The Name of the Rose (1980) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• William of Baskerville: main protagonist, a Franciscan friar
• Adso of Melk: narrator, Benedictine novice, scribe, and disciple to William
• Abo of Fossanova: the abbot of the Benedictine monastery
• Adelmo of Otranto: illuminator, novice, and first to die
• Ubertino of Casale: Franciscan friar in exile, and friend of William
• Benno of Uppsala: student of rhetoric
• Severinus of Sankt Wendel: herbalist
• Malachi of Hildesheim: librarian
• Berengar of Arundel: assistant librarian, in love with Adelmo
• Venantius of Salvemec: translator of manuscripts
• Alinardo of Grottaferrata: eldest monk
• Jorge of Burgos: elderly blind monk, former librarian
• Remigio of Varagine: cellarer
• Salvatore of Montferrat: secretive and gluttonous monk who speaks in a strange composite jargon, associate of Remigio
• Bernardo Gui: Inquisitor
• Bertrand del Poggetto: Cardinal and leader of the Papal legation

Quotes edit see section history

• “In the pages to follow I shall not indulge in descriptions of persons - except when a facial expression, or a gesture, appears as a sign of a mute but eloquent language - because, as Boethius says, nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn; and what would be the point of saying today that the abbot Abo had a stern eye and pale cheeks, when by now he and those around him are dust and their bodies have the mortal grayness of dust (only their souls, God grant, shining with a light that will never be extinguished)?”

  Adso of Melk

• “They claimed that Christ and the apostles had owned no property, individually or in common; and the Pope condemned this idea as heretical. An amazing position, because there is no evident reason why a pope should consider perverse the notion that Christ was poor: but only a year before, a general chapter of the Franciscans in Perugia had sustained this opinion, and in condemning the one, the Pope was condemning also the other.”

  Adso of Melk

• “I knew him slightly. I don't like him. A man without fervor, all head, no heart.”

• “But the head is beautiful.”

• “Perhaps, and it will take him to hell.”

• “Then I will see him again down there, and we will argue logic.”

• “Hush, William," Ubertino said, smiling with deep affection, " you are better than your philosophers.”

  Ubertino of Casale and William of Baskerville about William of Occam

• “It seemed to me that the difference did not lie in the actions of the one or the other, but in the church's attitude when she judged this act or that.”

  Adso of Melk

• “As an ancient proverb says, three fingers hold the pen, but the whole body works. And aches.”

  Adso of Melk

• “And as for the heretics, I also have a rule, and it is summed up in the reply that Arnald Amalaricus, Bishop of Cîteaux, gave to those who asked him what to do with the citizens of Béziers: Kill them all, God will recognize His own.”

  Abo of Fossanova

• “Yes. We were talking about those excluded from the flock of sheep. For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying "lepers" we would understand "outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities." But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.”

  William of Baskerville

• “My boy,' he said, 'you have before you a poor Franciscan who, with his modest learning and what little skill he owes to the infinite power of the lord, has succeeded in a few hours in deciphering a secret code whose author was sure would prove sealed to all save himself... and you, wretched illiterate rogue, dare say we are still where we started?”

  William of Baskerville

• “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind.”

  William of Baskerville

• “I learned later that, reading books off medicine, you are always convinced you feel the pains of which they speak.”

  Adso of Melk

• “The prince can and must condemn the heretic if his action harms the community, that is, if the heretic, in declaring his heresy, kills or impedes those who do not share it. But at that point the power of prince ends, because no one on this earth can be forced through torture to follow the precepts of the Gospel: otherwise what would become if that free will on the exercising of which each one of us will be judged in the next world?”

  William of Baskerville

• “You see?' he said to me. 'Under torture or the threat of torture, a man says not only what he has done but what he would have liked to do even if he didn't know it. Remigio now wants death with all his soul.”

  William of Baskerville

• “And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.”

  William of Baskerville

• “No one ever obliges us to know, Adso. We must, that is all, even if we comprehend imperfectly.”

  William of Baskerville

• “Laughter, for a few moments, distracts the villein from fear. But law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God.”

  Jorge of Burgos

• “Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil you live in darkness.”

  William of Baskerville

• “Don't build a castle of suspicions on one word.”

  Ubertino

• “He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason is he odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.”

  William

• “He (Salvatore) replied that when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. I (Ado) reflected that this is why the simple are so called. Only the powerful always know with great clarity who their true enemies are.”

