In a message dated 98-03-23 11:43:48 EST, you write:
> I am (for what will be to many listmembers obvious reasons) especially
> interested in why, even to a 19th-century architect, the queen is the only
> female included--or more specifically, why is the king the only one here
> who has a female counterpart? Naturally the bishop would not be expected
> to have one (although an abbess might do--which brings up the question
> whether abbesses EVER appeared in sculptural programs of this nature?),
> but why hasn't the knight got a lady with him?
>
> John Parsons
>
Wasn't the knight's relationship to his lady, in the chivalric code, supposed
to be as abstemious as a bishop's? So "his" lady might conceivably have been
somebody else's wife.
Do you think it's a coincidence that king, queen, bishop, and knight are all
names of chess pieces? I was thinking also of the Biblical practice of
picturing the world with 4 corners (and, by implication, 4 sides).
pat sloane
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