Congratulations! You made it through Eco’s first 100 penitential pages! Don’t you want to know more? There’s so much to talk about that I don’t quite know where to start….
I need help with that. What do you need to make the reading, um...shall we say, less challenging? At least on the first read. It strikes me that maybe the best thing I can do while waiting for direction from you is to offer a two-part introduction, first on the history of the period, especially of the Church, which will make the rest of the book more comprehensible — no one ever accused Eco of writing down to his readers; he assumes you’ll know what he knows, but few of us do, and the rest of us have to use concordances — and second, on some of the stylistic tricks Eco uses to draw us into his world. Here goes nothin’!
First, a sketch of Church history — Table-setting, if you will
1. Why is the Pope the head of the Church?
Let’s get this out of the way, since it’s easy. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus said to his disciple Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Petrus means “rock” in Greek, so it’s a pun. But the upshot of it all is that Christ designates Peter as his heir, conferring on him his authority, the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and the power to “bind and unbind” on earth and in heaven. After Christ’s death and resurrection, Peter goes on to be an evangelist, eventually becoming the Bishop of Rome. Whereupon he died. Actually, he was martyred by order of Nero, crucified upside down and is probably buried beside Paul in the crypt beneath the high altar at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Since Peter was the Bishop of Rome, all subsequent bishops of Rome inherit Peter’s seat and Peter’s authority — the Petrine theory. So the Pope is not the pope (papa — father) because it’s a seat designated for the head guy, but because he’s the bishop of Rome, the heir of Peter. This holds true for every pope down to the present time.
This became a problem when the Pope moved to Avignon in France. How can the bishop of Rome be the bishop of Rome if he’s not in Rome?
2. Why did the Pope leave Rome in the first place?
It became politically expedient to do so. And Rome was getting dangerous for Popes.
Very briefly, the period of the Dark Ages (roughly 5th — 9th century) in Europe is marked by the collapse of organized power and authority. Rome fell, and there was really nothing to replace it. Where there had once been an empire subject to the same general laws, where people could travel pretty freely and conduct commerce, the collapse of civil authority led to what I would superficially call the Balkanization of Europe — warlords and petty rulers controlling roads and commerce.
Out of the mess of the Dark Ages, the Church provided a unifying and civilizing force. It had the power to promise eternal salvation, which is admittedly a powerful motivator to make people behave; even rulers found themselves pressured to bow to Church authority. The Church had an impressive arsenal of motivators, but the biggest cudgel of all was the power of Interdict.
Remember, because Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of Eden, their children inherited their Fallen State (Original Sin). Therefore, every child born in the world is not born innocent, but in a state of sin, a state removed by baptism. The sacraments: baptism, confirmation, confession and penance, communion, last rites; all lift the sinner temporarily from the state of sin to the state of grace. It’s a temporary state because, being fallen, we invariably sin. Each one of the sacraments requires the mediation of a priest: a priest to baptize, to hear confession, administer communion, apply last rites. Without a priest to do these things, you are going to fall deeper and deeper into sin, and you’re going to die in sin, and probably go to hell or the very at least, spend a long time in purgatory.
Interdict is a fancy word for ecclesiastical work-stoppage. If the Holy Roman Emperor sufficiently annoys the Pope, the Pope can declare all the lands under the HRE in interdict. Think of it: no one can be baptized, or married, or confessed and shriven, or even buried, while the interdict is in effect. If you’re king in a country where almost everyone is Christian, closing the Church means the damnation of every one of your subjects. How long are your subjects (remember: Job One in the Middle Ages is salvation) going to put up with you pissing off the Pope?
The papacy realizes it has enormous power. It wields it.
Fast forward a few centuries and you have an epic power struggle between the Church and secular authorities. Although the head of the Church wasn’t supposed to be a secular authority, he was. Not only did the Church own and control a lot of land (see Papal States), not only did the Church claim exclusive authority over ecclesiastics (a priest is accused of molesting a child; does the Church investigate or does the secular state take charge?), the Church under Boniface VIII in 1302 actually asserted supreme control over every believer and over every secular authority. Wikipedia does a good job explaining the history in the discussion of Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam.
