As I have already remarked, these romances picture to us the manners of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and not those of the Carlovingian era. The period when the game of chess was first introduced into western Europe can only be conjectured, for writers of all descriptions were so much in the habit of employing the notions belonging to their own time in relating the events of the past, that we can place no dependence on anything which is not absolute contemporary evidence. The chess-board and men so long preserved in the treasury of St. Denis, and said to have belonged to Charlemagne, were, I think, probably, not older than the eleventh century, and appear to have had a Byzantine origin. If the game of chess had been known at the court of Charlemagne, I cannot but think that we should have found some distinct allusion to it. The earliest mention of this game that we know is found in a letter from Damianus, cardinal bishop of Ostia, to Alexander II., who was elected to the papacy in 1061, and enjoyed it till 1073. Damianus tells the pope how he was travelling with a bishop of Florence, when, “having arrived in the evening at a hostel, I withdrew,” he says, “into the cell of a priest, while he remained with the crowd of travellers in the spacious house. In the morning, I was informed by my servant that the aforesaid bishop had been playing at the game of chess; which information, like an arrow, pierced my heart very acutely. At a convenient hour, I sent for him, and said in a tone of severe reproof, ‘The hand is stretched out, the rod is ready for the back of the offender.’ ‘Let the fault be proved,’ said he, ‘and penance shall not be refused.’ ‘Was it well,’ I rejoined, ‘was it worthy of the character you bear, to spend the evening in the vanity of chess-play (_in vanitate scachorum_), and defile the hands and tongue, which ought to be the mediator between man and the Deity? Are you not aware that, by the canonical law, bishops, who are dice-players, are ordered to be deposed?’ He, however, making himself a shield of defence from the difference in the names, said that dice was one thing, and chess another; consequently that the canon only forbade dice, but that it tacitly allowed chess. To which I replied, ‘Chess,’ I said, ‘is not named in the text, but the general term of dice comprehends both the games. Wherefore, since dice are prohibited, and chess is not expressly mentioned, it follows, without doubt, that both kinds of play are included under one term, and equally condemned?’” This occurred in Italy, and it is evident from it that the game of chess was then well known there, though I think we have a right to conclude from it, that it had not been long known. There appears to be little room for doubting, that chess was, like so many other mediæval practices, an oriental invention, that the Byzantine Greeks derived it from the Saracens, and that from them it came by way of Italy to France.