In occult numerology, the number is assigned to have many different qualities. In Barbara J. Bishop's The Universal Vibrations of Numbers, the main attributes of the astrological Number seven include: gaining facts about the unknown, unseen, or unproven; delving into the mysteries of life by observing, and analyzing. It is the number of the solitary individual who reads and studies, who is always thinking, exploring, and inventing; an individual fascinated by metaphysical and spiritual matters. An educated individual who brings the wonders of life out of the background and shares with the world, his knowledge. All these astrological qualities seem to coincide with life at the abbey, but the comparison between the biblical seven and the occult seven fuse at a deeper level, drawing from one origin (p. 567) In the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the number seven occupies the supreme place Babylonian religion and astrology. The Babylonians recognized seven planets: Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon. Each day of their 7-day "week" was sacred to one of these celestial bodies. The four phases of the moon were comprised in a period of seven of 4 + 7 days.
The number seven processes mystical attributes, and in Eco's story the idea
of the Holy Number also reveals the occult element which presents itself
throughout the story. And in relation to the holy numbers, the similarities
between the Biblical and pagan modes of numerological studies share one
origin. Thus the daemonic element is illuminated, revealing the close
relation of Christian and infidel ideology.
Brunellus episode, I: as a preliminary mystery in a detective story:
Sherlock Holmes mysteries, particularly, begin with some
initial demonstration of Sherlock's powers of observation and
reasoning. We need a profile of this in order to understand its
significance for The Name of the Rose In particular,
we should notice that because Adso's gaze was upward
toward the Aedificium (pp. 21-22), he did not notice
the horse footprints that William had observed so closely.
The upward gaze of Adso, toward heaven, symbolizes the
conservative mode of thought held to by Jorge of Borges,
while William's gaze downward toward the earth symbolizes
a protomodern way of thinking that is represented by
Roger Bacon's Aristotelianism. Jorge makes this
contrast explicit during his last encounter with William,
when he praises Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy
as a text that turns a monk's gaze toward the heavens,
while Aristotle's scientific works turn his gaze toward
the slime of earth (p. 473).
Brunellus episode, II: abduction: For Eco and
for other semioticians, the type of reasoning that is typical
of detective stories is "abduction." Several essays in
The Sign of Three, including Eco's own contribution,
emphasize abduction, and relate it to the thinking of
Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce's distinction of signs
into three categories, viz. symbol, icon, and index, is
incorporated into the episode. See: John J. White, "On
Semiotic Interplay: Forms of Creative Interaction Between
Iconicity and Indexicality in Twentieth-Century Literature,"
in Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature,
eds. Max Nanny and Olga Fischer (Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
1999), pp. 83-108.
Brunellus episode, III: intertextual relationship with Voltaire's
Zadig:
"It is obvious you are hunting for Brunellus, the abbot's
favorite horse, fifteen hands, the fastest in your stables, with a dark
coat, a full tail, small round hoots but a very steady gait; small head,
sharp ears, big eyes" (p. 23): [Unoma Azuah comments] In Voltaire's version, Zadig bumps into the master hunt for the king's
horse, and describes the horse even though he has never seen the king's
horse ; "It is your best galloper. It is fifteen hands high, has very
dainty hooves. Its tail is three and a half feet long..." " Which way
did it go? Where is it? asked the master of the hunt. "I have not seen
the animal," replied Zadig. " I have never even heard of it before."
Brunellus episode, IV: relationship between William of Baskerville
and Adso: According to Eco in Interpretation and
Overinterpretation, this relationship is modeled on that of Serenus
Zeitblom and Adrian in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. We
need a profile of that in order to understand its significance
in the novel. NOTE: This topic presents a significant challenge,
because the two fictional pairs, William and Adso on one
hand, and Zeitblom and Adrian on the other, do not resemble
each other in obvious external details. Zeitblom and Adrian
are fellow students (not old master and young novice as is the
case with William and Adso).
Brunellus episode, V: quotation from Alanus de Insulus:
Alan de Insulus (Alain of Lille) [ca. 1128-1202] was called
the "doctor universalis" in the 13th-14th centuries, because
his literary allusions indicated vast learning. His most
influential works were De planctu natura, and
Anticlaudianus. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Alain de l'Isle, being
brief, is of limited use. In its immediate context, Anticlaudianus was probably one of the earliest sources for
the notion of "the book of God's World," seen as supplementing
the "book of God's Word."
"I am not sure he [Brunellus] has those features [small head,
sharp ears, big eyes], but no doubt the monks firmly
believe he does" (p. 24): Eco here exemplifies the notion that sensory perception
is in part a sociocultural construct, a reminder that the perception
of objects in the world is relative to individuals.
