NEAR THE BEGINNING of Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, an erudite medieval abbot turns to a monk who has just arrived in his monastery in Italy. “Monasterium sine libris,” he declaims, in Latin, naturally, “est sicut . . . hortus sine herbis, pratum sine floribus, arbor sine foliis.” A monastery without books is like a garden without herbs, a meadow without flowers, a tree without leaves. The abbot continues this explanation (or, less charitably, exposition) of monastic life in the vernacular. His order of monks, the Benedictines, he explains, “growing up under the double command of
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