The Name of the Rose

by Umberto Eco

“William,” he was saying, “they were on the point of killing me, you know. I had to flee in the dead of night.” “Who wanted to kill you? John?” “No. John has never been fond of me, but he has never ceased to respect me.

“Then who wished you ill?” “All of them. The curia. They tried to assassinate me twice. They tried to silence me. You know what happened five years ago.

John asked me to draw up a memorial on poverty. It was a fine work, William, may God forgive my pride. . . .” “I have read it. Michael showed it to me.” “There were the hesitant, even among our own men, the Provincial of Aquitaine, the Cardinal of San Vitale, the Bishop of Kaffa. . . .” “An idiot,” William said. “Rest in peace. He was gathered to God two years ago.”

“Tell me,” William said, “tell me how you saved yourself from those dogs.” “Ah, dogs indeed, William. Rabid dogs. I found myself even in conflict with Bonagratia, you know?” “But Bonagratia is on our side!” “Now he is, after I spoke at length with him. Then he was convinced, and he protested against the Ad conditorem canonum. And the Pope imprisoned him for a year.”

And yet, three women in my life have been three celestial messengers for me. Angela of Foligno, Margaret of Città di Castello (who revealed the end of my book to me when I had written only a third of it), and finally Clare of Montefalco. It was a reward from heaven that I, yes, I, should investigate her miracles and proclaim her sainthood to the crowds, before the Church moved. And you were there, William, and you could have helped me in that holy endeavor, and you would not—” “But the holy endeavor that you invited me to share was sending Bentivenga, Jacomo, and Giovannuccio to the stake,” William said softly.

I did not like the business. Nor did I like—I shall be frank—the way you induced Bentivenga to confess his errors. You pretended you wished to enter his sect, if sect it was; you stole his secrets from him, and you had him arrested.” “But that is the way to proceed against the enemies of Christ! They were heretics, they were Pseudo Apostles, they reeked of the sulphur of Fra Dolcino!” “They were Clare’s friends.” “No, William, you must not cast even the hint of a shadow on Clare’s memory.”

Only on investigation was it clear that Bentivenga of Gubbio proclaimed himself an apostle, and he and Giovannuccio of Bevagna seduced nuns, saying that hell does not exist, that carnal desires can be satisfied without offending God, that the body of Christ (Lord, forgive me!) can be received after a man has lain with a nun, that the Magdalen found more favor in the Lord’s sight than the virgin Agnes, that what the vulgar call the Devil is God Himself, because the Devil is knowledge and God is by definition knowledge! And it was the blessed Clare, after hearing this talk, who had the vision in which God Himself told her they were wicked followers of the Spiritus Libertatis!”

“Don’t say that, William. How can you confound the moment of ecstatic love, which burns the viscera with the perfume of incense, and the disorder of the senses, which reeks of sulphur? Bentivenga urged others to touch a body’s naked limbs; he declared this was the only way to freedom from the dominion of the senses, homo nudus cum nuda iacebat, ‘naked they lay together, man and woman. . . .’”

“Lies! They were seeking pleasure, and they found it. If carnal stimulus was felt, they did not consider it a sin if, to satisfy it, man and woman lay together, and the one touched and kissed the other in every part, and naked belly was joined to naked belly!” I confess that the way Ubertino stigmatized the vice of others did not inspire virtuous thoughts in me.

“Yours is an ardent spirit, Ubertino, both in love of God and in hatred of evil. What I meant is that there is little difference between the ardor of the seraphim and the ardor of Lucifer, because they are always born from an extreme igniting of the will.”

“You mean that between desiring good and desiring evil there is a brief step, because it is always a matter of directing the will. This is true. But the difference lies in the object, and the object is clearly recognizable. God on this side, the Devil on that.”

“Perhaps I am accustomed to Oxford,” William said, “where even mystical experience was of another sort. . . .” “All in the head.” Ubertino smiled. “Or in the eyes. God perceived as light, in the rays of the sun, the images of mirrors, the diffusion of colors over the parts of ordered matter, in the reflections of daylight on wet leaves . . . Isn’t this love closer to Francis’s when he praises God in His creatures, flowers, grass, water, air? I don’t believe this type of love can produce any snare. Whereas I’m suspicious of a love that transmutes into a colloquy with the Almighty the shudders felt in fleshly contacts. . . .”

There is an immense abyss between the high ecstasy of the heart loving Christ Crucified and the base, corrupt ecstasy of the Pseudo Apostles of Montefalco. . . .” “They were not Pseudo Apostles, they were Brothers of the Free Spirit; you said as much yourself.” “What difference is there? You haven’t heard everything about that trial, I myself never dared record certain confessions, for fear of casting, if only for a moment, the shadow of the Devil on the atmosphere of sanctity Clare had created in that place. But I learned certain things, certain things, William!

The Devil is stubborn, he follows a pattern in his snares and his seductions, he repeats his rituals at a distance of millennia, he is always the same, this is precisely why he is recognized as the enemy!

Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him. . . . These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. Under torture Bentivenga may have told the most absurd lies, because it was no longer himself speaking, but his lust, the devils of his soul.”

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.”

