Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose
Day One: Sext
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The Romanesque church (pp. 40-41): Adso visits the abbey church for the first time. Eco wants us, as modern readers, to realize that this is a Romanesque church, and he does so by alluding to physical characterists that would distinguish it from a Gothic church. These terms, "Romanesque" and "Gothic," were not applied to church architecture until the 19th century, so Eco must give us clues, instead. In order to understand the setting, it is important to read up on Romanesque church archicture, and Gothic church architecture.

[Mary Bogart comments] Eco explains in Postcript to The Name of the Rose that the narrative "mask" of Adso, a "chronicler of the period," would free him, the empirical author, from "suspicion," but not "from the echo's of intertextuality" (510). Through Adso's description of the church, Eco attempts to establish a modal reader, a reader whom, for perhaps the first time, tries to establish a dialogue with the text (523).

At first glance, the two paragraphs at the opening of Sext, appear to be background information, the narrator's "innocent" attempt to place the church in historical context, a context of whom a contemporary of Adso's might easily identify, while simultaneously creating an accurate narrative image for the reader. However, a closer reading allows the reader's eyes, like Adso's "to grow accustomed to the gloom"- this "gloom" perhaps, being the first 100 pages of text. A closer look at Adso's architectural references as contextual clues also provides the bait a reader needs to see if he or she is able to become a modal reader, one "created by the book" (522).

To illustrate, the following notes include highlighted references--links to relevant information, and pictures that Adso might would include in a travelogue.

"The church was not majestic like others I saw later at Strasbourg, Chartres, Bamberg,* Paris (p. 40): Two key words in this phrase are "majestic" and "later." The ambiguity of these words whose purpose is to place the church in historical context, but one must be aware that "later" could not mean the mature or high Gothic period, because historically, Adso would not have been alive then. Therefore, "majestic," although an adjective associated with the high Gothic period, is Adso's personal feeling about what would later be called a "crossing tower." Adso might also have associated "majestic" with Abbot Suger's efforts; however, Eco doesn't mention St.-Denis among the Cathedrals of which Adso compares the abbey church. Perhaps this association would have been too simple for the reader to get an actual picture of time and place.

*I could not find any pictures of Bamberg. Here is a map of ecclesiastical Europe. Perhaps you'll have better luck.

**Here is a closer look at Strasbourg and Paris

"It resembled, rather, those I had already seen in Italy*, with scant inclination to soar dizzyingly toward the heavens…"

*Here are examples of Romanesque churches and cathedreals in Italy. Two others whom William would have known were Pisa and Assisi.

"…indeed firmly set on the earth, often broader than they were high; but at the first level this one was surmounted, like a fortress, by a sequence of square battlements and above this story, another construction rose, not so much a tower, as a solid, second church, capped by a pitched roof* and pierced by severe windows" (p. 40):

*For a picture of a pitched roof, see Lorna Price, Lorna, Plan of St. Gall: In Brief, University of California Press, 1982, p. 21

"A robust abbatical church such as our forefathers* built in Provence and Languedoc" (p. 40): *Who were the 'forefathers' who built churches in Provence and Languedoc and why did Adso mention these regions as a point of reference?"

Adso writes his "book" to an audience of patron brothers who knew who would have recognized who "our forefathers" were. However, here, Eco is asking reader to discover who he or she is as a modal reader because Adso's references give clues to the reader's monastic heritage. By mentioning, these communities, Adso had either visited or studied them. So, what is the historical connection between Adso, the reader, and "our forefathers"? (A title in the University of Auckland Library Catalogue called Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France: Provence and Languedoc, 1000-1500, edited by Kathryn Reyerson and John Drendel, 1998, is available for anyone who would like to explore this path further.)

Provence and Languedoc are areas in southern France in the French Pyranees. Most of the villages are accessible to one another by small, winding mountain roads or by canals. Many Romanesque churches are perched on mountaintops (sound familiar?), and one is famous for the surrounding crypts and tombs carved right into its mountain. These churches are not major tourist attractions; in present times, a traveler like Eco might rent one of the lovely villas and spend his time skiing (in winter) or hiking (in summer). One can imagine how this area might inspire a traveler such as Eco; he could get a feeling for medieval times in relative comfort and privacy. For example, when Adso says "… far from the audacity and excessive tracery…" could Eco be referring to a type of tourism? Moreover, as Adso continues, "characteristic of the modern style…" could this style refer to a style of visiting the more famous Cathedrals in Paris? Another interesting note: some of the canal waters are believed to have healing powers.

