On Umberto Eco's novel 'The Name of the Rose'

Reading 'The Name of the Rose':

History, Humour, Heresy and other things

By Vikram Grewal

When Umberto Eco says ‘books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told’, he in a way delineates the nexus between the historical novel and historiography. History and fiction wrapped together seem inseparable once diluted. The question of what is history and what has been weaved into the historical setting courtesy the author’s imagination exists as a conundrum for the reader. Eco expresses the existence and influence of any work through two perspectives (very simply: the reader’s and the writer’s). He refers to the ‘echo of intertextuality’ by pointing out that the writer while interrogating the text on which he is working finds out that the text reveals ‘natural laws of its own’ but along with the ‘recollection of the culture with which it is loaded.’ When a book is finished, ‘a dialogue is established between the text and its readers’ and while a book is in progress- ‘the dialogue is in between that text and all other previously written texts’. No wonder his magnum opus, explicitly labelled as a palimpsest, is an Italian version of the French version of a Latin edition of Adso of Melk’s manuscript.

The Name of the Rose is a detective story, although that is just its format; it is a first rate murder mystery but that is just its content; it is medieval but that is just the setting. It is a landmark work in the field of semiotics- the study of meaning-making. Full of symbols and hidden references, it has been described as a machine for generating interpretations in many reviews that followed its popular release. William of Baskerville exudes the air of Sherlock Holmes (The Hound of the Baskervilles) and has uncanny resemblance with respect to William of Occam, the English Franciscan friar. He is presented as a follower of another English Franciscan Roger Bacon. The character of the blind librarian Jorge of Burgos has been inspired from the Argentine short story writer Jorges Luis Borges- a great influence on Eco. Borges conceives of the universe as a library in his short story The Library of Babel- vestiges of which are visible in the Abbey’s library (in the form of a labyrinth).

The murder mystery perfectly blends in the historical context in which the novel has been set. Adso mentions the ‘year of the lord’ 1327 in the prologue. The very immediate context is the medieval conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. The papacy had been moved to Avignon in 1305. In 1314, two claimants to the throne emerged post a disputed imperial election one of them being Louis of Bavaria, also known as Louis IV. The struggle between the two rivals continued till 1316- when John XXII was elected as the pope. Adso describes him in poor light. John, whose intention was to restore the papal authority in Italy, escalated the animosity further by siding with Louis’s rival. He declared Louis excommunicated. In response to this Louis invaded Italy and set up his own anti-pope. The advancing of the armies of Louis IV (Adso’s father being among the imperial supporters) towards Rome forms the close back-drop of the story. What is out of the scope of the central theme is the entry of Louis in Rome in 1328, however Adso mentions it in brief.  The year of death of Brother William (d. 1347) - due to bubonic plague- is also given.

The Emperor found unlikely allies in the so-called Spiritual Franciscans, or Fraticelli (“little brothers”), a group within the Franciscan order ‘calling for a return to the radical character of St. Francis’s original ideal of poverty, which forbade not only individual friars but also the community as a whole to own anything. Most of the spiritual groups which were labelled heretical taught that radical poverty was the essence of Christian life. Groups like the Franciscans, Waldensians and the Psuedo Apostles condemned the pope and the bishops, none of whom pretended to practise radical poverty. The more extreme wings of the movement struggled to repudiate all ecclesiastical hierarchy as a ‘perversion of the Gospel.’ Though it seems problematic; due to this open dichotomy- the Papacy-Emperor conflict took the form of a conflict between two ideologies- that of the impoverished and that of the affluent.

In the novel the only descriptions of John XXII come from his enemies, who portray him as a kind of monster. Ubertino tells Adso: the church ‘has been transformed into harlot, weakened by luxury, she roils in lust like a snake in heat!’ It is argued that Louis IV himself didn’t relate to the practice of poverty. However, by vouching for the cause of the Fraticelli, he armed himself against the papacy since he could then openly attack the dignity and question the legitimacy of John XXII. The central point of theological dispute became whether Jesus and the Apostles had owned anything, either individually or in common.

The Rule of St Benedict is at the heart of the storytelling. That is evident as the manuscript is divided into days and each day into periods corresponding to the liturgical hours of the routine of the Benedictine monks. However, this Rule has been criticized in quite a few contexts. Franciscans were ‘opposed to the rule that the order had established’ as they thought the order had by then assumed ‘the character of those ecclesiastical institutions it had come into the world to reform’. Thus they rediscovered a book written by a Cistercian monk named Joachim who claimed the advent of a new age in which the spirit of the Christ and the Apostles- for long corrupted by the Church- would be revived. They considered him to be talking of the Franciscan order.

