[In the essay below, Dinshaw considers the role of games in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, arguing that the metaphor of the game works on many levels in the play.]

Much of the scholarship on Jean Bodel's Jeu de saint Nicolas has concerned the rules and results of the dice games played by the three rogues, Pincedé, Cliquet, and Rasoir, in the tavern. Intent on explicating the action of these obscure passages, scholars have generated a series of proposed and rejected explanations, in which the literary aspect of the text has been second in importance to exact details of the games.¹ More recent criticism, focusing on the structure of the play as a whole and the function of these tavern scenes within the larger framework, has found thematic and structural coherence in the juxtaposition of the tavern world with the pagan king's court and the Christian realm.² I should like to suggest an integration of these two critical approaches: a return to the earlier emphasis on games, not, however, on the particular games of "Hazard" and "Highest Points," but rather on all kinds of games and game playing, in and out of the tavern. Johan Huizinga and, following him, V. A. Kolve have described a game as a free activity, governed and circumscribed by rules, that is outside the events of real life; it is "only pretend," but it proceeds nevertheless with paramount seriousness.³ Using this description, I explore the many ludic elements of the Jeu and suggest that the concept of game itself underlies Bodel's expansion of the Saint Nicholas legend and provides an essential unity in the play.

Saint Nicholas was the most popular saint in Christendom; his cult was phenomenally widespread and deeply devoted, and a profusion of legends grew around him. The Iconia Sancti Nicolai, the basis of Bodel's play, is only one legend in this large body of hagiographical material. P. R. Vincent, in his chapter on the Iconia legend, demonstrates that many representations of the legend existed at the time the Jeu was composed (generally agreed to be around 1200) in various media: in prose, verse, and drama, as well as in sculpture and stained glass. These representations were widely distributed throughout Western Europe, and, despite their differing forms, all rather uniformly correspond to the first Latin vita, Johannes Diaconus' ninth-century translation of Methodius' Greek work on Saint Nicholas.⁴ Vincent paraphrases Diaconus' version thus:

An army of Vandals from Africa sacked Calabria. One of the Vandals (a barbarus) found an image in the house of a Christian. Taking it, he learned from a Christian captive that it was an image of St. Nicholas, a great miracle worker. Keeping this information to himself, the barbarus returned to Africa with the army. A tax collector (thelonarius) by profession, he was one day called away by his business and, commanding Nicholas to guard his treasure, he left his treasure house open with the image before it and under no other guard. Thieves passing by planned to rob the treasure house that night, which they accordingly did, leaving behind only the image. When the barbarus returned he beat the image, beside himself with rage and grief, and threatened to burn it if the treasure were not returned. Stirred by the mistreatment of his image as though he himself had been beaten, St. Nicholas appeared to the robbers as they were dividing the spoil and threatened them with public exposure and death unless they returned the stolen property forthwith. The terrified robbers replaced everything in the treasure house, which caused the barbarus this time to weep for joy and, kissing the image, he loudly proclaimed his belief in St. Nicholas and in Christ. He and his household were baptized in the Christian faith and, having built a church to St. Nicholas, he, with his wife and children, spent his time there glorifying God and St. Nicholas.

(pp. 17-18)

The Bodel and Diaconus versions have in common the basic plot scheme of an infidel's entrusting his riches to an image of Saint Nicholas, the robbery of the treasure by thieves, Saint Nicholas' appearance to the thieves and the treasure's restoration, and the infidel's subsequent conversion to Christianity. But we can immediately see major differences, not just minor variations, between Bodel's play and the general outline of the legend. In Diaconus, the pagans attack the Christians, whereas in Bodel, this siege is turned into a Crusade as the Christians invade the land of the heathens; Diaconus' barbarus becomes Bodel's powerful King; Bodel introduces the captive Preudom, sole survivor of the Christians, whose rescue, in addition to the treasure's restoration, is effected by Saint Nicholas. But perhaps more immediately striking is the alteration of the entire architecture of the legend: Bodel has expanded the legend from the middle, adding scenes of tavern life, which take up nearly half of the play's 1,533 lines yet do not affect the essential plot of the legend. We could ascribe Bodel's changes to the "realism" for which the Arras playwrights are renowned; perhaps, as Vincent proposes, Bodel wanted to portray "the attitude of the common man of twelfth-century Arras towards the active and familiar Saint Nicholas" (Vincent, p. xi) and therefore modified and expanded the legend to include a Crusade (especially since the play is thought to have been written at the time of preparations for the Fourth Crusade) and tavern scenes (in a tavern that critics agree is pure Artois). But we might also take a tip from the bulk of the text itself and consider the sheer volume of "low-life" scenes featuring gambling action. Bodel not only adds contemporary Arras to the legend, he adds an exploration of the whole concept of game, which governs his alterations and inventions. The Crusade battle is an opposition between Christian and pagan, referring ultimately to the game of human history between God and Satan; the captive Christian provides good fun for the King, who challenges him to a game of proving the power of the Saint Nicholas statue; the main pastime in the tavern is gambling. Indeed, as we shall see, games pervade the play at every level, and the concept of game in the pagan realm is developed and contrasted, finally, to game in the Christian realm.

