Finding the world of Chess, here may we can glean some truths of the word bishop.
History
A pre-
Stauntonbishop
The bishop's predecessor in medieval chess,
shatranj (originally
chaturanga), was the
alfil, meaning
the elephant, which could leap two squares along any diagonal, and could jump over an intervening piece. As a consequence, each fil was restricted to eight squares, and no fil could attack another. The modern bishop first appeared shortly after 1200 in
Courier chess.[SUP]
[1][/SUP] A piece with this move, called a
cocatriz or crocodile, is part of the Grande Acedrex in the game book compiled in 1283 for King
Alfonso X of Castile. The game is attributed to "India", then a very vague term.[SUP]
[2][/SUP] About half a century later Muḥammad ibn Maḥmud al-Āmulī, in his
Treasury of the Sciences, describes an expanded form of chess with two pieces moving "like the rook but obliquely".[SUP]
[3][/SUP]
Derivatives of
alfil survive in the languages of the two countries where chess was first introduced within Western Europe—Italian (
alfiere) and Spanish (
alfil).[SUP]
[4][/SUP] It was known as the
aufin in French,[SUP]
[5][/SUP] or the aufin, alphin, or archer in early English.[SUP]
[6][/SUP]
The term "bishop" first entered the English language in the 16th century, with the first known written example dating back to 1560s.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] In all other Germanic languages, except for
Icelandic, it is called various names, all of which directly translate to English as "runner" or "messenger" (e.g. in Norwegian "Løper", in Danish "Løber", in Swedish "Löpare", in German "Läufer" and in Dutch "loper"; in Finnish, the word is "lähetti", and in Polish, "goniec", both with the same meaning). In Romanian, it is known as "nebun" which refers to a crazy person (similarly to the French name "Fou" (fool) which is most likely derived from "Fou du roi", a jester).[SUP]
[7][/SUP] In Icelandic, however, it is called "biskup",[SUP]
[8][/SUP] with the same meaning as in English. Interestingly, the use of the term in Icelandic predates that of the English language, as the first mentioning of "biskup" in Icelandic texts dates back to the early part of the 14th century, while the 12th-century
Lewis Chessmen portray the bishop as an unambiguously ecclesiastical figure. In The Saga of Earl Mágus, which was written in Iceland somewhere between 1300–1325, it is described how an emperor was checkmated by a bishop. This has led to some speculations as to the origin of the English use of the term "bishop".[SUP]
[9][10][/SUP]
The canonical chessmen date back to the
Staunton chess set of 1849. The piece's deep groove symbolizes a bishop's (or abbot's)
mitre. Some have written that the groove originated from the original form of the piece, an
elephant[SUP]
[11][12][/SUP] with the groove representing the elephant's
tusks (see photo in the
history section).[SUP]
[13][/SUP] The British chose to call the piece a bishop because the projections at the top resembled a mitre.[SUP]
[14][/SUP] This groove was interpreted differently in different countries as the game moved to Europe; in France, for example, the groove was taken to be a
jester's cap, hence in France the bishop is called "fou" (the jester; the word can also mean madman or gannet).[SUP]
[15][/SUP]
In some Slavic languages (e.g. Czech/Slovak) the bishop is called "střelec/strelec", which directly translates to English as a "shooter" meaning an
archer, while in others it is still known as "elephant" (e.g. Russian
slon). In
South Slavic languages it is usually known as "lovac", meaning "hunter", or "laufer", taken from the German name for the same piece (laufer is also alternative Polish name). An alternative name for bishop in Russian is officer (
Russian: офицер).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(chess)
So Bishop could simply mean a runner,a messenger or a servant.
God bless
