The Name of the Rose
Third Day: Vespers (pp. 210-20)
Bernardo Gui's arrival is announced



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Bernardo Gui, in the symbolic world of The Name of the Rose, is the Antichrist. When he arrives, he assumes both spiritual and temporal authority, and in his role as Inquisitor, inflicts persecution on the monks and friars and inspires terror among them.

William's "obscene hissing sound" (p. 210), when he learns from Abbot Abo that the legation from the Pope in Avignon will be led by Bernardo Gui and that he will come with an army: We recall that since William's native language is English, the four-letter word that he uses would begin with "sh--"!

"Thomas is fat" (p. 197): St. Thomas Aquinas was so obese that after he had died in an upper room, it took several men, with great difficulty, to carry his body downstairs and out of the house.

a story about King Mark" (p. 201): Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, an early 13th-century German romance.

"William of Occam, who is now in Avignon" (p. 206): William of Occam was imprisoned by the Pope in Avignon from 1323 to 1327 or possibly as late as May 1328, when he escaped and fled to Germany. Thus, in November 1327, the time of The Name of the Rose, it is possible that William of Occam was in prison in Avignon.

"mathematics was invented before the other sciences" (p. 215): [Melissa Svigelj comments: William is discussing with Adso universal notions and the mathematical sciences that he is going to use to solve the mystery of the labyrinth. What William is referring to was of some controversy in the 13th century. Recovery of ancient works at European universities in the 13th century led to debate on scientific method. The so-called realists espoused the Platonic approach, whereas the nominalists preferred the views of Aristotle.

William's assertion of the existence of math before science was well known by 14th century scholars. His statement that mathematics came first is probably a reference to efforts to systematize knowledge through designs that Paleolithic people painted on the walls of caves, and numerical records that were carved in bone or stone. A variety of mathematical tables came from Mesopotamian cultures, inscribed in cuneiform characters on clay tablets. Other tablets dating from about 2000 BC show tht the Babylonians had knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem, solved quadratic equations, and developed a sexagesimal system of measurement from which modern time and angle units stem. All of these attempts at organizing the universe appeared before primitive attempts to establish science.

The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras established a movement in which mathematics became a discipline fundamental to all scientific investigation in the 6th century BC. At Athens, in the 4th century BC, Ionian natural philosophy and Pythagorean mathematical science combined to produce the syntheses of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. At the Academy of Plato, deductive reasoning and mathematical representation were emphasized; at the Lyceum of Aristotle, inductive reasoning and qualitative description were stressed.

William, utilizing mathematical knowledge and reasoning, points out that mathematics came before science as an emphasis on its important role as he continues his search for truth at the abbey.
Reference: "Science," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation.

"Thus God knows the world, because He conceived it in His mind, as if from the outside, before it was created, and we do not know its rule, because we live inside it, having found it already made...The creations of art [can be known from the outside], because we retrace in our minds the operations of the artificer. Not the creations of nature, because they are not the work of our minds." (218): [Nancy Pine comments:] William's comment, as both he and Adso are deciphering the riddle of the labyrinth, is echoed and extended by Edgar Allan Poe. In Eureka: A Prose Poem, Poe explains the origin of the universe as created by God, or Unity, or the divine Mind. According to an article by Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Poe argues that God manifested himself as a giant "single particle," which he then diffused outward from its center into innumerable separate atoms (289). Each particle, therefore, has a centripetal urge to return to the condition of Unity (to God). This primal Unity precedes human memory but is a mental principle of material being.

Poe agrees with William's terms that living inside the world, we cannot "know its rule"—that is, the earthbound soul is unable to attain the supernal ideal (287). However, Poe extends William's idea of art. For Poe, not only can art be retraced to the mind of the artificer, but it can also be a vehicle to approximate the divine Mind. The artist's works are attempts to seize the divine while inside the world. Although nature is "not the work of our minds," we are part of our "lost parent" (290). According to Poe, through art, particularly the poem, we can come as close as humanly possible to realizing Unity, the supreme "poet," God. Reference: Moldenhauer, Joseph J. "Murder as Fine Art: Basic Connections between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision." PMLA 83 (May 1968): 284-97.

"The creations of art, because we retrace in our minds the operations of the artificer" (p. 218): [Melissa Svigelj comments] This is William's response to Adso's exclamation related to solving things from the outside. William is explaining to Adso that it is possible to solve puzzles created by humans because one human mind can get inside another human mind and figure out it's intentions. William goes on to explain that the same is not true for creations of nature, because they are not the works of the human mind. Eco relies on this technique of discovering solutions more than once in The Name of the Rose. This way of decoding mysteries in detective novels goes as far back as Edgar Poe. Eco appears to be relying on Poe's belief that "...what man makes, man can decipher." Poe uses this as evidence to support his claim that he can solve any cryptogram submitted to him. It is Poe's thought that to know what another feels, one needs only to imitate that person, or exist in other's minds. When something is presented that cannot be figured out, Poe would reply that it is not that we cannot solve it, but rather that we will not make the attempt. Eco utilizes Poe's claim as William continues his quest for the truth in The Name of the Rose. Mysteries in detective novels can always be solved if the detective applies what he knows as a human to investigate the minds of other humans.
Reference: Shawn Rosenheim, "'The King of Secret Readers': Edgar Poe, Cryptography, and the Origins of the Detective Story," English Literary History 56 (Summer 1989): 375-400.



"Facilis. You take the cheese before it is too antiquum..." (p. 220) [comment by Liisa Hake]: In The Name of the Rose, Salvatore's speech comes off as a gibberish that reflects his travels throughout Europe. In a conversation with Adso about making "cheese in batter," he describes the process (my translation in parenthesis): " Facilis. (Easy). You take the cheese before it is too antiquum (old), without too much salis (salt), and cut in cubes or sicus (any way/as you) like. And postea (afterwards), you put a bit of butierrro (butter) or lardo (lard) to rechauffer (warm up) over the embers. And in it you put two pieces of cheese, and when it becomes tenero (soft/melted), zucharum et cin- namon supra positurum du bis (put sugar and cinnamon on top to brown). And immediately take to table, because it must be ate caldo, caldo (hot, hot).

With his curious mix of romance language diction, taken from French, Latin, and Italian (the language English represents in the text, it may be supposed), is Salvatore's speech an example of a "natural language… enriched through the creativity of single individuals" - a hybrid of Dante's De vulgaris eloquentia, which Eco reviews in The Search for the Perfect Language [Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995] (p. 38)?

Works Cited

The next study page is Third Day: After Compline (pp. 221-50)