Bodel's use of the concept of game in his dramatic adaptation of the Iconia legend might be related, in fact, to the entire idea of the vernacular theater in the Middle Ages. Liturgical terms such as or do, officium, and processio were used to denote early liturgical dramas, but the vernacular drama took its reference from the word ludus, used in classical times to denote many different activities, such as sports, jokes, athletics, military exercises, and drama. The vernacular equivalents of ludus—jeu, spiel, and pley—became the accepted terms for the vernacular drama; thus, while referring to dramatic activity, these words are associated with the concept of recreation, of playing (Kolve, pp. 11-13). The Old French jeu has a wide range of meanings that includes tournaments, battles, dice games, jokes, children's games, and love games; in Le Jeu de saint Nicolas it is used both for the dice games in the tavern and for the play itself:

Clikés. A quel jeu?
Pincedés.         A quel que tu veus.
Clikés. A plus poins?
Pincedés.           Soit, si m'alt Dieus.

Cliquet. What game is it?
Pincedé.                 Whatever you like.
Cliquet. Highest Points?
Pincedé.               So be it. Amen.
(11. 870-71

Li Preecieres. Del miracle saint Nicolai
             Est chis jeus fais et estorés.

Preacher. The legend of Saint Nicholas
        Is the theme and story of our play.
(11. 112-13)

This semantic ambivalence almost certainly points to the idea of vernacular theater held in the medieval period. In England, plays were often known as "games": a prologue in a drama fragment dated at 1275-1300 introduces its play (now lost) thus:

Nu sittet stille and herkint alle,
þat hur no mis þing ev bifalle;
And sittet rume and wel atwo
þat men moðt among ev go.
þey þat beut igadert fale,
Ne makiet naðt to lude tale—
Hit uer ev bot muchel scame
For to lette hure game …

Now sit still and hearken all,
So that nothing amiss befalls you here;
And sit far apart and well-separated,
So that men may pass among you.
You who are gathered in great number,
Don't talk too loudly—
It would be a great shame to you
To inhibit our game … ⁶

The morality play The Pride of Life (probably composed in the middle of the fourteenth century) is announced in this way:

Nou beith in pes and beith hende,
 And distourbith noðt oure place,
For þis oure game schal gin and ende
 Throgh Jhesu Cristis swete grace.

Now hold your peace and be courteous,
 And don't disturb our place,
For this our game shall begin and end
 Through Jesus Christ's sweet grace.
(Davis, p. 93, 11. 109-12)

And the entire N-Town cycle (c. 1450) is called a "game" in its Proclamation:

whan þat ðe come þer xal ðe sene
this game wel pleyd in good a-ray
Of holy wrytte þis game xal bene
and of no fablys be no way.

When you come, there shall you see
This game well-played in good array;
Of holy writ this game shall be,
And of no fables in no way.⁷

There are abundant examples of plays being termed "games"; the terms were used interchangeably in English to denote a dramatic representation, and Kolve argues for a medieval idea of theater in which "drama was conceived of as a game …" (p. 14). The medieval drama creates a "game" world in which the audience is shown the truth in the guise of a game, a world that is analogous to, but separate from, real life. This type of drama is opposed to the liturgical drama (which continued to be performed until the Reformation), in which the performers identified with—"became"—the characters portrayed and literally reenacted the original action that the play concerns. Writing about the English phenomenon of the Corpus Christi plays, in words equally applicable to a conception of the vernacular drama in general, Kolve says:

The aim of the Corpus Christi drama was to celebrate and elucidate, never, not even temporarily, to deceive. It played action in "game"—not in "ernest"—within a world set apart, established by convention and obeying rules of its own. A lie designed to tell the truth about reality, the drama was understood as significant play. (p. 32)

The concept of game thus underlies the entire medieval idea of a theater, and this notion may have informed the ludic additions and changes that Bodel made in the Iconia legend as he reworked it into a play. Very possibly, he conceived of the products of his craft as games. And further, in his expansion of the legend, Bodel structured the Jeu like a game: the Iconia legend provided the narrative boundaries inside which Bodel created his play; within these "rules," the play frolics and leaps about with abundant energy.

