Alea evangelii

The manuscript, Corpus Christi College ms. 122 (folio 5 verso), attempts to give scriptural meaning to a hnefatafl variant, and, though the layout is unwieldy, its proportions are also found in a game board fragment unearthed at Wimose on the Danish island of Funen.

It includes three sections: the ten Eusebian Canons (or tables) representing how each Gospel agrees with or differs from the others; the "Alea Evangelii" diagram and two pages of explanation in Latin; the Vulgate Latin version of the four Gospels, preceded by St. Jerome's prologue.

The description of the game states that it was invented at the court of King Æthelstan of England (924–939) by two learned men: an anonymous Frank and Israel the Grammarian, one of the leading European scholars of his time.

[6][7] A photograph of the game is the frontispiece of The Times of St Dunstan by J. Armitage Robinson, who also reproduces and discusses the text.

Finally, "the figure 1 in the middle of the alea signifies the indivisible substance of the Trinity, or the supremacy of the first canon".

Canons II, III and IIII, together with the four "different men" and the "primary man", form the circle surrounding the central diamond.

Actually, the manuscript mentions the existence of attackers and defenders, but the two sides are not differentiated on the diagram, which only presents the details of how the pieces are assigned to the four evangelists according to the Christian allegory which is the main subject of the text.

Mac White[13] notes that CCC MS 122 "mentions dukes and knights, presumably pieces, which is rather puzzling".