William continues, "As Isidore of Seville said, the beauty
of a horse requires `that the head be small . . . [and that he have]
short and pointed ears, big eyes, flaring nostrils, erect
neck, thick main and tail, round and solid hoofs'." William is
quoting from Etymologiae XII.i.45-46, where Isidore
writes that horses are to be evaluated according to four
criteria, viz. form, beauty, merit, and color ("forma,
pulchritudo, meritum atque color" [45]). With regard to
beauty (pulchritudo), a horse must have "aures
breves et argutae, oculi magni, nares patulae, erecta cervix, coma densa et cauda,
ungularum soliditatis fixa rotunditas." The monks,
then, knowing these criteria from the encyclopedic
tradition of Isidore, would have perceived these qualities
in Brunellus, not because they were actually there, but because they were supposed
to be there according to the traditional standard of
equine beauty.
This passage may be considered in the broader context of
a classical debate between the Epicureans and the
Skeptics concerning the nature of perception. The epistemology
of the Stoics, and of Democritus and Epicurus, was based
upon the belief that sensory perceptions are the basis of
knowledge. According to the Epicurean view, objects in the
world constantly emit little pictures of themselves, called, in
Latin, simulacra (singular simulacrum. These
simulacra bombard the eye and thus constitute our
perceptions. If the simulacra reach the eye intact,
then our sensory perception corresponds with reality. But
if the simulacra are damaged or distorted--if, for
instance, they collide with each other in space before
reaching the eye--then our sensory perception is distorted
and does not correspond with reality.
In contrast with the Epicurean doctrine of simulacra,
the Skeptics taught that in the process of perception, the
eye receives only signals or clues, and the mind translates
these into conjectures that take the form of pictures.
These pictures of things in the world are unreliable because
perceptions are relative to individuals. The proof of this
is in the varying ways in which the same object might be
perceived by different individuals, or even by the same individual
under differing circumstances. Sextus Empiricus (3rd cent. A.D.),
in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, presents many
examples: white objects seem yellow to someone suffering from jaundice, and read to someone with bloodshot
eyes; if we gaze at the sun and then look down at a book,
the letters seem golden and circular (1.44-45). "Again,"
Sextus Empiricus writes, "when we press the eyeball at one side
the forms, figures, and sizes of the objects appear oblong and narrow.
So it is probably that all animals which have the pupil of the eye
slanted and elongated--such as goats [and] cats . . . have
impressions of the objects which are different and unlike
the notions formed fo them by animals which have round
pupils" (1.47). As with the shape of the eye, so with the
shape of mirrors: if a mirror is concave, it reflects objects
as small; if convex, it reflects objects as elongated and
narrow (1.47). And so it is with other senses: animals with a
narrow auditory passage will not have the same perceptions
of sound as animals with a wide auditory passage (1.50).
Animals with rough and dry tongues will not have the same
sense of taste as animals with moist tongues<1.52).
In The Island of the Day Before (trans. 1995), Eco
develops a contrast between the Epicurean and Skeptic views
about perception. Roberto, the protagonist, holds to the
Epicurean view, while the fictive editor of his diary is
a Skeptic. Roberto, haveing been exposed to the sun in
a deserted ship, writes in his diary that "the pain that
this light now causes my eyes informs me that I am not
dreaming: I see. My pupils are suffering because of the storm
of atoms that like a great warship bombards me from that
shore; for vision is nothing by the encounter of the eye
with the powder of matter that strikes it." This theory
of vision, Roberto realizes, is contrary to that of his teacher,
the Canon of Digne, who had taught that "it is not that
objects from a distance send you, as Epicurus had it, perfect
simulacra that reveal both the exterior form and the
concealed nature. You receive only signals, clues, and you
arrive at the conjecture we call vision." Shipwrecked and
gazing at evidence of land, Roberto could see and could
name the objects that he saw, and he experienced the certainty "on
which senses and reason can rely" (p. 65). Still, his
fictive-editor observes that what Roberto saw was the result of
a "transient marriage" of the distant land to the light,
the winds, and the clouds. If the ship had been anchored "along another
line crossing the rhombus of the winds, the spectacle would have
been different" (p. 66).
In Island of the Day Before, then, Eco explores the
problem of the relativity of sensory perception from a
physical perspective; in The Name of the Rose,
from a sociocultural perspective.
"...thus suicide would have been the only conceivable explanation"
(32): [Gary Swanson comments] Adelmo's death is not simply a rash decision, born in the mind of
a desperate youth (nor in an author's whim), but has apocryphal meaning,
hinting at both the fact of its suicide and who Adelmo spoke with shortly
before his death.
