The Name of the Rose
First Day: Toward Nones (pp. 65-70)
William of Baskerville and Severinus the Herbalist

The preceding study page was First Day: Sext.
Click here to return to the study page index.
Click here to return to the ENG 510 syllabus.
Address questions or comments to Professor Anderson.

Plan of St. Gall as a source: There is a strong possiblity that the description of vegetables and medicinal herbs in The Name of the Rose is influenced by the "Plan of St. Gall." This was an architectural "master plan" for an ideal Benedictine monastery, prepared during Carolingian times. The "Plan of St. Gall" is our most complete source of information for many aspects of a Benedictine monastery, and practically our only source for information about kitchen and medicinal gardens. The inventory of vegetables and herbs may owe something to this manuscript.

Symbolism in bono and in malo: Note that the herbs in Severinus' garden can be used either for good, as medicines, or for evil, as poisons.

"hell is heaven from the other side" (p. 65): This theme reappears in Adso's dream of the Underworld (p. 427).

"Consider the pumpkin. It is cold and damp by nature...." (p. 66): Severinus here alludes to the ancient and medieval theory of the four humours, based upon the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. [Holly Spuckler comments] In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) writes that "A humour is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us; or adventitious and acquisite" (Anatomy of Melancholy [New York: Ferrar & Rinehart, 1927], p. 128. The four humours were defined as:

blood: a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour. If malancholy proceeds from blood, the individual will have a ruddy, high-colored complexion, be inclined to laughter, wit and merriment, and partial to dancing and music.

phlegm: a cold, moist humour. If melancholy proceeds from phlegm (which is the most frequent), the person is stupid, sleepy, dull, cold, and asinine. Phegmatic persons tend to weep more and take pleasure in water, ponds, pools, and fishing. They also tend to be more pale, sleepy, heavy, head-achy and meditative, often muttering to themselves.

choler: a hot, dry, bitter humor. If malancholy proceeds from cholar, the person is bold and impudent, apt to quarrel and partake in combat. Choleric persons tend to be furious, impatient in discourse, sleeping little and tending to speak in many different languages, depending on temperament at any given moment. Avicenna argues that these symptoms proceed from the Devil, so that the individual behaves as if possessed. Burton also notes that Cardan claims that this humour prepares the individual to courageously endure death and all torments.

melancholy: a cold, dry, thick, black, sour humour, purged from the spleen. It is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. Avicenna says that melancholic individuals are usually sad and solitary, inordinately suspicious and fearful, with corrupt imaginations. They are cold and black, bashful and, as Arnoldus writes, they will endure no company, they dream of graves, and dead men, and they think themselves bewitched or dead.

"evil visions" (p. 67): [Eric Bakos comments] The concept of ordeal has deep roots in cultures worldwide. Fasts, trials by combat and even torture have been used as rites of passage. However, few of these ordeals have captured the popular imagination as vividly as the ordeal drug or poison, particularly over the last thirty years. From introductions to recreational drugs in pop "counter" culture to chemical interrogation in spy thrillers and brutal manhood ceremonies in the save-the-rainforest genre, the ordeal poison remains one of the most effective plot devices.

Umberto Eco makes excellent use of an ordeal poison as a "supernatural" guard in the library of The Name of the Rose, as well as challenging the more alert reader to discern the source of Eco's use of the device in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" by Doyle.

In "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" Sherlock Holmes solves the murder of two people and the sudden insanity of two others by deducing the existence of a poison that, when heated, produces fumes capable of inducing fear enough to kill or madden healthy adults. Holmes observes: "In each case there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere. In each case, also there is combustion going on in the room" (Doyle 432). "Surely there is some connection between three things - the burning, the stuffy atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of those unfortunate people" (Doyle 433).

Similarly, Brother William of Baskerville apprehends the possibility of such a compound from the remarks of, or more accurately, the refusal to remark further on the subject by the monastery's herbalist Severinus of Sankt Wendel. "Beans, on the contrary, produce urine and are fattening, two very good things. But they induce bad dreams. Far less, however, than certain other herbs. There are some that actually provoke evil visions." Severinus sidesteps Adso's question "Which?" by answering "Aha, our novice wants to know too much. These are things that only the herbalist must know; otherwise any thoughtless person could go about distributing visions: in other words, lying with herbs" (Eco 67). Adso, of course, misses the point and fails to go forth forewarned.

Adso and Watson report similar effects from the vapors of the poisoned lamps. Watson's description of his experimental exposure is factual and Doyle likely had the dangers of other drugs as well as the new science of psychology in mind when he wrote, "At the very first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of the unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul (Doyle 434).