"…far form the audacity and excessive tracery characteristic of the modern style, which only in more recent times has been enriched, I believe above the choir with a pinnacle boldly pointed toward the roof of the heavens" (p. 40). "Two strait and unadorned* columns" (p. 40, paragraph 2): "Unadorned" is an important word here because it was unusual for these columns not to be adorned with carvings. The purpose in choosing plain columns could be twofold: first, the monastery would not associate nor align itself with any patron saints; second, as a plot device, the plain columns would distract a person from the tympanum, thus perhaps foregrounding the tympanum's message. "…stood on either side of the entrance, which opened at first sight, like a single great arch; but from the columns began two embrasures that, surmounted by other, multiple arches led the gaze, as if into the heart of an abyss, toward the doorway itself" (p. 40). . . .

"...crowned by the great, tympanum supported in the sides by two imposts and in the center by a carved pillar*, which divided the entrance into in two apertures protected by oak doors reinforced by metal" (p. 40: *Adso mentions "a carved pillar," but does not elaborate. Again, typically, these pillars were carved with figures, but one would assume that Adso would note any carvings of patron saints.

"At that hour of the day,* the weak sun was beating almost strait down on the roof and the light fell obliquely on the façade without illuminating the tympanum**" (p. 40): *Typically, the sun "at that hour of the day," at noon, would be bright. However, Eco creates suspense by leaving the tympanum cloaked in "gloom" until Adso is close enough to experience the effects of its sculptures.

**See typanumn sculptures at Strasbourg, and Chartres, and Paris for comparison.

"…so after passing the two columns, we found ourselves abruptly under the almost sylvan vault of the arches* that sprang from the series of lesser columns that proportionally reinforced the embrasures…" (pp. 40-41): *I cannot find a picture of a "sylvan" vault and it must be an important architectural reference because Adso mentions sylvan vaulting a few times. However, here is a glossary containing detailed descriptions of vaulting.

tympanum images (pp. 40-41) [comment by Joe Motta]: On his first visit to the monastery’s church, Adso becomes engrossed in the images carved in the tympanum above the door. The scene depicted there is taken from Revelation 4:1-8. The author of Revelation asserts that this vision was revealed to him when a door in heaven was opened (Rev. 4:1). Eco is clearly associating Adso with the author of Revelation by portraying him as receiving the same vision at the door of the church.

Surrounded the throne of the Seated One, Adso discerns four winged creatures: a man, an eagle, a bull, and a lion. It is likely that the author of Revelation modeled these creatures after the Tetramorphs or cherubim observed by Ezekiel during his vision of heaven as described in Ezekiel 1:10-11 (see, Ross p. 93). The Tetramorphs or cherubim were angelic beings having four faces (human, lion, ox, and eagle).

Later Christian writers sought to associate the beings described in Ezekiel and Revelation with the Four Evangelists. The winged man is associated with Matthew because his gospel begins by tracing the human descent of Jesus. The winged lion is the symbol of Mark because his gospel expresses the royal dignity of Christ. The winged bull or ox represents Luke because the bull is a symbol of sacrifice, and his gospel emphasizes the sacrificial nature of Christ’s priesthood on Earth. The eagle is associated with John because his visionary gospel soars the nearest to heaven.

Just as the Evangelists proclaimed God’s message (ultimately culminating in the apocalypse) in words, the scene depicted in the tympanum sets forth the divine plan in pictorial form. In The Name of the Rose, Adso acts as an evangelist by recording in his manuscript the "apocalyptic" events that occurred at the monastery during his visit.

 

References:

Ferguson, George. Signs & Symbols in Christian Art. London: Oxford University Press, 1954.

Ross, Leslie. Medieval Art, A Topical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press 1966.

 



"the silent speech of carved stone" (p. 41) [Lee Zickel comments]: The driving force behind this line, while being formed around the way a monk should feel upon witnessing the effigies, is to be found in literary antiquity. Actually, if one were to consider it in Adso's terms it would be found in contemporary literature! The line quoted, as well as a good deal of the rest of Adso's vision, can be textually linked to Dante's Purgatorio. In Canto X, as Dante the Pilgrim "crossed the threshold of the gate" (ln. 1), he, just as Adso, encounters an arrangement of extremely life-like effigies. Dante's statues proceed to create for him a "visibile parlare", a "speech made visible" (ln. 94), which, just as to Adso the Pilgrim, "plunged [him] into a vision" (p. 41).

