DICE-GAMES were one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the Middle Ages, and also one of the most heavily criticised. The most common reasons for censure, cited in both secular and religious sources, were the crippling losses, endemic cheating, violence, and crime with which dicing was associated. That these were, and remain today, the main causes for concern over all forms of gambling is indisputable. Greed cannot have been the only or even the main motive to gamble, however, since it will not have escaped even the most ardent (or dim-witted) player’s notice that the most likely outcome would be embarrassing loss: the tavern songs in the Carmina Burana collection, among many other examples, are full of drunken players losing the shirts off their backs. This paper will concern itself with those other, secondary aspects of both the attraction of dice-games and the reasons behind their censure in the Middle Ages. The attractions of dice-games for their medieval adherents were in fact much the same as for modern players, but some aspects of the medieval condemnation of dicing are less readily comprehensible. The reliance on chance as a determining factor in human affairs, coupled with the ancient pagan use of dice in divination, led to the medieval association – unexpected for a modern audience – of dice-games with blasphemy. This is rarely discussed directly by medieval commentators on the subject, although it is often represented by the emphasis placed on descriptions of the violent swearing of dice-players. The perceived blasphemy of the actual activity of dicing formed an important part of the disquiet felt about it by at least some of its medieval critics. The reasons behind, and consequences of, this perception will be explored in some detail later on.

Since the prospect of monetary gain evidently cannot be the only attraction of dice-games, we must look elsewhere for the source of their addictiveness. The gambling impulse is a fundamental part of human nature: every society has some form of gambling in its traditions and pastimes, whether or not that society actually condones it. The root of this impulse lies, quite simply, in the sheer perverse pleasure of trying to predict the outcome of an unpredictable event.