The tavern, of course, is the obvious locus of games in the Jeu. Cliquet's first lines invite the King's messenger, Auberon, to play:

Qui veut un parti, a che caup,
Pour esbanier, petit gieu?

Who wants to gamble on the cut,
A little game, to keep us amused?
(11. 290-91)

A game is a pastime; it is for amusement, says Cliquet. But the tavern scenes explicitly introduce into the Jeu the concept of formal game as well. "Hazard" and "Highest Points" exist prior to, and independently of, the rogues who agree to play. A game is "known," writes Kolve; "that is, it has certain rules and requires a certain formal sequence of actions" (p. 181). These rules give form to the game; they define it, and without them there can be no game. The activity begins with a contract: the players agree to obey the rules in order to play. But the rogues of the Jeu constantly break the rules of their games, constantly break their contract, and chaos results. Cheating is rampant, and, in fact, seems to be expected: Auberon cautions Cliquet before their game ("Giete as plus poins, sans papetourt" 'Play "Highest Points!" No cheating, now' [1. 300]), as does Pincede before the three rascals begin their play (1. 849); Caignet produces dice that have been officially tested ("Jes fis taillier par eschievins" [1. 8441), on request of Cliquet, who claims that Pincede's dice were never square.

Rules delimit the game in space and time, creating "a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own" (Huizinga, p. 8). A game is a diversion from present circumstances; Cliquet's first lines indicate that he is looking for something to relieve his boredom. Yet, despite their being outside the activities of ordinary life, these tavern games proceed with the utmost seriousness: the players, far from being merely "amused," curse, fight, and nearly tear each other to shreds at the prospect of losing—losing not simply the money but the challenges, the games themselves. The rogues are completely absorbed by their activity.

But the tavern is not the only scene of games in the Jeu: the pagan realm outside is also a game-oriented world. In the first scene of the play, the Seneschal reports to the King that Christians are invading. Infuriated, the King turns on his idol, Tervagan, and threatens to destroy the statue if it does not protect the kingdom. The Seneschal points out that this fury is imprudent and advises the King to apologize and ask Tervagan for a sign showing how to get rid of the Christians. The statue, in response to the King's request, both smiles and weeps, and the King asks the Seneschal to expound this puzzling oracle. Because he fears the King's wrath and knows that His Majesty will be displeased with the message, the Seneschal refuses; to overcome this impasse, the King reassures him:

Senescal, n'aiés pas peür,
De tous mes dieus vous asseür;
Jus soit et fieste necaudent.

Seneschal, don't be afraid:
I swear to you by all my gods,
Just let it be a game, a joke!
(11. 195-97)

The King uses the concept of game to try to dispel the Seneschal's misgivings: he will act as if the Seneschal's explication is "only pretend," something "not real" and therefore not serious; it can be laughed off. The appositive syntactic relationship of "jus" and "fieste" emphasizes this aspect of game: Henry glosses "fieste" as "amusement, plaisanterie." This "pretend" context allows the King to receive the message of the oracle in utter seriousness, yet detach himself from the situation and walk away without harming the Seneschal (who is then part of the insignificant game). Similarly, the Seneschal can speak the truth in an "untrue" context, and thus escape unscathed.

There is a strong ludic element in the battle between the Saracens and the Christians in the Jeu. The combat itself lacks a formal game structure: it is not rule-governed, waged as it is between opponents who do not consider each other as equals or as antagonists with equal rights.⁸ In Christian terms, the pagans are unregenerate, living without the Truth, and the pagans think these Christians are barbarians (Auberon calls them "de put lin" 'a stinking tribe' [1. 121]). The battle is a lawless massacre, a butchery of the Christian troops, but it is not without a game element of another sort: the heathen emirs turn the fight into a competition, a chance to prove their personal prowess:

Li Amiraus del Coine. Chevalier sommes
  esprouvé;
  Se li crestïen sont trouvé,
  Gardés qu'il n'en escap uns seus.
Cil d'Orkenie. Escaper, li fil a putain!
  Je ferrai si le premerain.
  Mais gardés que nus n'en estorge.
Cil del Coine. Segneur, ne soiés ja doutant
  Que jou n'en ochie autretant
  Con Berengiers soiera d'orge.
Cil d'Oliferne. Segneur tuëour, entre vous
  Ochirrés les ore si tous
  Que vous ne m'en lairés aucun?

