The Name of the Rose
First Day: Vespers (pp. 84-92)
The preceding study page was First
Day: After Nones (pp. 71-83)
Mail questions and comments to Professor Anderson.
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.
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.
Topics:
"The rest of the abbey is visited" (p. 84): The
architectural plan and physical details of the monastery
no doubt are based on several sources. Abbot Suger of
St. Denis's De rebus administratione sua gestis,
for instance, was the source for some details of church
decoration and for the abbey treasures. No doubt some
actual monasteries also influenced Eco. But his most
important source would have been the "Plan of St. Gall,"
an architectural plan for an ideal monastery, which
goes back to Carolingian times but is preserved in a
copy made at the request of Gozbert, the abbot of St. Gall,
sometime after 830 AD. Gozbert had requested a copy of
the plan to be used as a guide for some reconstruction
that he was undertaking at the monastery ofSt. Gall. The
plan still survives, on five parchments sewn together, in
the library of the great church in St. Gall, and is regarded
as a national treasure of Switzerland.
Eco's source for the "Plan of St. Gall" probably was a
3-volume study by Walter Horn and Ernest Born, The
Plan of St. Gall (Berkeley: University of California,
1979) [NA5843 .H67 -- Art Library]. A convenient one-volume summary, with many
useful illustrations, is Lorna Price, The Plan of
St. Gall in Brief (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982)[NA5843 .P74 1982--Art Library].
William's pince nez spectacles and the study of
optics (pp. 86-87): This recalls the detail of William's
spectacles at page 74, in the chapter "First Day: Toward Nones"
(pp. 65-83). My notes on that passage are repeated here for
convenience:
Eco's most immediate source for this detail is Umberto Eco and
G. B. Zorzoli, The Picture History of Inventions, trans.
Anthony Lawrence (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 10-111,
"The Development of Optics." The pince nez eyeglasses that Adso describes
appear in a picture on page 108 of this source. William's
comment that spectacles prolong the career of a scholar
beyond the age of 50 is part of Eco's and Zorzoli's discussion
at the top of page 110. Mre general is the theme of the
very gradual dissemination of spectacles in Europe. They
were first invented probably in the 13th century in Italy,
but had not yet reached the Benedictine monastery: Eco
and Zorzoli note that spectacles did not become generally
available to the merchant class until the 16th century. Beyond
the immediate theme of the technology of spectacles, and
the contrast between the pince nez style of spectacles in the
medieval period (which are based on a mistaken understanding
of optics) and the modern style of glasses which first
appear in the 15th century, there are two more general
philosophical questions:
(1) The technology of spectacles are a product of the
natural science of "optics," which for the Scholastic
philosophers was important as a basis for advances in
theology. Roger Bacon thought of optics as the most
important of all sciences and the basis of all future
progress in science.
(2) Pince nez spectacles were the forerunners of the
microscope and the telescope and thus symbolize William
of Baskerville's role as a "proto-modern" thinker, similar
in this regard to Roger Bacon and William of Occam.
"Oculi de vitro cum capsula!" (p.86). [Anne Butera Comments "’I
want to show you a creation of our own times of which I am honored to own a
very useful example," thus says William to Nicholas the glazier, pulling out
his eyeglasses(86). Nicholas suggests that of such a device "many would
speak of witchcraft and diabolical machination" (87). William then points
out a distinction between two types of magic. One type is "the work of the
Devil" and another "is divine, where God’s knowledge is made manifest
through knowledge of man, and it serves to transform nature and one of its
ends is to prolong man’s very life" (87). This in bono definition of
magic overlaps with a general definition of medicine, to prolong human life.
The God given nature of medical knowledge can be seen in the writings of
Hildegard of Bingen. She writes, "In all creation, trees, plants, animals,
and gem stones, there are hidden secret powers which no person can know of
unless they are revealed by God" (from Physica quoted in Strehlow,
Wighard and Gottfried Hertzka, M.D. Hildegard of Bingen’s Medicine.
Sante Fe: Bear, 1988. Page xviii). In a thirteenth century ordinance
governing trade, glasses were referred to as "lapides ad legendum"
which roughly translates to "stones for reading" (Ellis, William S.
