“In the year 1327, Brother William of Baskerville is assigned an investigation of a possible heresy in a wealthy Italian Abbey, Abbaye de la Source, somewhere between Pompeii and Passy.
The Novel is narrated by a young Benedictine novice and William’s assistant, Adso of Melk. The story occurs in seven days of 1327, and the chapters are related to the daily monastic life of a Benedictine convent’s canonical hours: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Compline. The book is 503 pages long, so it comes to around 72 pages/day.
The religious bacground is ruled by the protagonists Pope John XXII (1249 – December 4, 1334), born Jacques Duèze (or d'Euse), who was pope from 1316 to 1334. He was the second Pope of the Avignon Papacy. (1309-1377), elected by a conclave in Lyon assembled by Philip V of France. Like his predecessor, Clement V, he centralized power and income in the Papacy, living a princely life in Avignon and spending a lot of money for his court and his wars.
The Pope opposed Louis IV of Bavaria as emperor, and Louis, in turn invaded Italy, and set up an antipope, Nicholas V. Pope John XXII had set a a constitution concerning the taxae sacrae poenitentiariae in which the pope exploited the sins of the religious in order to squeeze out more money by creating the indulgence. However the Franciscans had a vow of poverty and opposed this doctrine, thus the Pope wanted to declare them heretics because the Franciscan belief was not good for his business.
So William of Baskerville arrives to the Abbaye de la Source to see if a mediation is possible between the two factions, since there is a suspicion that some of the members of the abbey are against the indulgences.
His mission is overshadowed by a series of bizarre deaths and accusations of homosexuality between certain monks—so Brother William, aided by Adso, turn detectives. Their mission now is to find the killer before the two factions: the Italians who believe in the vow of poverty, and the French who want to continue the practice of indulgence arrive for a meeting to consider a compromise.
William’s tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon—all sharpened to a glistened edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity. William collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where the most interesting things happen at night. His foes are secrecy, religious rules and a secret desire to guard the library—for only the librarian can control the knowledge that leaves the convent.
It is no accident that the book starts out as a mystery and continues to deceive the reader until the climactic end—until the reader realizes that this is a mystery in which very little is discovered and the good detective is defeated. It is no accident, either, that the book should have been edited—it contains long didactic passages that even the book editors requested be edited out. The author’s explanation for boring you to death with them is that if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days—he had to accept the abbey’s slow pace. Therefore there are several hundred pages that are purposely left as a penance or an initiation. Unfortunately for us, the readers, the penance is almost all the way to the end—until we discover that the historical premise and the crimes had nothing to do with the book. But rather it was a theological debate on the role of laughter on religious doctrine.
“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 (religious) conviction were replaced by the rhetoric of mockery, if the topics of the impatient dismantling and upsetting of every holy and venerable image...You yourself (William) would be caught in the devil’s plot.” page 476.
At the end, when seven murders have occurred to hide a book by Aristotle that praises laughter William concludes: “Now the Antichrist is truly at hand, because no learning will hinder him anymore.”
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