Coine. We are battle-tested warriors;
 So if we come across the Christians,
 Make sure no single one escapes.
Orkenie. Escape, you say! Those sons of
 whores!
 I'll strike the first one that comes—you'll
 see!
 But take care no one gets away!
Coine. My lords, you needn't be in doubt
 That I shall mow the Christians down
 Like Berengiers at the barley-harvest.
Oliferne. You wholesale murderers, between
 you
 Will you make such a total slaughter
 There won't be a single one left for me?
(ll. 439-50, my emphasis)

The Emir of Oliferne is anxious lest he miss his "turn" to display his adeptness at the game of massacring the Christians. This scene is reminiscent of similar scenes in the English Corpus Christi Crucifixion plays, in which, as Kolve deftly demonstrates, the tortores of Christ turn their tasks into competitive games. The tormentors are concerned more with the actual process of killing Christ, the activity of the game, than with the meaning of his dying (Kolve, pp. 185-200). Such attention to the activity is a characteristic of game: the object of the action is the game itself. In Bodel's play, the pagan emirs are similarly interested in the actual process of the battle, in how each will perform.

After the slaughter of the Christian soldiers, the emirs discover the single surviving Christian kneeling in front of an image of Saint Nicholas. The Emir of Orkenie exclaims:

Segneur baron, acourés tost!
Toutes les merveilles de l'ost
Sont tout gas fors de che caitif.
Ves chi un grant vilain kenu,
S'aoure un mahommet cornu.

Comrades in arms, come here quickly!
The marvels of the Christian army
Are all a joke compared with this—
Look at the wretch, white-haired old rogue,
Praying to an idol with horns.
(ll. 454-58)

Henry glosses "gas" as "chose sans intérêt, plaisanterie"; it is rendered into modern French as "amusette," modern German as "ein Nichts."⁹ A joke is a trivial thing, amusing but empty. And the emirs go on to share their newly discovered joke with the King; they bring back the Preudom for him to see, as an amusement, a kind of sideshow freak:

Li Amiraus d'Orquenie. Ochirrons le ou
  prenderons vif?
Cil d'Oliferne. N'en ochirrons mie, par foy,
    Ains le menrons devant le roy,
    Pour merveille, che te promet.

Orkenie. Shall we kill him here, or take him
 alive?
Oliferne. Let's not kill him for goodness sake!
    We'll take him for the King to see:
    He'll be dumbfounded, I promise you.
(ll. 459-62)

Later, the Seneschal explains to the King:

Roys, pour merveilles esgarder
Le t'avons fait tout vif garder.
Or oiés dont il s'entremet:
A genous le trouvai ourant,
A jointes mains et en plourant,
Devant sen cornu mahommet.

Your Majesty, just for the wonder of it,
We've brought him live for you to see.
Now, listen how he spends his time.
I found him on his knees, praying,
Clasping his hands together, weeping,
Before his idol with its horns.
(ll. 508-13)

They are playing with the Christian, exploiting him as entertainment. Again, an analogous scene occurs in the Corpus Christi plays: in the York Passion sequence, Christ is brought before both Caiaphas and Herod as a kind of joke (Kolve, pp. 182-84). Caiaphas is told by a soldier:

My lorde! my lorde! my lorde! here is layke,
 and öou list!

My lord! my lord! my lord! here's some fun, if
 you please!¹⁰

And Jesus' arrival provides Herod with a good time:

My lorde, þei bryng you yondir a boy boune in
 a bande,
þat bodus outhir bourdyng or bales to brewe.

My lord, they bring you yonder a boy bound
 in a band,
That forebodes either amusement or trouble abrewing.
(p. 295, 11. 82-83)

Herod then proceeds to turn his trial of Jesus into a game. And in Bodel's play, the King responds to the Christian in a ludic vein. He asks the Preudom if he really believes in the statue's powers, then asks him why; the good man replies with a catalog of Saint Nicholas' miracles, concluding:

Riens qui en se garde soit mise
N'iert ja perdue ne maumise,
Tant ne sera abandonnee,
Non, se chis palais ert plain d'or,
Et il geüst seur le tresor:
Tel grasse li a Dieus donnee.

Nothing entrusted to his care,
Can ever be lost or badly damaged,
However long it is left unguarded—
Not even this palace, if filled with gold,
Provided his image lay on the treasure:
Such is the power that God has given him.
(11. 526-31)

The King apparently perceives a challenge in the man's claim about the palace and, in turn, challenges the Christian to prove this assertion:

Vilain, che sarai jou par tans.
Ains que de chi soie partans,
Tes nicolais iert esprouvés:
Mon tresor commander li voeil.
Mais se g'i perç nis plain men oeil,
Tu seras ars ou enroués.

