The Name of the Rose
Second Day: Prime (pp. 142-55)
The preceding study page is Second Day: Sext (pp. 138-41).
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Topics:
Abbot Abo's love of treasures (pp. 142-45): Abbot Abo is
a composite character. In part his behavior is based on the
portrait of the ideal abbot in the Benedictine Rule; this
is apparent especially in
First Day: Terce (especially pp. 29-38).
In part his character is based on that of Abbot Suger of
St. Denis, who cultivated an interest in Gothic architecture
and in the collection of art objects and relics for the
Church. The most important medieval document about this is
Suger's De regus administratione sua gestis, in
Patrologia Latina 186:1211-39. The most important
study is Edwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church
of St. Genis and its Art Treasures (Princeton University
Press, 1946). Also useful is Elizabeth G. Holt,
A Documentary History of Art, 2 vols. (New York,
1957), 1:22-48, and Eco's own comments about Abbot
Suger in his Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
(translation 1986), pp. 12-14. There, Eco writes, "For the Abbot
of St. Denis, the House of God should be a repository of
everything beautiful. King Soloman was his model, and his guiding
rule dilectio decoris domus Dei. The Treasury at
St. Denis was crammed with jewellery and objects d'art
which Suger described with loving exactitude" (p. 13).
Treasures in the temple of Solomon (p. 143): The
most obvious meaning is that Abbo Abo adopts King Solomon's
building and decorating of the Temple in Jerusalem as his
model for collecting and maintaining treasures in the
Benedictine abbey. Secondly, King Solomon was Abbot
Suger's model for building and decorating great churches
in the Ile de France.
He took it in his hand with infinite love, gazed at
it, his face radiant with bliss. (pg.
144)
[Michelle Rankins comments]
In the
Nones chapter, of The Name of the Rose, the
reader is transported (along with the abbot) into a
sea of lustful thinking in regards to the many regal
artifacts which drip from the edifices of the
church.
The abbot himself says that he can be
"…transported from this lower world to that higher
world by anagoge….", all while gazing longingly at the
jewels within the church walls.
,br>Eco's language
is so powerful, bold, yet sickening that if the reader
were unaware of the setting of the story, one could
easily assume this type of almost orgasmic behavior by
the abbot is caused by the arousal of another human
being--not by a cross with pearl inlay within a
church. (pg. 144)
"We pursue a manuscript": (p. 154): William correctly
defines the nature of the mystery, which at first had seemed
to turn on "something unhealthy . . . going on among his [Abbot Abo's]
young monks." Intertextually, the concealed manuscript
takes its place alongside Edgar Allan Poe's purloined letter, and the
hidden photograph in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in
Bohemia." William finally does come across the manuscript
that he is seeking, but he fails to recognize it, because
it is incorporated into an Arabic codex which he does not
examine (p. 362).
The next study page is
Second Day: After Vespers (pp. 156-59)