William of Baskerville has been presented as a Renaissance man. He talks about personalized religion and logical scientific ways of deduction. During the debate with the legation, he talks of a model which seems like a rudimentary form of democracy. He is a detective rather than a philosopher which is significant, because all he does is ‘unmask relatively superficial mysteries, not the inner meaning of the universe.’ The book grapples with the transition taking place in religion at the individual level during the renaissance. William investigates the case of the deaths in the abbey through a pattern- which followed the ‘Seven Trumpets’ from the Book of Revelation, however, after solving it in the end he says there in fact was no pattern. This seems to be a subtle example of the progressive mind which disproves the set of established superstition. Features of the renaissance are apparent: ‘the rising secular state which clips the Church of its power to enforce its teachings; movements which are revolutionary in both religious and a political sense; the scientific method; a kind of nihilistic despair about ultimate truth; the draining of the religious spirit out of institutions and its survival as purely inward and subjective states of the soul; and sexual liberation (Adso does not repent his brief affair with a woman, and in old age he confesses to homosexual impulses)’.       

Scientific method has been stressed upon. Roger Bacon, the thirteenth-century English Franciscan has been described as an early proponent of the ‘potential blessings’ of science and technology. Brother William’s lenses also- seem to be symbolic of his different perspective which is progressive and in a way avant-garde (‘ahead of its time’). His sceptical, practical, empirical English temper acts as an ‘antidote to all forms of fanaticism’. His perception of women is also unique.

The representation of the female as a diabolical force that disrupts the hearts and minds of monks following the Rule is apparent. The story encompasses only one female character- that too unknown and living under subhuman conditions. Feminine characteristics are condemned by the monks in the abbey. This is seen when Ubertino describes Adelmo to William and Adso: ‘There was something feminine...something diabolical in the dead man. He had eyes like that of a girl...seeking intercourse with the devil.’ Though he prays to the Virgin Mary and talks of three other nuns who contributed to the cause of the order with great sacrifices- ‘when the female, by nature, so perverse becomes sublime by holiness then she can be the noblest vehicle of grace’- he refuses to view them through a rational let alone egalitarian perspective. Carnal desire being a sin and women being perverse individuals are reiterated throughout (‘Woman takes possession of a man’s precious soul’). Salvatore is put to trial by Bernard Gui, the inquisitor, who also accuses the unknown peasant girl of practicing black magic. 

The abbey’s Library is a testimony of the semiotics master Eco is. In the context of post-modern literary theory it is a significant metaphor. Eco has created a vast and intricate ‘library dystopia’ by casting a librarian as the arch-villain and the use of a library book as the villain’s principal murder weapon. There survives no copy of Aristotle’s book Poetics which is being referred to. The library is the representative of the Church’s claim to be the ‘depository of truth’. Yet the library is sterile — ‘genuine seekers of truth are hampered in their use of it, and much of the monks’ energy goes into the mechanical processes of copying what past sages have written’.

Theresa Colletti in her extremely popular review of the book identifies "three major narrative threads" in The Name of the Rose: the story of Adso of Melk, who is both the teller of the tale and a Benedictine novice; the debate about heresy and the Franciscans; and the murder mystery, which involves the monastery library, the problem of laughter, and the search for the unknown book. Thus it is imperative to discuss two themes that are central to the interpretation of the text: the medieval or perhaps the Benedictine notion of humour and heresy.

The two informal debates which mustn’t be disparaged to being mere arguments as depicted in the book include the exchange of words that William and Jorge have in the scriptorium. These ‘arguments’ were based on ‘humour’ and whether it must be embraced by the community of the monks or not. Brother William emphasises the importance of humour in literary expression and the Greek translator Venantius supports him by calling laughter ‘a vehicle of truth’. Even Adelmo’s work is full of humorous metaphors and frivolous illustrations- which upset the librarian. Jorge the librarian is of the view that a monk shouldn’t speak until he’s questioned and should never laugh; also that laughter is devilish and that Christ never laughed. He says that laughter is an emotion that degenerates a person down to the rung of animals (‘monkeys laugh…humans don’t’). Further in the argument Jorge declares, ‘In much wisdom is much grief...and he that increaseth his knowledge...increaseth his sorrow also.’ This exposes the rigidity of the order and William’s argument represents the sense of reform that we relate with the renaissance. Later he explains Adso that laughter kills fear and without fear there cannot be faith. Because without fear of the devil, there is no more need of God. . ‘Humour is based on the inversion of norms, on shock, exaggeration, incongruity, ridicule. Laughter stands things on their heads, turns the world topsy-turvy to show its other side. Laughter gives perspective- a Renaissance innovation in visual art not employed by medieval painters. Those essentially medieval types, the fanatic and the heretic, do not laugh; nor do they have any perspective on themselves or the world…Laughter is the rational man's enantiodromia, by which he converts discomfort to relief.’ However, the argument on the ‘licitness’ of laughter (as Weaver puts it) remains an unresolved issue.