Fellow, that's what I'll soon discover:
Before I go away from here,
Your Nicholas will have his test.
I'll leave my treasure in his keeping.
But, if I lose a thimble-full,
I'll have you burnt, or broken on a wheel.
(11. 532-37)

The King here does not have the motive of the barbarus in the various other representations of the Iconia legend, who must leave town on business and so must entrust his riches to the care of the image. Presumably, the King's treasure can remain as securely guarded as it always has been. The King's actions seem entirely gratuitous: he is not interested in any necessary protection; he has nothing to gain and everything to lose. His interest is in the challenge, in the game that he has begun. He makes a contract with the Preudom, clearly stating the rules; he enters the game out of curiosity and a desire for amusement, but he proceeds with the utmost seriousness. The King's primary concern is to win the game by proving the good man wrong, even though winning would mean the loss of his colossal wealth; the game itself is his motivation.

Once the treasure has been exposed and its availability made known, it is again seen as a challenge—this time, to the tavern rogues. Rasoir has heard the crier's invitation to plunder the King's riches, and he immediately envisions an end to debts and penury: he orders quantities of wine, giving the tavern keeper broad assurances of payment. Surely, the thieves are incited to steal the treasure by their poverty and their greed, but there is also a sense of sheer curiosity and challenge about such a caper: the King's wealth displayed for all to see, without a living guard—why not have a go at it? It is a game of chance, and Cliquet knows it is a risk; he tells the Taverner:

Sire, se Dieus me gart de honte,
De meskeanche et de prison,
C'on ne nous prengne a occoison,
Que nous ne soions tout pendu,
Si tres bien vous sera rendu
Que d'or fm arés plain un bac.

If God almighty keeps me free
From failure, infamy and jail—
And provided no one catches us
In the act and we all get hanged—
Then you'll be lavishly repaid:
You'll have a barrel full of gold.
(11. 977-82)

The rogues, of course, accept the challenge. They enter the palace and begin to stow away the treasure:

Clikés. Rasoir, che bon escrin pesant
 Prendés, car che sont tout besant.
Rasoirs. A! vif dïable! Que il poise!
 Pinchedé, met che sac plus pres:
 Chis escrins poise comme uns gres!
 Pour un petit qu'il ne me crieve.
Pincedés. Rue chaiens tout a un fais,
 N'ai talent que l'escrin i lais;
 J'aim mieus assés que je m'en grieve.

Chi voeil jou esprouver me forche:
Ne voeil c'autres de moi l'en porche …

Cliquet. Rasoir, help lift this heavy chest.
 Look, it's full of golden coins.
Rasoir. The devil it is! What a weight!
 Move the sack closer, Pincede.
 This coffer's heavy as a flagstone;
 One ounce more would rupture me.
Pincedé. Tip everything into a heap!
 I don't want to leave the chest behind—
 I'd rather break my back with it.
 Watch me while I try my strength!
 No one else is going to take it.
(11. 1001-11)

Pincedé, like the Saracen emirs in the battle with the Christians, turns this adventure into a competitive game. When his companions fail under their burdens, he displays his premier physical capabilities: "Watch me while I try my strength!" And when the thieves return to the tavern with the load (carried by Pincedé, with a certain bravado), the loot makes for further gaming: it is used as the stakes in more dice games.

Saint Nicholas' stern appearance to the rascals frightens and dismays them. To his command to return the treasure and the statue, Pincedé responds, in a burst of religiosity, "Per signum sancte cruchefis" (1. 1300). Rasoir is shaken, and Cliquet is miserable. Nonetheless, they soon put the occurrence into their own familiar context: Pincede speaks of it in terms of the outcome of a chancy venture:

Et du pechié et de l'avoir
Devés avoir droite parchon.

Each must take his proper share
Of the profits and the loss.
(11. 1313-14)

Thanks to the robbery, the rouges have managed to defraud on still another tavern bill. The Taverner lost even more than he thought: Cliquet observes, "Car ses sas a fait une wide!" 'He never charged us for the sack!' (1. 1345). And Pincede urges still another game of chance:

Segneur, or creés m'estoutie!
Prengne chascuns un pugnie
De ches besans, ja n'i parroit!

