The Name of the Rose

by Umberto Eco

And as long as these walls stand, we shall be the custodians of the divine Word.” “Amen,” William said in a devout tone. “But what does this have to do with the fact that the library may not be visited?” “You see, Brother William,” the abbot said, “to achieve the immense and holy task that enriches those walls”—and he nodded toward the bulk of the Aedificium, which could be glimpsed from the cell’s windows, towering above the abbatial church itself—“devout men have toiled for centuries, observing iron rules. The library was laid out on a plan which has remained obscure to all over the centuries, and which none of the monks is called upon to know. Only the librarian has received the secret, from the librarian who preceded him, and he communicates it, while still alive, to the assistant librarian, so that death will not take him by surprise and rob the community of that knowledge. And the secret seals the lips of both men. Only the librarian has, in addition to that knowledge, the right to move through the labyrinth of the books, he alone knows where to find them and where to replace them, he alone is responsible for their safekeeping. The other monks work in the scriptorium and may know the list of the volumes that the library houses. But a list of titles often tells very little; only the librarian knows, from the collocation of the volume, from its degree of inaccessibility, what secrets, what truths or falsehoods, the volume contains. Only he decides how, when, and whethe...