A trace engraved on the wall of a medieval cloister or the pavement of a square can reveal much more than meets the eye. There are arcane and fascinating worlds that marks on stone can unveil. Every graffito is there for a reason, perhaps unknown to us, but not to its creator. Stone is incorruptible and, in the past, scratching its surface was a way of making an imprinted message eternal. While some of these signs are well known today, others remain shrouded in mystery. It is not always easy to tell whether they were intended to conceal symbolic content, a message for a specific community, or whether they simply responded to a practical, functional or even playful need. This is evident in medieval tabulae lusoriae1, which reproduced boards of games that have been around since ancient times, such as the Merels Board.
These graffiti were often found along spiritual pilgrimage routes, and even more surprisingly, inside churches, abbeys, and other places of worship2. How, then, can the playful aspect be reconciled with the sacred? Nevertheless, evidence suggests that, over time, the engraving of the Merels Board became associated with the divine.
The sacred and the game
Although there appears to be a clear distinction today between the sacred and the profane, with separate spaces and times attributed to each, this was not the case in antiquity. For the ancients, play was an integral part of ritual3. It followed the same principles of codification and reiteration, with well-defined rules, and could even be said to have metaphysical efficacy. In Greece, the Panhellenic Games had a sacred character and were officiated in honour of deities from the 8th century BC. In Rome, the game of dice had been forbidden since 204 BC4, yet it was permitted during the Saturnalia5.
Other examples exist. But the main aspect is that the game, unconsciously or manifestly, represented a reflection of something beyond the sphere of the human. No one can predict either victory or defeat. Outcomes were guided by divinity, by the goddess Fortune, just like the events of life. This is the meaning of the sacred. In its Indo-European linguistic origin it means “separate”, “other” than what man can dominate.
An ancient game
The Romans already used tabulae lusoriae as a form of entertainment. We have a large number of them at the remains of the Basilica Iulia in Rome’s City Forum, for example. The building’s steps feature three concentric squares connected by lateral axes. This was the board of the Italian filetto, whose geometry therefore reproduces a Merels Board. The game involved using nine white checkers for one player and the same number of black ones for the other. The aim was to arrange three checkers of the same colour in a row, at the expense of the opponent.
Archaeologists have found other Roman Merels Board in religious sites. At the Sanctuary of Minerva in Breno, an engraved stone block with its board and some pawns was found6. The artefact, now kept at the National Archaeological Museum of the Valle Camonica in Cividate Camuno, is only a fragment and shows a certain extemporaneity in its rough workmanship. It is not yet a symbol, but it demonstrates that the game was conceived within such an important sacred area.
The origin of the symbol in the Middle Ages
The filetto remained unchanged over the centuries, mainly due to its simplicity. It was certainly very popular in the Middle Ages. We find the same schemes cited in Arabic manuscripts, such as in the Book of Songs (Kitab al-Aghani) by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī from the 10th century, and Christian ones, of which the Libro de los juegos commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile in 1284, a symptom of inter-cultural permeability. Probably this process gained strength from the interactions between West and East during the crusades. Most likely, the knightly orders of the time, such as the Templars, contributed to its spread.
Religious feeling also involved games with tabulae lusoriae, which in a certain sense became an eschatological allegory. The struggle between good and evil, black and white, took life on the Merels Board as on the chessboard. This is the origin of the symbol.
The Merels Board as a sacred symbol
The Merels Board is so frequently found in places of worship that its message can only be understood in relation to the sacred7. We find it at Valvisciolo Abbey in Sermoneta, in Fossanova, in the complex of Sette Chiese in Bologna, in Genoa cathedral of St Lawrence, in Fidenza Cathedral, on a slab at the Sanctuary of Monte Sant’Angelo on Mount Gargano and so on.
There are clues that suggest how the Merels Board bypassed the simple playful use. First, many specimens are placed in Cistercian churches and abbeys, but Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had been clear about this, “detestantur aleas et scaccos” he had stated in De laude novae militiae8. Moreover, some of the patterns are on vertical walls, an uncomfortable place for the use of a game board. The Merels Board survived the moralization of games. This was only possible as a symbol, only with new sacred meanings ascribed to it. As with so many other games, customs and festivities, it was certainly reinterpreted in a Christian sense.
The Merels Board, microcosm and macrocosm
We can perceive in the search for the sacred the desire to trace a superior order that can regulate the world, that provides an answer to the prevailing chaos. In the theological vision of the Christian Middle Ages, God is the creator of the cosmos, He is the one who gives order to matter9. Sacred geometry could express such perfection on a symbolic level. The geometric schemes, drawn in a ritual manner, had defined proportions and imitated the harmony of creation.
