The Name of the Rose
Second Day: Compline (pp. 160-68)


The preceding study page is Second Day: After Vespers (pp. 156-59).

"Mane, Tekel, Peres" (p. 163): [Joe Motta comments] When William uses a lamp to heat the manuscript page on which Venantius’s coded message was written, Adso describes the letters appearing “[s]lowly, as if an invisible hand were writing ‘Mane, Tekel, Peres’.” These three words are an allusion to Daniel 5:24-28. According to the Biblical story, Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, held a great feast during which he made use of sacred gold and silver vessels plundered from the temple of Jerusalem. In the course of the festivities, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on a palace wall the words “Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin (or “Peres”, the Biblical text is inconsistent). After his court diviners and sorcerers are unable to decipher the message, Belshazzar summons Daniel, who interprets the words as follows:

Mene- God has numbered the days of your kingdom;

Tekel- you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting;

Peres- your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

Daniel’s interpretation can be applied to the events occurring at the monastery. The days of the monastery have been explicitly numbered in the text (the events of the novel occur over the course of seven days, at the end of which the abbey is destroyed). The conduct of the monks is found wanting—they engage in murder, sodomy, suicide, and other unchristian acts. The Catholic community is divided among those who affirm the poverty of Christ, represented by Michael of Cesena and his delegation, and those who defend the Church’s right to own property, represented by Bernard Gui and the papal legation.

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Topics:

Malachi emerging from the darkness to reach his choir stall (p. 160): This is as it was the previous day at compline (p. 97). Arriving late for divine office is an infraction of the Benedictine Rule, chapter 43, "Of Those who are Tardy in Coming to God's Work or to Table."

"mysterious signs" (p. 165) [Eric Bakos comments] Eco leaves his reader an entertaining puzzle with a number of possible solutions and intertextualities in The Name of the Rose when William and Adso discover a slip of paper with what William surmises is Venantius' key to finis Africae. Like Poe and Doyle in their respective works "The Gold Bug" and "The Adventure of the Dancing Men," Eco leaves enough information scattered throughout the text for the astute reader to decipher the code. The reader can also infer a reverse intertextuality with Carl Sagan's novel Contact as scientists from a variety of fields try to decrypt a signal from space while religious zealots protest.

William observes "Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages" and "The best treatises on cryptography are the work of infidel scholars" (Eco 165). Sherlock Holmes' remark in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" reveals an intertextuality or, at least, a referent. Says Holmes: "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing and am myself the author of a trifling monograph on the subject…" (Doyle 720). Poe provides a better lesson in code breaking in "The Gold Bug" but the shallowness of treatment by Eco suggests Eco had Doyle in mind even though both Poe and Eco use heat sensitive ink.

[Michelle Rankins comments] According to, The King of the 'Secret Readers'": Edgar Poe, Cryptography, and the Origins of the Detective Story ( pgs. 375-395) by Shawn Rosenheim, the analytical skills of the detective are similar to those skills of a cryptographer as they both utilize codes and signs to solve mysteries of various kinds. In Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville, discusses codes and signs, which is very similar to cryptographic codes discussed in the Rosenheim article. (pgs. 164-6). Umberto Eco's use of Adso's manuscript itself may be linked to Poe as he uses 'books' as a code, such as the rare book in The Murders at the Rue Morgue, in which Auguste Dupin and our narrator's first meeting took place.

Unfortunately for William, Adso holds the last rung of the storming ladder, gleaned from one of Salvatore's incoherent rants and hands it to William only by accident. As William and Adso are ready to quit the monastery, Adso quips "Tertius equi" (Eco 457). William recognizes the value of Adso's comment and uses it to enter finis Africae.

Symbols as Ciphers

However, the code breaking process is far less important than the symbolism surrounding it. Codes are broken in most detective novels and the reader likely assumes the code will be broken by William, especially if the reader notices Eco's foreshadowing of the event in the marginalia of Adelmo of Otranto. Adso describes "foxes, and martens armed with crossbows who were scaling the walls of a towered city defended by monkeys" (Eco 77)

.

The fox represents William with his wit and acumen and the marten (ferret) represents Adso and his sharp eyes and agility (Andrews 271, 320). The crossbows represent technology and William's astrolabe comes first to the reader's mind, but they also represent the power of science. Just as the crossbow can crack the heaviest armor, so Bacon's science cracks superstition enabling William and Adso to storm the library as the monk(ey)s' defenses fail. In effect, the Cross bows before the crossbows.

On the Margins

Since the fox and the marten are "satanic" animals, this being reinforced by Eco placing them in the marginalia, the reader is forced to consider the villainous role William and Adso play in the destruction of the library.

In one of the opening scenes of The Name of the Rose, the Abbot asks William, "'Are you telling me then,' the abbot said in a worried tone, 'that in many trials the Devil does not act only within the guilty one but perhaps and above all in the judges?'" (Eco 31) Further, in "Desperately Seeking Satan" Walter Stephens quotes Henry More in a letter written in 1700. "[M]ethinks the divine Providence does plainly outwit the Powers of the dark Kingdom, permitting wicked Men and Women, and Vagrant Spirits of that Kingdom to make Leagues or Covenants one with another, the Confession of Witches against their own Lives being sow palpable an Evidence, besides the miraculous Feats they play, that there are bad Spirits, which will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly that there is a God (Stephens 104).

Satan's will or Satan's Will?

The possibility that William and Adso are pawns of evil rather than agents of reason makes some sense if the reader is open to the possibility that God reveals himself through the action of evil. While Eco may simply be playing with Poe's concept of doubling typified in "The Purloined Letter," he may also be planting doubt in the reader regarding who really wanted the library destroyed.

Consider the possibility that Satan hates the library because it is the finest in Christendom. William and Adso are then doing the Devil's work in their violation of finis Africae and their subsequent participation in precipitating the destruction of the library. Or, perhaps the library is destroyed to punish the monks for their multitude of sins including (but not limited to): Pride (the books), Greed (the Reliquary), Sloth (the Servants), Gluttony (knowledge and food), Avarice (ever one more book), Vanity (the Abbot's ring), Lust (for knowledge and flesh) and Wrath (the poisoned text).

Possibilities are endless and even the aged Adso admits "And it is a hard thing for this old monk, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or none at all" (Eco 501).

Enigmas

While William and Adso's culpability in the destruction of the library is unquestionable, the underlying reason for the fire (divine, diabolical or mortal) is left to the reader.

Pablo Neruda left a wise comment on such dilemmas in his poem "The Enigmas."

"I lived like you probing the interminable star and in my net, at night, I awakened naked the only catch, a fish trapped in the wind."

Exit Music

"Runaround" by Blues Traveler from four, A&M Records 1994 Works Cited

Andrews, Ted. Animal-Speak. St.Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 1995.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II.

New York: Bantam Books, 1986.

Eco, Umberto. Trans.William Weaver. The Name of the Rose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace

& Co, 1994

.

Haft, Edele J., Jane G. White and Robert J. White. The Key to "The Name of the Rose."

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Mahokey, Colonel James, USAF. Interview with the author. 6 October, 2000.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Sagan, Carl. Contact. Thorndike, Maine: Thorndike Press, 1985.

The next study page is Second Day: Night (pp. 169-78)