A kind of joy: the Wise King games
Braulio VÁZQUEZ CAMPOS
Original title: Manera de alegría: los juegos del Rey Sabio
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Alfonso X the Wise, Astrology, Astronomy, Backgammon, Chess, Dice, Game, Middle Ages, Philosophy, Political thought, Worldview.
The «Book of Games» is one of the most luxurious works to have emerged from the scriptorium in the service of King Alfonso X the Wise, but it is also one of the most content rich. It constitutes the foremost evidence of the board games played in the Castilian court in the 13th century, especially chess, backgammon, and dice. Its pages not only encompass explanations of the mechanics and strategy of these recreational activities, but also display an entire world view through allegories, metaphors, philosophical discussions, and political interpretations. This paper endeavours to dissect each of these aspects.
Andreas Capellanus (XII century) and The game of Love
Nicolás MARTÍNEZ SÁEZ
Original title: Andrés el Capellán (siglo XII) y el juego del Amor
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Andreas Capellanus, Court Love, Game, Segle XII.
Andreas Capellanus writes De amore at the end of the 12th century in a context of interweaving of traditions such as the Christian clerical, the feudal courtesan and the troubadour poetry. In this work, a new aesthetic sensibility is represented in love that acquires a playful dimension. The dialogues that arise between people of different social classes and the so-called Love´s Court reveal this game where men and women argue in favor of a love that does not obey social classes. De amore is composed of three books. The first two are those where seriousness and play seem to mix in a work that is both a scientific treatise and a practical manual of the rules governing worldly relations between men and women. The last book can be understood in a playful dimension where it is possible to win in only one way: by giving up.
Army, game, and social order: an approach to the cosmic metaphor of the justification of war in De bello by Juan de Legnano
Emiliano ALDEGANI; Lucía GARCÍA ALMEIDA
Original title: Ejército, juego y orden social: una aproximación a la metáfora cósmica de la justificación de la guerra en De bello de Juan de Legnano
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
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.