Lads, now take a risk with me!
Everyone grab himself a fistful
Of these gold coins—it wouldn't show.
(11. 1346-48)

Indeed, although the rogues are the only ones to see Nicholas himself, they remain far from converted by the experience and seem to regard his visitation as merely bringing the end of the game. They have lost the game of chance, which was the robbery. This game involved breaking the law, which Saint Nicholas comes to enforce. In the thieves' game-oriented world, the saint is thus simply a rule giver and their adventure "just a game." Since that limited activity has ended, they immediately plan new sport:

Rasoirs. J'ai espiié une paroit
 Que j'arai ja mout tost crosee,
 Pour le ware d'une espousee
 Qu'est en une huche de caisne.
Clikés. Segneur, et je m'en vois a Fraisne,
 Un petit dela Gaverele.
 Se je puis faire me querele,
 Li maires i ara damage.
Pincedés. Cliquet, li mairesse est mout sage,
 Si te connistra au passer.
 Ne me voeil pas si lonc lasser:
 Chi pres, jusqu'a une ruee,
 Ai espïet une buee
 Que j'aiderai a rechinchier.

Rasoir. I've got my eye on a bedroom wall,
 Which I shall soon have drilled right
   through
 To get my hands on a bride's fine clothes,
 That are packed away in a chest of oak.
Cliquet. And I shall go to Fresnes, my lads,
 A little way beyond Gavrelle.
 If I conduct my business right
 The mayor of Fresnes will feel the pinch.
Pincedé. The mayor's wife is pretty sharp,
 She'll know you if you pass the house.
 I shan't bother to go so far:
 Just a stone's throw away from here
 I caught sight of a line of washing.
 I think I'll lend a hand with the rinse.
(11. 1361-74)

The rogues' vision of Saint Nicholas as a law-enforcement officer points up the essential characteristic of the realm in which they dwell: it is rule-governed. Rules, it was stated earlier, are essential to the definition of games. We have seen how games pervade the action of the play and, accordingly, how full of rules this game-oriented world is. For example, we learn from the Taverner in his first lines that there are strict controls on wine prices:

Auberons. A conbien?
Li Tavreniers.   Au ban de le vile.
   Je n'en serai a nul fourfait
   Ne du vendre ne du mestrait.

Auberon. How much do you charge?
Taverner.         The local rate.
   I'm never like to be in trouble
   For over-charging or short-measure.
(11. 258-60)

There are regulations, newly invented, for delimiting the individual territories of the criers Connart and Raoul:

De le vile ait chascuns sen ban.
Connart, tu crieras le ban,
S'iers au roi et as eskievins;
Et Raouls criera les vins …

Each one must have his rights in town:
Connart, you shall be town-crier
Under the King and the magistrates;
Raoul shall advertise the wines …
(ll. 630-33)

In this last example, the Taverner intercedes in a brawl between the two criers and makes a rule to protect each one's rights. Indeed, all these rules are made to establish order and provide protection, to compensate for the absence of natural order in the pagan world. There is no natural bond between individuals: at the insistence of the Seneschal, the King takes the binding oath of tapping his fingernail to his tooth because otherwise, as the King himself later admits, he would have killed the Seneschal for imparting the bad news. The constant haggling about payment in the tavern and the fear that payment will not be made for goods consumed attest to the lack of responsibility of one person for another. There is no trust between individuals: everyone in the tavern suspects cheating—and rightly so—in gambling, drawing wine, or reckoning bills. These scenes portray a fallen world, and rules are a necessity of a fallen world; there would be natural order in an unfallen state. And because rules are necessary in this pagan realm they will be broken.

There is, however, another kind of game represented throughout the play. The Crusade theme and the conversion of the heathens that results from the miracle are manifestations of the general struggle between Christians and unbelievers and, ultimately, of the battle between God and Satan. This game has enormous proportions: "The whole of human history can be understood as a game in which the opponents are the Triune God and Satan …," writes Kolve (p. 204). A ludic vision of history appears not only in the theater of the Middle Ages but also, deeply rooted, in the medieval imagination. The Redemption—the Crucifixion and the Harrowing of Hell—is figured forth as a tournament, or game, between Christ and Satan, in sermons, plays, and lyric poetry. This image of the Christ-knight jousting with the Adversary is a commonplace of the later medieval imagination: as Rosemary Woolf demonstrates, the figure began in the twelfth century, when the earlier theological emphasis on the Redemption as a conquest of the devil gave way to a new emphasis on the crucified Christ's love of the human race; this theological point was blended with the concept of chivalric behavior in the romances, and the very popular figure of the Christ-knight was the result.¹¹ An early version of this allegory appears in Ancrene Riwle (c. 1200): a powerful king loves a lady who is besieged by foes in an earthen castle, and he engages in a tournament with the enemy to free her:

þes king is Iesu godes sune. þe al onþiswise [þ]o[l]ede ure saule þe deoflen hefden biset. and he as noble wowere efter monie messagers and feole goddeden. com to pruuen hisluue. and schaude þurch cnichtschipe. þat he we luuewurðe as were sumnhwile cnichtes iwunet for to don. dude him inturnement and hefde for his leoues luue his scheld infecht as kene cnicht on vch half iþurlet.