• “But how does it happen," I replied with admiration, "that you were able to solve the mystery of the library looking at it from the outside, and you were unable to solve it when you were inside?""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.”

  Adso and William

• “The good of a book lies in its being read....Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.”

  William

• “Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also learning what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

  William

• “The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text. /The postscript/”

• “I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.”

  William

• “My flesh had forgotten the intense pleasure, sinful and fleeting (a base thing), that union with her had given me; but my soul had not forgotten her face, and could not manage to feel that this memory was perverse: rather, it throbbed as if in that face shone all the bliss of creation.”

  Adso

• “And you, I said with childish impertinence, never commit errors?Often, he answered. But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.”

  Adso and William

• “You are trying to convince yourself that this whole story proceeded according to a divine plan, in order to conceal from yourself the fact that you are a murderer.”

  William

• “But if one day somebody, brandishing the words of the Philosopher <Aristotle> and therefore speaking as a philosopher, were to raise the weapon of laughter to the condition of subtle weapon, if the rhetoric of conviction were replaced by the rhetoric of mockery, if the topics of the patient construction of the images of redemption were to be replaced by the topics of the impatient dismantling and upsetting of every holy and venerable image - oh, that day even you, William, and all your knowledge, would be swept away!”

• “Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”

  William

• “Where is all my wisdom, then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.”

• “But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primigenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• 'Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means,

  Highlighted by 47 Kindle customers

• Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

  Highlighted by 44 Kindle customers

• learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.'

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• the beauty of the cosmos derives not only from unity in variety, but also from variety in unity.

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• The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance.

  Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers

• Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.'

  Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers

• I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.'

  Highlighted by 36 Kindle customers

• He replied that when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• 'We are dwarfs,' William admitted, 'but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they.'

  Highlighted by 25 Kindle customers

• I felt dull and somnolent, for daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh: the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Ultima Thule: An island country far to the north; it may denote any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world." Historically, it has been used to refer to Iceland or Greenland.
• Hyperborea: A mythical land believed by the Greeks to lie far north of Thrace, possibly in the Arctic Circle. The name means "beyond Boreas", Boreas being the North Wind.

Organizations edit see section history

• The Order of Friars Minor: The order of Franciscan monks.
• Fraticelli: A heretical offshoot of the Franciscan order, who emphasized the virtue of poverty.

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Matins: A liturgical hour (which Adso sometimes refers to by the older expression "Vigiliae"). Between 2:30 and 3 in the morning.
• Lauds: A liturgical hour (which in the most ancient tradition were called "Matutini" or "Matins"). Between 5 and 6 in the morning, in order to end at dawn.
• Prime: A liturgical hour. Around 7:30, shortly before daybreak.
• Terce: A liturgical hour. Around 9 in the morning.
• Sext: A liturgical hour. Noon (in a monastery where the monks did not work in the fields, it was also the hour of the midday meal in winter).
• Nones: A liturgical hour. Between 2 and 3 in the afternoon.
• Vespers: A liturgical hour. Around 4:30, at sunset (the Rule prescribes eating supper before dark).
• Compline: A liturgical hour. Around 6 at night (before 7, the monks go to bed).
• Cellarer: A person, usually a monk, responsible for providing food and drink.
• Minorite: A Franciscan monk; the term comes from the official name of the Franciscan order, the Order of Friars Minor.
• Glabrous: Smooth, having no hair.
• Illuminator: Someone who decorates a manuscript with things like illustrations, decorated initials and borders. In the strictest sense, only gold and silver would be used to illuminate.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Umberto Eco (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Aurora Fornoni Bernardini (Translator) - Brazilian Portuguese translator
2. Homero Freitas de Andrade (Translator) - Brazilian Portuguese translator
3. Елена Костюкович (Translator)
4. Morana Čale (Translator) - Croatian translator
5. Theodore Bikel (Narrator)
6. Maria Celeste Pinto (Translator) - Portuguese

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #174)
• Premio Strega (1981, #1)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PQ4865.C6 P613 1984
• Dewey: 853.914

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Fiction › Mystery
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Mystery › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › Italian
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia article: The Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. First published in Italian in 1980 under the title Il nome della rosa, it appeared in English in 1983, translated by William Weaver.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Name of the Rose (1986) (IMDb): Staring Sean Connery, Ron Perlman, and F. Murray Abraham

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