Pictures in the church as apocalyptic vision (p. 41): The role and efficacy of religious images, or "icons," was a recurring theme in the Middle Ages, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire, where religious images were destroyed in an "Iconoclastic movements." According to the Iconoclast rationale, the veneration of images was a form of idolatry. Western writers, such as Bede in De Templo, defended religious images using two arguments: (1) artistic portrayals of biblical stories function as a "visual Bible" for the illiterate; and (2) religious images inspire "compunctio," a desire for piety, in the hearts of devout Christians who view them. A general medieval rationale for church decoration is provided by Suger of St. Denis [1081-1155], abbot of St. Denis from 1122-1155, in the Book on What was Done in his Administration.

David dancing before the ark (p. 42): The immediate allusion is to the story about the recovery of the ark of the Covenant, after the Philistines had stolen it, in 2 Samuel 6. David's dancing is one of many allusions to David as a musician, and this, in turn, evokes the medieval theory of music as imitation of divine harmonies, expressed in Boethius' De musica and elsewhere.

"I saw a miser, stiff in the stiffness of death . . . his soul in the form of an infant" (p. 44) [Tracie Lloyd comments]: Adso's journey through the church introduces him to a variety of images which display the Second Coming of Christ (see Catholic Encyclopedia, "Second Coming," p.1179). The image of a miser alludes to Matthew 19:23-24, where Jesus warns that it is difficult for a rich man to enter heaven. Perhaps Adso recognizes, in this symbol, some assurance that due to his lack of material wealth, he shall enter the gates of heaven.

With further analysis, this passage points to the controversy of whether a human soul is distinct in characteristic. The soul Adso witnesses is the one of the miser that is taken by a demon. This soul has taken the shape of an infant or a "physical form" versus an "atomic form" (see "resurrection of the body" in Catholic Encyclopedia, pp. 1110-1111). Adso's observation of the infant soul also brings up another question: Since this man died as a miser and not an infant, why was his soul not only of a physical form, but one that bears no reference to his previous physical state?

Adso's vision of one like the Son of Man (p. 45): the source for Adso's language is Revelations 1.

Adso's encounter with Ubertino de Casale (p. 48). [Roula Hohlakis comments] Adso describes Ubertino as a man wearing the habit of the Cluniac order. The Cluniac reforms were founded in France, northwest of Lyons, in 909 by Abbot Berno. The Catholic church celebrates the early abbots of the Monastery of Cluny on April 30th. The goal of this order was to achieve isolation from outside society. Indeed, they became independent of all but papal jurisdiction. The Monastery of Cluny is known for being a center of reform in Western monasticism in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Abbot Odilo, the fifth abbot of the Monastery of Cluny is well-known for instituting November second as All Soul's Day which was meant to be a day of prayer for the dead brothers of the abbey, but eventually expanded to include anyone who died in the faith of Christ. Eventually, the Cluniac reforms spread to other cities in France and much of Spain and Italy. The Golden Age of Cluny lasted over two centuries and is said to have contributed greatly to the advance of Western Civilization. For more information on the Cluniac reforms. For more information: Cluniac reform.