This king is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who in this manner wooed [following later scribe's correction] our soul, which the devils had besieged. And he, as a noble wooer, after many messengers, and many good deeds, came to prove his love, and shewed by his knightly prowess that he was worthy of love, as knights were sometimes wont to do. He engaged in a tournament, and had, for his lady's love, his shield every where pierced in battle, like a valorous knight.¹²

Consistent with a ludic vision of history, although not exactly referring to a formal game between God and the devil, is the common "mousetrap" metaphor for the Incarnation. Augustine, in three sermons, explains the necessity of Christ's incarnation as a divine trick on Satan; in Sermon CCLXIII, for example, he writes:

Exsultavit diabolus quando mortuus est Christus, et ipsa morte Christi est diabolus victus, tanquam in muscipula escam accepit. Gaudebat ad mortem, quasi praepositus mortis. Ad quod gaudebat, inde illi tensum est. Muscipula diaboli, crux Domini: esca qua caperetur, mors Domini.

The devil exulted when Christ died, but by this very death of Christ the devil is vanquished, as if he had swallowed the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced in Christ's death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death.¹³

Christ's body is also commonly seen, by Augustine and others, as the bait on a divine fishhook, which lures Satan to his own destruction. God thus plays a trick, a joke, on the demon, but it is a joke with the most serious, far-reaching consequences, hardly "ein Nichts." The Deceiver is deceived, and God's control of history, this cosmic game, is proved supreme.

The outcome of this game, of course, is sure. The rules, boundaries, the action itself—all have been predetermined by God. To the Christian acting in history, playing in God's game, the emphasis is not, as it is in the pagan realm, on rules; it is, rather, on belief: one must believe that God, omniscient and omnipotent, is controlling the game. Although the earthly society of Christians, too, is fallen, natural order and obedience to his commandments will follow the act of faith. An angel of God exhorts the Christians to faith, which replaces the ever-present rules of the pagan world of the Jeu. He encourages the soldiers:

Metés hardiement vos cors
Pour Dieu, car chou est chi li mors
Dont tout li pules morir doit
Qui Dieu aime de cuer et croit.

Boldly entrust your lives entire
To God; the death you'II meet today
Is one all people ought to die
Who love God and have faith in him.
(11. 420-23)

He admonishes the captive Christian:

Preudons, soies joians, n'aies nule paour,
Mais soies bien creans ens ou vrai Sauveour
      Et en saint Nicolai,
Que jou de verté sai que sen secours aras;
Le roy convertiras et ses barons metras
Fors de leur fole loy, et si tenront le foy
Que tienent crestïten …

Good man, rejoice and cast away all fear!
Sustain your firm belief in Christ your
 Saviour,
And in Saint Nicholas.
I know it for a truth
That you will have his aid:
You will convert the King
And all his baronage
Out of their foolish faith;
And they will then believe
As Christians do, I know.
(11. 550-56)

The angel's foreknowledge of what will happen manifests God's ultimate control of the events of the game.

The miracle of the Saint Nicholas statue is the interesection of the two kinds of game, the pagan and the Christian. On the level of plot, the miracle unites all the heretofore disparate elements of the play (the King and court, the captive Christian, and the rogues). It associates the pagan games of the thieves and of the King: the thieves lose their game, and the King loses his as well; since his treasure is not only preserved but augmented, he cannot prove that the Christian's faith is foolish and misguided. But the nature of the game has changed: a miracle ends the pagan game, shifting the focus from rules to belief in God, who is the inventor and master of a new, divine game. The robbers, in reaction to the miracle, remain governed and preoccupied by rules, as we saw earlier: they view Saint Nicholas as a lawgiver, a sort of policeman. The King and court, however, respond with belief in God and Saint Nicholas. Alfred Adler calls the miracle "ce coup dè des triomphal" of the Christian captive as "joueur" (p. 120); of course, it is ultimately God's toss, too, a toss in a game that has been preordained from the beginning of time.