Heresy comes from the word ‘haeresis’ from the Latin transliteration of the Greek word meaning ‘choosing’ or ‘choice’. Thus in simple words, the people who ‘chose’ to believe in thoughts and ideologies that were different from what the Roman Catholic Church practiced and propagated were deemed as ‘heretics’. In the book, the word ‘heretic’ induces a sense of terror- heresy was considered the gravest of all crimes during the period under consideration. There have been instances of heresy in the first millennium CE. In the thirteenth-fourteenth century period we see a sudden emergence and rise in the number of Christian sects considered ‘heretical’ by the church. Many of these have been mentioned: ‘Catharists, Waldensians, the poor of Lyons, the Umiliati, Beghards, Joachimites, Patarines, Psuedo Apostles, Poor Lombards, Arnoldists, Williamites, Followers of the Free Spirit and Luciferines.’ Various measures were taken by the Church to tackle and suppress such groups- one of the most prominent being the Inquisition.

The Church instituted the Inquisition, an official body ‘charged with the suppression of heresy’. Its aim was to combat religious sectarianism and put down everything considered anathema by the Church. The Name of the Rose opens with the gloomy ambience of the abbey which is waiting for the legation from Rome accompanied by the Inquisition headed by William’s old foe Bernard Gui. In the book, the Inquisition is depicted as an elitist oppressive judicial system with fanatic officials who give in to superstition over logical reasoning and pass eerie judgements (Gui’s conviction of the innocent Remigio the Cellarer, Salvatore the Hunchback and the peasant girl illustrates this). The Inquisition was active across Europe, particularly where it had fervent support from the civil authority. The ‘Spanish Inquisition was particularly brutal in its methods’, which included the burning at the stake of many heretics. This method is also applied on the three victims or perhaps scapegoats of the Inquisition under Gui whose primary goal was to reaffirm the superiority of the Church over all.

The most radical of these sects were the Dolcinites which were especially strong in Italy. There are numerous references of them, Fra Dolcino and their movements which combined, ‘in varying proportions, the ideal of radical poverty, varieties of mysticism, rejection of ecclesiastical authority, and sometimes violence against the existing social order.’ ‘The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.’ These movements were often suppressed ferociously. Michael of Cesena, the Franciscan general has also been given much attention.

The ‘apocalypticist’ philosophy of the late twelfth-century Italian Cistercian abbot Joachim of Flora takes centre stage in the turn of events. According to Joachim, ‘there will be three ages of history, corresponding to the persons of the Trinity. The age of the Son, which he thought was about to end, was essentially the age of the Incarnation, with its corollary of a visible and hierarchical Church. In the dawning age of the Holy Spirit, however, all things material and structural would pass away, and Christians would be guided by direct interior illumination.’ Mystical prophecy would replace hierarchical authority. Another medieval philosophy which has been awarded prime importance is William of Occam’s Nominalism, ‘which contended that the mind cannot know the real essence of things but only their appearances.’ There is a theory that the book takes its title from this philosophy as at the end is a Latin quote which might be by Occam himself: “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus” — Simply, all we really have are names and appearances, and they should be enough.
The most apparent perspective clearly reflected in Eco’s writings, and on which he comments in the Post-Script, is the postmodernist thought. He believes that postmodernism is not a chronologically defined trend but a way of operating. ‘We could say that every period has its own postmodernism, just as every period would have its own mannerism.’ He is of the opinion that ‘storytelling means thinking with your fingers,’ and stresses on the intertextuality in historical context which is illustrated beautifully in William’s message to Adso in which he tells him to aim for ‘preservation of knowledge’ and not search for it ‘because there is no progress in the history of knowledge but merely a continuous and sublime recapitulation’. 

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Bibliography

The Name of the Rose written by Umberto Eco, translated by William Weaver, 1984 Vintage, 2014

The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Text written by Umberto Eco, Indiana University Press, 1984.

The Name, the Thing, the Mystery written by Verlyn Flieger, The Georgia Review. Vol. 38. No.1 (Spring 1984)

War of the Rose: the Historical Context of ‘The Name of the Rose’ written by James Hitchcock, Crisis Magazine, 1987.

Missing Eco: On reading “The Name of the Rose” as Library Criticism. Written by Jeffrey Garrett.  The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. Vol. 61. No.4 (Oct, 1991).

Naming the Rose: Eco, Medieval Signs, and Modern Theory. Written by Theresa Coletti, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. xi.