The Name of the Rose

by Umberto Eco

Having had until then (and since then, God be thanked) little intimacy with creatures of that sex, I cannot say what her age may have been.

She wore a threadbare little dress of rough cloth that opened in a fairly immodest fashion over her bosom, and around her neck was a necklace made of little colored stones, very commonplace, I believe. But her head rose proudly on a neck as white as an ivory tower, her eyes were clear as the pools of Heshbon, her nose was as the tower of Lebanon, her hair like purple. Yes, her tresses seemed to me like a flock of goats, her teeth like flocks of sheep coming up from their bath, all in pairs, so that none preceded its companion.

Now, after years and years, while I still bitterly bemoan my error, I cannot forget how that evening I had felt great pleasure, and I would be doing a wrong to the Almighty, who created all things in goodness and beauty, if I did not admit that also between those two sinners something happened that in itself, naturaliter, was good and beautiful. But perhaps it is my present old age, which makes me feel, culpably, how beautiful and good all my youth was. Just when I should turn my thoughts to death, which is approaching. Then, a young man, I did not think of death, but, hotly and sincerely, I wept for my sin.

And of woman as source of temptation the Scriptures have already said enough. Ecclesiastes says of woman that her conversation is like burning fire, and the Proverbs say that she takes possession of man’s precious soul and the strongest men are ruined by her. And Ecclesiastes further says: ‘And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands.’ And others have said she is the vessel of the Devil. Nevertheless, dear Adso, I cannot convince myself that God chose to introduce such a foul being into creation without also endowing it with some virtues.

But my rational soul that morning was dazed by weariness, which kept in check the irascible appetite, addressed to good and evil as terms of conquest, but not the concupiscent appetite, addressed to good and evil as known entities.

In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

alone with William, exempted from the obligations of the Rule, they were free to eat and at the same time exchange their impressions. After all, it was, God forgive me the unpleasant simile, like a council of war, to be held as quickly as possible before the enemy host, namely the Avignon legation, could arrive.

When John had condemned all Spirituals as heretics, Michael had not hesitated to hand over to him five of the most unruly friars of Provence, allowing the Pontiff to burn them at the stake.

Two years before the day I saw him he had yet enjoined his monks, in the chapter general of Lyons, to speak of the Pope’s person only with moderation and respect (and this was just a few months after the Pope, referring to the Minorites, had complained of “their yelping, their errors, their insanities”).

“One thing you must learn,” William said to him, “is never to trust his oaths, which he always maintains to the letter, violating their substance.”

“For that matter, the death of Clement the Fifth itself was never very clear. The King had never forgiven him for having promised to try Boniface the Eighth posthumously and then doing everything he could to avoid repudiating his predecessor. Nobody really knows how Clement died, at Carpentras.

when the cardinals met in Carpentras for the conclave, the new Pope didn’t materialize, because (quite rightly) the argument shifted to the choice between Avignon and Rome. I don’t know exactly what happened at that time—it was a massacre, I’m told—with the cardinals threatened by the nephew of the dead Pope, their servants slaughtered, the palace set afire, the cardinals appealing to the King, who says he never wanted the Pope to desert Rome and they should be patient and make a good choice. . . .

“Anyway, another king succeeds, survives eighteen months, and dies. His newborn heir also dies in a few days’ time, and the regent, the King’s brother, assumes the throne. . . .”

“And this is Philip the Fifth. The very one who, when he was still Count of Poitiers, stopped the cardinals who were fleeing from Carpentras,” Michael said.

“He puts them again into conclave in Lyons, in the Dominicans’ convent, swearing he will defend their safety and not keep them prisoner. But once they place themselves in his power, he does not just have them locked up (which is the custom, after all), but every day reduces their food until they come to a decision. And each one promises to support his claim to the throne. When he does assume the throne, the cardinals are so weary of being prisoners after two years, and so afraid of staying there for the rest of their lives, e...

When Bishop of Avignon, he gave all the right advice (right, that is, for the outcome of that squalid venture) to Philip the Fair about how to ruin the Templars.

My master was truly very sharp. How could he foresee that Michael himself would later decide to support the theologians of the empire and to support the people in condemning the Pope?

in four years’ time, when John was first to pronounce his incredible doctrine, there would be an uprising on the part of all Christianity?

If the beatific vision was thus postponed, how could the dead intercede for the living? And what would become of the cult of the saints? It was the Minorites themselves who would open hostilities in condemning the Pope, and William of Occam would be in the front rank, stern and implacable in his arguments. The con...

“We confess and believe that the souls separated from the body and completely purified are in heaven, in paradise with the angels, and with Jesus Christ, and that they see God in His divine essence, clearly, face to face . . .” and then, after a pause—it was never known whether this was due to his difficulty in breathing or to his perverse desire to underline the last clause as adversative—“to the extent to which the state and condition of the separated soul allows it.”

“Therefore you don’t have a single answer to your questions?” “Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.” “In Paris do they always have the true answer?” “Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors.”