Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque

Keywords: Keywords: Game, Huizinga, Legnano, Middle Ages, War.

The aim of this paper is to point out the articulation between the celestial order and the military order expressed in the work of the medieval jurist John of Legnano (14th century) in the Tractatus de Bello, de Represaliis et de duello. In the introduction to his book, he states that ‘human war’ reflects war in the divine order, which leads the author to justify the military conflicts present in his time as coming from God, a hypothesis that he supports based on the testimonies offered by the Gospels. Thus, in the first chapter, he divides war into Spiritual, celestial, or human warfare and Corporal, universal or warfare. In addition, some central ideas of the medievalist Johan Huizinga, in his work Homo ludens, on the sacred meaning of victory in the context of medieval military confrontations, which is deeply related to the meaning of victory in the game, will be recovered. Based on this key reading, the aim is to contextualise Legnano's conception within the framework of the canonical understandings of the foundations of war conflicts that prevailed in the late medieval period.