"...thus suicide would have been the only conceivable explanation"
(32): [Gary Swanson comments] Adelmo's death is not simply a rash decision, born in the mind of
a desperate youth (nor in an author's whim), but has apocryphal meaning,
hinting at both the fact of its suicide and who Adelmo spoke with shortly
before his death.
"But I have reason to think that another of them has stained himself
with an equally terrible sin" (33): [Gary Swanson
comments] At first the monks do not want
to consider the possibility of suicide, and so attribute the death to
murder, burying Adelmo in hallowed ground. However, William finally
comes to believe it was suicide. "The more I think about it, the more I
am convinced that Adelmo killed himself" (91), he tells Adso. But in
comparing suicide with another sin, we come to learn that the other
equally terrible sin is that of sodomy. "...the same passion whose evils
divine wrath had castigated in Sodom and Gomorrah" (137) Benno tells us
how Berengar promised to reveal a mystery to Adelmo in a sexual wager,
which did not come off as planned.
"Cautiously Benno went after them, and at the mouth of the lower corridor
he saw Berengar, trembling, huddled in a corner, staring at the door of
Jorge's cell. Benno guessed that Adelmo had flung himself at the feet of
the venerable brother to confess his sin." (138). Jorge is not
necessarily the most sympathetic of persons to unburden yourself to: "And
he followed all ...the paths of monstrosity. Which God knows how to
punish" (81) Jorge tips his hand here to having been somehow involved in
the crime. Then when Berengar admits to seeing Adelmo just prior to his
death, Adelmo speaks like a character from an Apocalypse, saying "As you
see me here, you see one returned from hell, to hell I must go back...The
pains of hell are infinitely greater than our tongues can say" (115).
The sly hint embedded in the text refers us to the apocryphal Apocalypse
of Peter. In this early work, once almost considered canonical,
especially by the early church writer, Clement of Alexandria, Jesus takes
Peter on a tour of hell. One of the visions he has is this: "And other
men and women being cast down from a great rock (precipice) fell (came)
to the bottom, and again were driven by them that were set over them, to
go up unto the rock, and thence were cast down to the bottom and had no
rest from this torment." This punishment, we are told is that reserved
for "they that did defile their bodies, behaving as women..." (James,
510).
Alinardo gives us the key to understanding who would have this type of
obscure knowledge of apocrypal apocalypses, by this time considered
heretical text and kept from common view. "I was the one, you know, to
suggest to the abbot...the one we had then...to collect as many
commentaries on the Apocalypse as possible. I was to have become the
librarian...But then the other one managed to have himself sent to Silos,
where he found the finest manuscripts, and he came back with splendid
booty...Oh, he knew where to look...And so the library was given into his
keeping, and not mine. But God punished him, and sent him into the realm
of darkness before his time" (303).
We must ask ourselves if it is, as Brother William would have it, costly
for our minds to imagine Jorge mentioning such an obscure fact to Adelmo
in the depth of his despair, possibly, as William also suggests "perhaps
someone had frightened him, and perhaps had told him the very episode of
the infernal apparition that he recited to Berengar" (116).
The "great gate" and the abbot on the threshhold (p. 25):
[Rebecca Papakonstantinou comments] In The Name of the Rose, there are many allusions to Heaven throughout "
First Day." One such example is the description of the abbey, which has a
"great gate" and an "abbot" who stands "on the threshold" (25), an image
which conjures St. Peter standing as guardian at the pearl gates of Heaven.
Past the gate, "to the left of the avenue, there stretched a vast area of
vegetable gardens, and…the botanical garden" (25), a description which
invokes images of the Garden of Eden. The fact that the Aedificium "was much
older than the buildings surrounding" (26) it suggests that it is in the last
stages of a cycle, much like the last stage of the world before the
Apocalypse and it also conjures images of the Fall-an end. When the abbot is
giving William instructions and provisions for his access to the abbey, he
allows him to "move freely though the whole abbey" but not "on the top floor
of the Aedificium, the Library" (35) This is strikingly similar to God's
instructions to Adam and Eve, whom he allowed to move freely through the
garden with one exception-they were not permitted to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge. God tell Adam and Eve, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the
garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad"
(Genesis 2:16-17). Similarly, William is prohibited from entering the
library, the place of knowledge. The abbot tells him, "You can move freely
through the whole abbey…but not…on the top floor of the Aedificium, the
library" (35).
The next study page is First Day: Terce (pp. 27-39)