Alea Evangelii 2024

[Mark Jones]

Alea Evangelii intrigues me.

I am not aware of any compelling explanation of the application, in the Corpus Christi manuscript, of a Christian religious context to what appears to be a large, probably 19 x 19, Tafl board. I have also seen no persuasive explanation of the arrangement of pieces shown in the manuscript, and whether it is a starting set up or an illustration of a game in progress. If it does illustrate a starting set up, I understand that the game would be pretty hopelessly unbalanced in favour of the attackers and against the king.

By the end of the Viking age, Christianity had come to Scandinavia, but it is almost certain that the Scandinavian Tafl games were developed before Christianity came to Scandinavia, when the old Norse gods were worshipped. I therefore find it difficult to accept any inherent linkage between Christianity and Alea Evangelii as a game.

Medieval monks, however, had a fascination with complex religious allegories. Personally, I therefore suspect that the Corpus Christi manuscript was such an allegory, and not an attempt to describe any actual game.

We have archaeological evidence of variously sized Tafl boards from elsewhere, for example 11 x 11, 13 x 13 and 15 x 15. I’m not aware of any other 19 x 19 boards (I understand that the Vimose board was probably Roman), but they may exist unbeknown to me. Tafl therefore appears to have been played in formats ranging from 7 x 7 to (possibly) 19 x 19.

The recent 21st century retranslations of Carl Linnaeus’ 1732 notes of the Lapland Tafl (Tablut) game are the best set of rules surviving. Personally, I find the argument that those rules were also probably broadly the rules that were used in all sized variants of Tafl to be persuasive. Why would that not be the case? There is no historical evidence that I am aware of that would undermine that argument.

I doubt whether anyone will ever come up with a clear explanation of what the Corpus Christi manuscript means for Tafl games (or, for that matter, what it means in religious terms!).

So, has anyone ever tried playing Alea Evangelii using Linnaeus’ 1732 Tafl rules (in their 21st century retranslated form), with 48 attackers and 24 defenders plus the king, and using his initial set up of a simple cross with serifs? If so, does it produce a reasonably balanced game?

[Draganov]

We don't know much about Alea Evangelii to judge about its balance. However, for me it is clear that the illustration shows the starting position and not a game in progress. I think so, because the pieces are very simmetrically placed over the board.
The question that I am trying to figure out is why there are dots next to some of the pieces (red circles)?
Why there are pieces shown like cross with something on top of it (blue circles)?
Why there are pieces like thick crosses (black circles)?

Gospel_Dice_(cropped).jpg (138.76 KiB) Viewed 734 times

[Mark Jones]

Damian Walker (cyningstan) has posted, on his website, a translation of the text that accompanied the diagram in the Corpus Christi manuscript. It’s here:

http://tafl.cyningstan.com/page/167/alea-evangelii-text

The black crosses are mentioned in it and they appear to be something to do with the religious allegory. The numbers referred to in the manuscript would have been written in Roman numerals (l, ll, lll, etc) at that time, which you can see on the board diagram. I suspect that the x above some of the crosses is the Roman numeral for ten, referred to in the manuscript.

As I said in my original post, I doubt whether anyone now will ever be able to explain clearly what the allegory was all about!

I’m afraid I have no idea what the dots represented, though, if indeed they represent anything.

Mentioning Damian Walker reminds me of his formula for calculating the usual number of pieces for each board size:

p = 6w - 29

(where p is the number of pieces and w is the width of the board in squares). Applying that formula to the Alea Evangelii board would yield 85 pieces, a king, 28 defenders and 56 attackers (rather than a king, 24 defenders and 48 attackers). That also makes me wonder what the arrangement of pieces in Corpus Christi manuscript does actually illustrate, and whether it’s either an illustration of a game already in progress or somehow linked to the religious allegory.

[Draganov]

Maybe all of the dots, crosses and X symbols and all other weird symbols are just some religious explanations and signs and are not related to the game rules. In that way the game reconstruction of Damian Walker (cyningstan) might be correct or at least the best thing we have so far.
Regarding the balance, as I said in another topic, the players back then in the vikings age were probably not so good, so the game would be well-ballanced. We can see a similar situation when tafl is played between players with low rating. The result of such match is always unpredictable.