History is thus the divine game, controlled and determined by God. But there is free will in this deterministic universe, and Bodel's play gives us, the audience, a dynamic sense of this Boethian relationship between fate and free will. We know the Iconia legend—we know how the story will end—yet we cannot predict what the characters' individual actions will be as the play progresses; their actions seem improvisatory within the world of the drama, even though we are aware that there is a preexisting plan for the entire play. Similarly, Bodel himself, in writing the Jeu, exercised freedom from traditional redactions of the legend, though the play as a whole affirms the miracle, affirms God's omnipotent and eternal control of the universe. Le Jeu de saint Nicolas leaves us with a feeling of expansive freedom within secure boundaries, boundaries drawn by the Master of the divine game.

Notes

¹ See, e.g., C. A. Knudson, "Hasard et les autres jeux de dès dans le Jeu de saint Nicolas," Romania, 63 (1937), 248-53; W. Noomen, "Encore une fois la partie de 'Hasard' dans le Jeu de saint Nicolas," Neophilologus, 43 (1959), 109-13; F. Lecoy on Noomen in Romania, 81 (1960), 139-41; A. Henry, "La Partie de hasard dans le Jeu de saint Nicolas," Romania, 81 (1960), 241-43.

² E.g., H. S. Robertson, "Structure and Comedy in Le Jeu de saint Nicolas," Studies in Philology, 64 (1967), 551-63; K. Heitmann, "Zur Frage der inneren Einheit von Jehan Bodels Jeu de Saint Nicolas," Romanische Forschungen, 75 (1963), 289-315; A. Adler, "Le Jeu de saint Nicolas, 6difiant, mais dans quel sens?" Romania, 81 (1960), 112-20.

³ Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (1949; rpt. Boston: Beacon, 1955), p. 13; V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 19-20. Throughout this paper, my debt to Kolve's work is large and obvious.

⁴ Patrick R. Vincent, The Jeu de saint Nicolas of Jean Bodel of Arras: A Literary Analysis, Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages, 49 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954), p. 33.

⁵ The text of the Jeu quoted in this paper is that of Albert Henry, Le Jeu de saint Nicolas de Jehan Bodel, 2nd ed., Université Libre de Bruxelles, Travaux de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, 21 (Brussels: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1965). Line references are to this text. The English translations are from Richard Axton and John Stevens, Medieval French Plays (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971).

⁶Non-cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. Norman Davis, Early English Text Society, supp. ser. 1 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970) p. 115, 11. 1-8. The modern English translations of the Middle English texts, except where otherwise noted, are mine.

⁷Ludus Coventriae; or, The Plaie Called Corpus Christi, ed. K. S. Block, Early English Text Society, extra ser. 120 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1922), p. 16, 11. 518-21.

⁸ Huizinga specifies that an attitude of equality between antagonists is a defining characteristic of warfare that serves a ludic function. He goes on to deny that battles fought by Christians against heathens have a play quality, because the infidels were "not recognized as human beings and thus deprived of human rights" (pp. 89-90). As a matter of fact, in the Middle Ages the Saracens were considered to be human; as Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., pointed out to me, they were thought to represent that half of humanity which rejected God and became the race of Cain. John Scotus Eriugena, in Bk. v, Sec. 38, of his Periphyseon or De Divisione Naturae (J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina [Paris, 1844-64], Vol. 122, col. 1011), explicates the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in terms of the whole human race, those who turned toward God and those who turned away. Nevertheless, Huizinga's point can be usefully applied to the Jeu—ironically, in inverted form: the infidels of the play view the attacking Christians as faithless barbarians (Auberon describes them to the King: "Nos dieus n'onneurent ne proient" 'Our gods they neither invoke nor honour' [1. 120]), whom they slaughter with abandon.

⁹ The modern French is from Henry's edition; the modern German is from K. H. Schroeder, W. Nitsch, and M. Wenzel, eds., Das Spiel vom heiligen Nikolaus, Klassische Texte des Romanischen Mittelalters, 14 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975).

¹⁰York Plays, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1885), p. 261, 1. 192.

¹¹ Rosemary Woolf, "The Theme of Christ the Lover-Knight in Medieval English Literature," Review of English Studies, 13 (1962), 1-16.

¹²The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. from BM Cotton MS Cleopatra C. VI by E. J. Dobson, Early English Text Society, OS 267 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), p. 286.I have expanded the manuscript abbreviations Dobson transcribes in his edition. The modern English translation is from James Morton's edition (London: Camden Society, 1853), p. 391.

¹³ Augustine, Sermon CCLXIII, "De Ascensione Domini," in Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina, Vol. 38, col. 1210. The English translation appears in Meyer Schapiro, "'Muscipula Diaboli,' the Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece," Art Bulletin, 27 (1945), 182.