"Salvatore spoke all languages and no language" (p. 46): [Michael Crozier comments] Salvatore's character is reminiscent of an apocalyptic vision. When in the abbey, William and Adso come across Salvatore, a man with abhorrent and grim features, who confuses them with his speech and strange dialect. They later learn of Salvatore's adventures and about the various places he has been, putting down roots in none of them. Thus coming to the conclusion that he speaks all languages and no language, invents a language for himself out of fragments and elements from others he has been exposed to. Adso says, "once I thought that his was, not the Adamic language that a happy mankind had spoken, all unified by a single tongue from the origin of the world to the tower of Babel, or one of the languages that arose after the dire event of their division, but precisely the Babelish language of the first day after the divine chastisement, the language of primal confusion." The Tower of Babel found in Genesis 1.1:9 was a biblical parable about God's intervention between man and his pride, as well as the origin of the many languages spoken of earth. The people of the tower did not ask for God's help, because their pride was so great they thought they didn't need it, putting themselves before GOD. This is the interesting part of Adso's observations; the notion of Divine chastisement, and the language of primal confusion. These observations give a more ominous meaning to the character of Salvatore, but more precisely they shed light on the myth of the tower. His notion of divine chastisement is the event that brought verbal chaos. Because GOD could no longer tolerate human pride, he intervened, to confuse and separate the unity of one tongue. Man loving himself over God is the core of the parable, but Adso's statement about the language of primal confusion is also part of the myth, and reveals something else about the character of Salvatore. His language follows no rules specifically set forth for a certain dialogue to follow. His language consists of all with the rules of none. It is not the language of peaceful acceptance of man's downfall, it is not the language of a race content in their readjustment in communication, but rather a language that has just begun to crumble and lose its meaning. A tongue confused just after GOD has marked his presence on the earth, a sign of the apocalypse. (p. 53). In Paul Auster's City of Glass, references to the Babel myth are present. The author says that " the Tower of Babel stands as the last image before the true beginning of the world." Again this could be a reference to the true beginning of chaos on the earth and the initiation of man's down fall. There is an interesting correlation between Auster's story and Eco's. Auster goes on to say that " there were three different groups involved in the construction: Those who wanted to dwell in heaven, those who wanted to wage war on God, and those who wanted to worship idols." All the people were united in their efforts and spoke one language in devotion to the tower. In Eco's story we see the abbey seemingly divided as well. We have monks who have remained faithful to order of god, monks who have committed murder as well as illicit sexual acts, and monks who fear idols before they fear God. All the monks have combined their efforts to make the abbey run efficiently, but there is a crumbling within the core of their faith. Pride, guilt, and selfishness have infected the abbey and man's position before GOD is in its final stage before the inevitable down fall.



Allusion to Dante Alighieri (p. 49)

Spirituals' desire to reform the Church by applying the doctrine of the poverty of Jesus and his apostles (p. 51): There may be an apocalyptic dimension to this theme. An influential apocalyptic theologian, Gerhoh of Reichersberg (1093-1169), in one of his four apocalyptic treatises, Investigation of Antichrist, argued that the Church was corrupt because there were too many simoniacs in the priesthood, especially in the papal court, and also because married priests were still tolerated. The wealth of the Church, and the domination of it by simoniacs, is an apocalyptic sign. Gerhoh foresaw, then, an age of reform when "Spirituales" (spiritual men) would restore the Church to its ancient apostolic purity, followed by the coming of the Final Antichrist: "Before the final coming," Gerhoh wrote, "the Church which is the true and living house of the living God, is to be reformed to its ancient practice of apostolic perfection in those who are called and ought to be spirituales." This is part of an elaborate theory of the history of the Church, developed by Gerhoh and summarized under "Papal Antichrist" in our Dictionary of Apocalyptic Terms.

Spirituals (p. 51): The "Spiritual" Franciscans' identification of themselves as "Spirituals" refers to their mysticism and their desire for apostolic purity, but also, more importantly, to their reformism and apocalypticism. With regard to reformism, not only did the Spirituals desire apostolic purity for themselves: they wanted to resture the entire Church to apostolic purity. With regard to apocalypticism, the Franciscans anticipated that an era of reform would prepare the Church for the advent of the Antichrist and the Second Coming of Jesus.

"Perhaps Celestine's life was too angelic" -- the pastor angelicus theme (p. 51): The allusion is to the pastor angelicus, a concept in late medieval apocalyptic theology according to which the coming of the Antichrist would be preceded by the rule of a truly spiritual, righteous pope who would reform the Church and restore it to its primitive apostolic purity.

One of the earliest writers to suggest this theme was Gerhoh of Reichersberg (1093-1169), who proposed that during the last days of the world, a truly spiritual pope would oppose the Antichrist and would reform the Church. The concept of the pastor angelicus was stimulated by the history of Celestine V, who was pope for a few months in 1294-1295. Celestine was an elderly hermit, who was unwillingly elected pope in order to break a stalemate in the papal conclave in July, 1294. Celestine favored the Franciscan Spirituals and established them as an eremetically community with the privilege of poverty. But his pontificate was an administrative disaster. He resigned the papacy after a few months, retired to an hermitage, and was imprisoned by his successor, Benedetto Caetani (Pope Boniface VIII, 1295-1303), who was an able administrator but also a brutal tyrant.

The contrast between the spiritual Celestine and the tyrannical Boniface gave rise to comparisons that encouraged the notion of an apocalyptic pastor angelicus; this contrast was a theme in the popular Vaticinia de summis pontificibus ("Prophecies concerning the Supreme Pontiffs"), often (wrongly) attributed to Joachim of Fiore.