Eco, on the opposite tack, exposes Adso to a similar poisoned lamp, the trap baited with an illuminated apocalypse. Adso recounts: "On the table, beside the thurible, a brightly colored book was lying open. I approached and saw four strips of different colors on the page: yellow, cinnabar, turquoise, and burnt sienna. A beast was set there, horrible to see, a great dragon with ten heads, dragging after him the stars of the sky and making them fall to earth. And suddenly I saw the dragon multiply, and the scales of his hide become a forest of glittering shards that came off the page and took to circling around my head. I flung my head back and I saw the ceiling of the room bend and press down toward me, then I heard something like the hiss of a thousand serpents, but not frightening, almost seductive, and a woman appeared, bathed in light, and put her face to mine, breathing on me. I thrust her away with outstretched hands, and my hands seemed to seemed to touch the books in the case opposite, or to grow out of all proportion. I no longer realized where I was, and where the sky. In the center of the room I saw Berengar staring at me with a hateful smile, oozing lust. I covered my face with my hands and my hands seemed the claws of a toad, slimy and webbed. I cried out, I believe; there was an acid taste in my mouth; I plunged into infinite darkness, which seemed to yawn wider and wider before me; and then I knew nothing further (Eco 174-175).

Although following Eco's "clew" back to Doyle is simple enough, Eco leaves much to the reader in his remarks on "Constructing the Reader" regarding Adso's ensnarement. "And then, if you are good, you will realize how I lured you into this trap, because I was really telling you about it at every step, I was carefully warning you that I was dragging you to your damnation; but the fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?" (Eco 524)

Perhaps Eco is using a two-way "clew" to not only lead the reader back to Doyle but also forward through the labyrinth of Adso's complex dreams and visions as they relate to the development of the plot of The Name of the Rose. Of course, this reader would be compensated with something better than hell.

For further reading on plant based poisons and medicines: Earthly Goods, Medicine Hunting in the Rainforest by Christopher Joyce, Little, Brown & Company, 1994.


De plantis attributed to Aristotle (p. 67): Alfred (Anglicus) of Sareshel's De Plantis libri II (ca. 1200) was a translation of an Arabic treatise on plants, by Ibn (Isaac) ben Honaim of Babylon (9th century). This was, in turn, a translation of a 1st-century BC Greek work on plants by Nicolaus of Damascus, a friend of King Herod. Alfred of Sareshel was one of the English scholastics who was especially important as a translator of (originally) Greek works from Arabic to Latin; another, during the 12th century, was Adelard of Bath, who introduced Euclid's Elements of Geometry to the west through a translation of this work from Arabic into Latin. Roger Bacon refer two William of Sareshel's De plantis and also to one other version of this work: Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, Fasc. XI: Quaestiones supra de plantis, ed. Robert Steele and Ferdinand Delorme (Oxford: Calrendon 1932): 60-68. This second version of De plantis is known only from Roger Bacon's allusion to it.
Nicolaus of Damascus' De plantis is rather disorganized, unlike the authentic works of Aristotle. It is probably, however, that some remnants of a work on plants by Aristotle does underlieDe plantis.



References:
Nicolai Damasceni De plantis libri duo, ed. E. H. F. Meyer (Leipzig: L. Voss, 1841): the first scholar to clarify that De plantis was by Nicolaus of Damascus, not by Aristotle.
Nicolaus Damascenus, De plantis: Five Translations, ed. H. J. Drossaart and E. C. J. Poortman (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1989).
James A. Weisheipl, ed., Albertus Magnus and the Sciences, Commemorative Essays 1980 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), includes two essays that provide a useful perspective on the science of plants in the Middle Ages: Karen Reeds, "Albert on the Natural Philosophy of Plant Life," pp. 341-54, and Jerry Stannard, "Albertus Magnus and Medieval Herbalism," pp. 355-77.

"These are things that only the herbalist must know" (p. 67): The notion of medical secrets, known only to physicians, dates back at least as early as the 5th-century B.C. Oath of Hippocrates, in which the physician promises, among other things, "to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentures pupils who have taken the physician's oath, but to nobody else." --Hippocrates, ed. and trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), vol. 1, p. 299.

"...naturally, Berenger" (p. 69): The adverb is used ambiguously, perhaps exploring further the theme of meanings "in bono" and "in malo" which is implied in the role of herbs as both medicines and poisons. [Michael Almony comments] The passage is in reference to homosexuality, and the operative word insidiously placed here is naturally. The word naturally is in reference to Alan de Lille's Complaint of Nature which is the most explicit diatribe against "sodomy" in medieval culture. Again referencing that homosexuality, and the sin of sodomy, is the sin against nature. Severinus' intention is to really say "unnaturally, Berengar," as he is the one to commit the unnatural act of sodomy. The reference to sodomy is also referenced by William of Baskerville's reaction to the conversation, i.e. he does not pursue it any farther and changes the subject. Homosexuality is again seen here as the unmentionable vice as referenced in the title of Michael Goodich's book The Unmentionable Vice:Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period (Dorset Press, 1979).



"work, for the Benedictine monk, is prayer" (p. 70): The liturgical offices are referred to in the Benedictine Rule, and throughout Benedictine monastic tradition, as opus Dei, the "work of God."

The next study page is First Day: After Nones (pp. 71-83)