I was suspected of heresy. You were weak also, in fighting evil. Evil, William! Will this condemnation never cease, this shadow, this mire that prevents us from arriving at the holy source?” He moved still closer to William, as if he were afraid someone might overhear. “Here, too, even among these walls consecrated to prayer, you know?” “I know. The abbot has spoken to me; in fact, he asked me to help him shed light on it.” “Then observe, investigate, look with a lynx’s eye in both directions: lust and pride. . . .”

There was something . . . feminine, and therefore diabolical, about that young man who is dead. He had the eyes of a maiden seeking commerce with an incubus. But I said ‘pride’ also, the pride of the intellect, in this monastery consecrated to the pride of the word, to the illusion of wisdom.” “If you know something, help me.” “I know nothing. There is nothing that I know. But the heart senses certain things.

“Tell me of yourself instead,” he said, turning again to William. “What have you done since then? It has been—” “Eighteen years. I went back to my country. I resumed studying at Oxford. I studied nature.” “Nature is good because she is the daughter of God,” Ubertino said.

But now that you are with us you can be of great help in a few days, when Michael also arrives. It will be a harsh conflict with Berengar Talloni. I really believe we will have some amusement.”

Ubertino looked at him with a tentative smile. “I can never tell when you Englishmen are speaking seriously.

At stake is the survival of the order, which is your order; and in my heart it is mine, too. But I shall implo...

O Lord, into what hands has Thy church fallen!” He turned his head toward the altar. “Transformed into harlot, weakened by luxury, she roils in lust like a snake in heat! From the naked purity of the stable of Bethlehem, made of wood as the lignum vitae of the cross was wood, to the...

The days of the Antichrist are finally at hand, and I am afraid, William!” He looked around, staring wide-eyed among the dark naves, as if the Antichrist were going to appear any moment, and I actually expected to glimpse him. “His lieutenants are already here, dispatched as Christ dispatched the apostles into the world!...

“They have already come, Ubertino,” William said, indicating his Franciscan habit. “But they have not yet triumphed; this is the moment when the Antichrist, filled with rage, will command the killing of Enoch and Elijah and the exposure of their bodies for all to see and thus be afraid of imitating them. Just as they wanted to kill me. . . .”

Now, with the distance of time, knowing what I know—namely, that two years later he would be mysteriously killed in a German city by a murderer never discovered—I am all the more terrified, because obviously that evening Ubertino was prophesying.

“The abbot Joachim spoke the truth, you know. We have reached the sixth era of human history, when two Antichrists will appear, the mystic Antichrist and the Antichrist proper. This is happening now, in the sixth era, after Francis appeared to receive in his own flesh the five wounds of Jesus Crucified.

“And so be it, Ubertino,” William said. “Meanwhile, I am here to prevent the human Emperor from being deposed. Your Angelic Pope was also preached by Fra Dolcino. . . .” “Never utter again the name of that serpent!” Ubertino cried, and for the first time I saw his sorrow turn into rage.

Messenger of the Antichrist if ever there was one! But you, William, speak like this because you do not really believe in the advent of the Antichrist, and your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!” “You are mistaken, Ubertino,” William answered very seriously. “You know that among my masters I venerate Roger Bacon more than any other. . . .”

“Who spoke clearly and calmly of the Antichrist, and was aware of the import of the corruption of the world and the decline of learning. He taught, however, that there is only one way to prepare against his coming: study the secrets of nature, use knowledge to better the human race.

“Your Bacon’s Antichrist was a pretext for cultivating intellectual pride.” “A holy pretext.” “Nothing pretextual is holy. William, you know I love you. You know I have great faith in you. Mortify your intelligence, learn to weep over the wounds of the Lord, throw away your books.” “I will devote myself only to yours.” William smiled. Ubertino also smiled and waved a threatening finger at him. “Foolish Englishman. Do not laugh too much at your fellows. Those whom you cannot love you should, rather, fear. And be on your guard here at the abbey. I do not like this place.”

“I tell you it is not good, and you reply that you want to know it better. Ah!” Ubertino said, shaking his head. “By the way,” William said, already halfway down the nave, “who is that monk who looks like an animal and speaks the language of Babel?” “Salvatore?” Ubertino, who had already knelt down, turned. “I believe he was a gift of mine to this abbey . . . along with the cellarer.

I exerted myself in their favor, procuring permission for them to follow my example. And two, Salvatore and Remigio, I found here when I arrived last year. Salvatore . . . he does indeed look like an animal. But he is obliging.” William hesitated a moment. “I heard him say Penitenziagite.” Ubertino was silent. He waved one hand, as if to drive off a bothersome thought. “No, I don’t believe so.

Salvatore: he is a greedy animal and lustful. But nothing, nothing against orthodoxy.

No, the sickness of the abbey is something else: seek it among those who know too much, not in those who know nothing. Don’t build a castle of suspicions on one word.” “I would never do that,” William answered. “I gave up being an inquisitor precisely to avoid doing that. But I like also to listen to words, and then I think about them.” “You think too much. Boy,” he said, addressing me, “don’t learn too many bad examples from your master. The only thing that must be pondered—and I realize this at the end of my life—is death.

