensive use, it became necessary not only to make the chess-board and men of less expensive materials and smaller, but to give to the latter simple conventional forms, instead of making them elaborate sculptures. The foundation for this latter practice had already been laid by the Arabs, whose tenets, contrary to those of the Persians, proscribed all images of living beings. The mediæval conventional form of the rook, a figure with a bi-parted head, somewhat approaching to the heraldic form of the fleur-de-lis, appears to have been taken directly from the Arabs. The knight was represented by a small upright column, the upper part of it bent to one side, and is supposed to have been meant for a rude representation of the horse’s head. The aufin, or bishop, had the same form as the knight, except that the bent end was cleft, probably as an indication of the episcopal mitre. The accompanying figure of a chess-board (No. 144), taken from a manuscript of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Cotton. Cleopat. B. ix.), but no doubt copied from one of the latter part of the thirteenth century, when the Anglo-Norman metrical treatise on chess which it illustrates was composed, gives all the conventional forms of chess-men used at that time. The piece at the left-hand extremity of the lower row is evidently a king. The other king is seen in the centre of the upper row. Immediately to the left of the latter is the queen, and the two figures below the king and queen are knights, while those to the left of the queen and white knight are rooks. Those in the right-hand corner, at top and bottom, are aufins, or bishops. The pawns on this chess-board bear a striking resemblance to those found in the Isle of Lewis. The same forms, with very slight variations, present themselves in the scenes of chess-playing as depicted in the illuminated manuscripts. Thus, in a manuscript of the French prose romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 12,228, fol. 23, v^o), written between the years 1330 and 1350, we have an interesting sketch (given in our cut No. 145) of two kings engaged in this game. The rooks and the bishops are distinctly represented, but the others are less easily recognised, in consequence of the imperfect drawing. Our next cut (No. 146) is taken from the well-known manuscript of the poetry of the German Minnesingers, made for Rudiger von Manesse, early in the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the National Library in Paris, and represents the prince poet, Otto of Brandenburg, playing at chess with a lady. We have here the same conventional forms of chess-men, a circumstance which shows that the same types prevailed in England, France, and Germany. Another group, in which a king is introduced playing at chess, forms the subject of our cut No. 147, and is taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Harleian collection in the British Museum (No. 1275), consisting of a numerous series of illustrations of the Bible history, executed evidently in England. It will be seen that the character of chess as a royal game is sustained throughout.