The Merels Board expressed the analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The square recalled the constituent elements of the universe (water, fire, earth, air), the cardinal points and the seasons. In other words, it summarised the fundamental principles of creation: matter, space and time. This explains why we find the Merels Board engraved inside abbey cloisters. Their square-plan architecture was the result of the same symbolism. Again, four are the beings who drove the Merkavah, the chariot of fire led by the Spirit of God10, a prophetic representation of the Evangelists and the Word of God. Implicit in the scheme of the Merels Board was the number three, a reference to the Trinity. The intersection of the lateral axes is figure of the Cross, axis mundi connecting earth to heaven.
The meeting place
The Merels Board, as a representation of the cosmos, was also the place of encounter with the sacred. It was the metaphysical space in which the divine manifested itself. Among the people of Israel, there was a building designated for this purpose: the Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The building housed the Ark of the Covenant in the Debir, the seat of Yahweh’s presence called Shekhinah. It is interesting to read the description of the Temple in the Second Book of Chronicles:
[Solomon] “He made the court of the priests and the great courtyard and the gates of the courtyard; the gates he overlaid with bronze”.
2, Book of Chronicles 4,9
The First Book of Kings also affirms that Solomon:
“The inner court was walled off by means of three courses of hewn stones and one course of cedar beams”.
1 Book of Kings 6:36
Biblical sources tell that around the building there were two courtyards, enclosed by walls. This is like an architectural Merels board. In Christianity, every church could only refer, at least symbolically, to Solomon’s Temple, the sacred centre that was God’s dwelling place. The Sistine Chapel in Rome, for example, has the same measurements as the temple described in the Bible. Perhaps the Merels Board, with its symbolic meaning of a sacred cosmic space, was a representation of the Solomonic Temple.
The Merels Board and the New Jerusalem
Similarly, the New Jerusalem, of which the Christian templum was an image on earth, is also described by Saint John in the Book of Revelation like a Merels Board:
“Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them (as their God)”.
“It had a massive, high wall, with twelve gates where twelve angels were stationed and on which names were inscribed, (the names) of the twelve tribes of the Israelites. There were three gates facing east, three north, three south, and three west. The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The one who spoke to me held a gold measuring rod to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city was square, its length the same as (also) its width. He measured the city with the rod and found it fifteen hundred miles in length and width and height”.
Book of Revelation, 21,3;21,12-16
We can explain the ambivalence of the Merels Board, expression of both earthly and heavenly places, by considering the connection between the Christian temple, which houses the pilgrim church on earth, and the New Jerusalem, which will be the home of the faithful at the end of time. In the biblical chapter, we note the recurrence of the number twelve. It signifies completeness, and thus all of humanity. It represents the entire cosmos returning to God. The symbolic meaning of the Merels Board thus marked the sacralisation of a place. Like a seal impressed in stone, it invoked the divine presence, prefigured the spiritual Jerusalem in the material temple on earth.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- S. Centonze, La Triplice Cinta, il Tris e l’Alquerque da tabulae lusoriae a simboli di pellegrinaggio – Schede di Censimento, in “MATHERA”, anno IV n. 12, del 21 giugno 2020, Antros, Matera. ↩︎
- G. Barrella, La Triplice Cinta nella Daunia, V convegno nazionale – Mergozzo Centro Studi Triplice Cinta, 17 – 18 ottobre 2020. Il relatore riporta che il 72% delle tabulae lusoriae rinvenute si trovino in chiese, eremi, grotte, santuari e abbazie. ↩︎
- M. Riemschneider, Riti e giochi nel mondo antico, Convivio, 1991. ↩︎
- G. Rotondi, Leges publicae populi Romani. Elenco cronologico con una introduzione sull’attività legislativa dei comizi romani, in Enciclopedia Giuridica Italiana, Milano, Società editrice libraria, 1912. ↩︎
- Luciano di Samosata, Saturnalia, II secolo d.C. ↩︎
- S. Solano, Una tabula lusoria e pedine da gioco dal santuario di Minerva a Breno (BS), in C. Lambrugo, F. Slavazzi, A.M. Fedeli, I materiali della Collezione Archeologica“Giulio Sambon” di Milano, All’Insegna del Giglio s.a.s., Firenze 2015. ↩︎
- M. Uberti, G. Coluzzi, I luoghi delle Triplici Cinte in Italia, Eremon Edizioni, 2008. ↩︎
- Bernard of Clairvaux, De laude novae militiae ad Milites Templi, IV, 7. ↩︎
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1265-1273. ↩︎
- Book of Ezekiel 3. ↩︎