William has a very erudite conversation with Severinus the herbalist. We walked back down the central nave and left. I was still troubled by the conversation with Ubertino. “That man is . . . odd,” I said. “He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal. Ubertino could have become one of the heretics he helped burn, or a cardinal of the holy Roman church. He came very close to both perversions.

In which there is a visit to the scriptorium, and a meeting with many scholars, copyists, and rubricators, as well as an old blind man who is expecting the Antichrist. As we climbed up I saw my master observing the windows that gave light to the stairway. I was probably becoming as clever as he, because I immediately noticed that their position would make it difficult for a person to reach them. On the other hand, the windows of the refectory (the only ones on the ground floor that overlooked the cliff face) did not seem easily reached, either, since below them there was no furniture of any kind.

The abundance of windows meant that the great room was cheered by a constant diffused light, even on a winter afternoon. The panes were not colored like church windows, and the lead-framed squares of clear glass allowed the light to enter in the purest possible fashion, not modulated by human art, and to illuminate the work of reading and writing.

For three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite color.

Severinus explained to us that monks working in the scriptorium were exempted from the offices of terce, sext, and nones so they would not have to leave their work during the hours of daylight, and they stopped their activity only at sunset, for vespers.

And it was while all were still laughing that we heard, at our backs, a solemn and stern voice. “Verba vana aut risui apta non loqui.” We turned. The speaker was a monk bent under the weight of his years, an old man white as snow, not only his skin, but also his face and his pupils. I saw he was blind. The voice was still majestic and the limbs powerful, even if the body was withered by age. He stared at us as if he could see us, and always thereafter I saw him move and speak as if he still possessed the gift of sight. But the tone of his voice was that of one possessing only the gift of prophecy.

Then, turning to the old man, he said, “The man standing before you is Brother William of Baskerville, our guest.” “I hope my words did not anger you,” the old man said in a curt tone. “I heard persons laughing at laughable things and I reminded them of one of the principles of our Rule. And as the psalmist says, if the monk must refrain from good speech because of his vow of silence, all the more reason why he should avoid bad speech. And as there is bad speech there are also bad images. And they are those that lie about the form of creation and show the world as the opposite of what it should be, has always been, and always will be throughout the centuries until the end of time. But you come from another order, where I am told that merriment, even the most inopportune sort, is viewed with indulgence.”

“Ah, yes,” the old man said mockingly, but without smiling, “any image is good for inspiring virtue, provided the masterpiece of creation, turned with his head down, becomes the subject of laughter.And so the word of God is illustrated by the ass playing a lyre, the owl plowing with a shield, oxen yoking themselves to the plow, rivers flowing upstream, the sea catching fire, the wolf turning hermit! Go hunting for hares with oxen, have owls teach you grammar, have dogs bite fleas, the one-eyed guard the dumb, and the dumb ask for bread, the ant give birth to a calf, roast chickens fly, cakes grow on rooftops, parrots hold rhetoric lessons, hens fertilize cocks, make the cart go before the oxen, the dog sleep in a bed, and all walk with their heads on the ground! What is the aim of this nonsense?

“Our Lord did not have to employ such foolish things to point out the strait and narrow path to us. Nothing in his parables arouses laughter, or fear. Adelmo, on the contrary, whose death you now mourn, took such pleasure in the monsters he painted that he lost sight of the ultimate things which they were to illustrate. And he followed all, I say all”—his voice became solemn and ominous—“the paths of monstrosity. Which God knows how to punish.” A heavy silence fell. Venantius of Salvemec dared break it. “Venerable Jorge,” he said, “your virtue makes you unjust. Two days before Adelmo died, you were present at a learned debate right here in the scriptorium. Adelmo took care that his art, indulging in bizarre and fantastic images, was directed nevertheless to the glory of God, as an instrument of the knowledge of celestial things. Brother

And Adelmo that day quoted another lofty authority, the doctor of Aquino, when he said that divine things should be expounded more properly in figures of vile bodies than of noble bodies. First because the human spirit is more easily freed from error; it is obvious, in fact, that certain properties cannot be attributed to divine things, and become uncertain if portrayed by noble corporeal things. In the second place because this humbler depiction is more suited to the knowledge that we have of God on this earth: He shows Himself here more in that which is not than in that which is, and therefore the similitudes of those things furthest from God lead us to a more exact notion of Him, for thus we know that He is above what we say and think. And in the third place because in this way the things of God are better hidden from unworthy persons.

But often the treasures of learning must be defended, not against the simple but, rather, against other learned men.

The life of learning is difficult, and it is difficult to distinguish good from evil. And often the learned men of our time are only dwarfs on the shoulders of dwarfs.”

“Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

In which the labyrinth is finally broached, and the intruders have strange visions and, as happens in labyrinths, lose their way.

“I looked for you immediately after compline. Berengar was not in choir.” “What are you telling me?” William said, with a cheerful expression. In fact, it was now clear to him who had been in ambush in the scriptorium. “He was not in choir at compline,” the abbot repeated, “and has not come back to his cell. Matins are about to ring, and we will now see if he reappears. Otherwise I fear some new calamity.” At matins Berengar was absent.