"Bishop of Kaffa . . . an idiot" (p. 55): Jerome, the Bishop of Kaffa, attempts an a forteriori argument, followed by an ad hominem argument, during the formal debat on the poverty of Jesus and his apostles (Fifth Day: Prime, pp. 335-38, at pp. 342-43. The Bishop of Kaffa's contribution to the debate marks the beginning of its deterioration into a brawl.

St. Clare of Montefalco (p. 56).

Angela of Foligno (p. 58): The debate between Ubertino and William about the mysticism of Angela of Foligno brings out contrasts between mysticism, with its dependence upon revelation, and scholasticism, with its dependence upon reason and logic. Angela of Foligno's imagined sexual encounter with Christ would have been preceded by a long period of meditation characterized by a willful "mortification of the flesh" through suppression of sensory experience (e.g. staying in a darkened room, its windows covered with brown curtains so as to suppress the sensation of colors). This suppression of the senses was called, by St. John of the Cross, the "dark night of the soul." Through it, the mystic eventually can achieve union with God, an intensified sensory experience that might take the form of extreme pain (sharing the pain of Jesus' crucifixion), or alternatively, extreme pleasure, felt and portrayed as sexual ecstasy. For Ubertino, this is a holy experience; the only heretical danger that it presents would be in choosing the wrong object--union with the devil instead of with God. For William, the experience itself seems wrong. One difference between Ubertion and William is that for the mystics, beauty is experienced by possessing a beautiful object; an object is regarded as beautiful if it gives aesthetic delight. For the Scholastic philosophers, beauty is experienced as apprehension of a beautiful object, not as possession of it. Visio, `sight', for the Scholastics, is "disinterested knowledge," in contrast with possession. For the Scholastics, an object is beautiful if it has a beautiful form (what Thomas Aquinas calls the "first perfection"), and if it fulfills its ordained function (what Aquinas calls the "second perfection").

The example of Angela Foligno also implies the problem of the "sensorium," or hierarchy of the senses. Beginning as early as Plato, "sight" has been ranked as the noblest of the senses, equated with knowledge, just as light is symbolic of divinity. Sight and hearing together are the most important senses (the ones on which aesthetic experience is based, for example), while smell, taste, and touch are lower senses. Touch is the lowest ranking of the senses, the one that humanity shares with all animal life-forms. Now Angela's ecstatic union with Christ, realized as a sexual encounter, gives primacy to the sense of touch, and thus upsets the proper hierarchy of the senses, so far as Scholastic reasoning is concerned. William responds to Ubertino's account of mystical ecstasy, by stating that the proper experience of the divine is through light, based on visio, sight, the noblest of the senses. William's theological approach is consistent with the claim of Roger Bacon (cited elsewhere in the novel) that the study of optics represents the future of theological speculation.

Intellectual pride attributed to Adelmo of Otranto (p. 60): The allusion is to the Benedictine Rule, chapter 57, "Of the Artists of the Monastery."

"blitiri" (p. 47): nonsense-word borrowed from Sextus Empiricus (3rd-century AD), Against the Logicians [Adversus mathematicos, 2.133. Sextus was a physician and Skeptic philosopher whose treatises, Outlines on Phrrhonism and Against the Logicians are our best source of information about Skepticism and also about the epistemonlogy of the Stoics and Epicureans, whom the Skeptics opposed and whose arguments about signification and meaning Sextus takes pains to refute. Sextus develops an argument to the effect that absolutely truthful speech is impossible. One part of this argument is the point that speech in and of itself is not necessarily "meaningful." This is illustrated from examples of "non-significant speech," which "will not exist in that which has no significance, such as the words `Blituri' and `Skindapsos'; for how is it possible to accept as true a thing which is not significant?" -- Sextus Empiricus, trans. R. G. Bury (4 vols.), vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935], p. 307.

"I venerate Roger Bacon...." (p. 63): [Michael Almony comments] In looking at The Picture History of Inventions, "The Development of Optics". Umberto Eco and G.B. Zorzoli (New York: Macmillan, 1963), Roger Bacon views "optics" as a beginning to change the world of experience through technology or "the use of knowledge to better the human race". Throughout The Name of the Rose, there are a myriad of apocalyptic signs, and by contrast, this is an example of an anti-apocalyptical sign. William of Baskerville's use of spectacles (The Name of the Rose, p. 74) is a reference to the concept of an , optics, and Roger Bacon himself.

Outline on Romanesque architecture and art, with links to other sites, prepared by Mary Bogart:

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