Glass: From the First Mirror to Fiber Optics, the Story of the Substance
that Changed the World. New York: Avon, 1998 page 156). Glass is
created when natural materials are manipulated by people in certain ways.
This manipulation can be seen as a revelation of those "stones’" secret
powers. The "secret" use of glass as an aid to vision can therefore only
have an in bono definition. For the glazier, frustrated with the
work of making reliquaries, this new science provides new work. And yet the
production of eyeglasses is not only medical or scientific, it is also
artistic: "medicine is not only a science; it is also an art" (Ackerknecht,
Erwin, M.D. A Short History of Medicine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1982. Page xviii).
"it is . . . less costly for our minds to believe that Adelmo
. . . threw himself of his own will from the parapet of the wall"
(p. 91) [comment by Joe Motta]: Towards the end of the first day, William informs Adso that he has
become convinced that Adelmo committed suicide. When Adso asks why,
William states that it is "less costly for our minds to believe that
Adelmo . . . threw himself of his own will from the parapet of the wall
. . . ." He further instructs Adso that "one should not multiply
explanations and causes unless it is strictly necessary." In making
such statements, William is applying a principle espoused by William of
Occam known as "Occam's razor." The principle is also called the "law
of parsimony" and the "law of economy." Occam expressed this
proposition in several ways:
1. It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer. (Frustra
fit per pluraquod potest fieri per pauciora).
2. When a proposition comes out true for two things, if two things
suffice for it, it is superfluous to assume a third. (Quando propositio
verificutar pro rebus, si duae res sufficiunt ad eius veritatem,
superfluum est ponere tertiam).
3. Pluarlity should not be assumed without necessity (Pluralitas non est
ponenda sine necessitate).
4. Entities are not to be multipled beyond necessity (Non sunt
multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem).
Although the principle was employed before Occam by Durand de
Saint-Pourcain (d. 1332), a French Dominican theologian and philosopher,
Occam mentioned the rule so frequently and used it so acutely that it
was eventually referred to as Occam's razor. For example, he used it to
dispense with the concept of "efficient causality," which he viewed as
no more than a regularity of succession. We see William of Baskerville
adopt this view on page 206, when he states, "[I]f only the sense of the
individual is just, the proposition that identical causes have identical
effects is difficult to prove."
References:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994.
Carpenter, Barry; Hoffman, Ronald; and Minkin, Vladimir I. "Ockham's
Razor and Chemistry." HYLE--An International Journal for the
Philosophy of Chemistry. Vol. 3 (1997), pp. 3-28.
Dwarfs on the shoulders of dwarfs (p. 89): William here adapts
a metaphor that Alanus de Insulus uses in Anticlaudianus,
in his representation of 13th-century science: the moderns
are dwarfs who stand upon the shoulders of giants and
therefore can see farther than the giants (Curtius,
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, p. 119. Alanus here alludes to a saying attributed
to Bernard of Chartres (d. ca. 1119-1130). Through
William's adaptation of this theme, Eco alludes to the
topos of the "decline of learning" introduced in as part
of the "ageing of the world" theme in the Prologue.
For the history of the topos of "dwarfs on the shoulders
of giants": R. Klibansky, Isis 26 (1936):147-49.
"They were called the Pastoureaux, the Shepherds" (pg. 92) [Jacqueline J.
Reese comments] I find it interesting that there is such extreme
contradiction in the word Shepherd. Jesus Christ was referring to Himself
when He recommended His followers to pray Psalm 23 that starts, "The Lord is
my Shepherd, I shall not want." The Shepherd here is considered a leader of
a flock, just as Christ is the leader of His Church. But in the 13th
century, the word Shepherd took on a new meaning. These rebellious heretics
sacrificed any material possessions they had and resorted to only carrying
sacks of limited possessions to survive. The fact they were brutally
slaughtered is the only similarity to Christ sharing the same tile of
Shepherd. Reference: The Poor in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 1-11, 38-53, 59-69, 119-190.
The next study page is "First Day:
Compline" (pp. 93-97).