Secular authorities did not take this well. Vassals loyal to the French king Philip IV beat and imprisoned Boniface, who died not long after. His successor lasted nine months before he, too, died.
In the struggle between secular forces under France and the Holy Roman Empire, in 1309, Pope Clement IV moved the papacy to Avignon, placing himself primarily under the protection of the French king and aligning the papacy with French interests. And there it stayed for 67 years.
3. What was special about the Avignon papacy?
Two main features mark the Avignon papacy, and they’re interconnected.
a) Improved administration. The bureaucracy of the Church centralized and increased in efficiency.
b) The papal court greatly expanded and became more elaborate.
By “expanded” and “elaborate,” I also mean “expensive.” This period of the Church is marked by the growth of any office that helped in the raising and collecting of taxes. I’m not saying that the Avignon papacy invented simony (the selling of Church offices) or the selling of indulgences (pardons for sins, even sins not yet committed) or the relic trade (Got Yer Saints here! Three for a buck!), but they sure did perfect the practices.
Wealth and power, prestige, abuse of authority, the Avignon papacy had it all. Little wonder John XXII saw the Franciscans as a threat.
Is that enough Church history to get going on with?
Eco’s Stylistic Tricks
The Prologue or, How Many Layers Deep Can We Bury This Narrative?
I could write for a whole evening just on the Preface — but won’t.
Suffice it to say that Eco has set himself an enormous task: convincing us as readers of the verity of his manuscript. In the Postscript to The Name of the Rose he writes that he chose the narration he did, burying the narrator’s “I” four layers deep, because it masked his own voice, his own ego as a writer and scholar (1, pp. 19-20). Which is a reasonable explanation, but it’s also one that’s necessary to give us as readers the illusion of authenticity, by placing Adso’s story in a frame. “Eco’s” manuscript is a rough Italian translation of a now-vanished French translation written by Abbé Vallon — and let us leave aside the hilarity of the situation that the book disappeared in a romantic breakup and our author didn’t dare ask for the book back — of a fourteenth century manuscript. Except that the edition “Eco” translated from appears not to exist anywhere, and all that’s left are the notebooks, since the base text is now out of reach.
On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth-century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German monk toward the end of the fourteenth century. (2, p. 4)
Thus from the start, the story is a palimpsest: a manuscript that has been erased incompletely and written over. An accidental survival, all of which resonates later in the novel.
It also sets us up to believe it’s possible. I’ve read a lot of novels about “newly-discovered” medieval manuscripts, and Eco pulls it off better than anyone else. He does it by distancing us from the text.
The Glosses
Before every section of the day, we have a gloss that tells us what’s going to happen. This is not a bug; it’s a feature.
Medieval manuscripts are big on glosses. The word “gloss,” which today implies deception (as in, “the Press Secretary glossed over the implications of the meeting”) in the Middle Ages was meant for clarification and commentary. Sometimes the glossing would overwhelm the base text.
For more about marginal glosses, you can’t do better than to look at the British Library’s Digital Manuscript Project.
But that’s not all. There’s a rich tradition of commenting in the margins (glossing) of medieval manuscripts — by their producers and by readers. There’s also the tradition of decoration — rubrication (colored capitals), illumination (decoration in silver and gold), marginalia, illustrations. The decoration had a two-fold purpose: 1) books were expensive and precious. In a monastery where learning is devoted to the glory of God, only the best will do; therefore, using decoration and illumination is appropriate. 2) Much of the decoration: chapter headings, colored capitals, etc. helped readers find and keep their place. Note: illumination is strictly defined as use of silver and gold. Colored inks are called decoration. Therefore, the capital D in the example above is a decorated capital. An illuminated manuscript by definition has silver and gold leaf used in the decoration.
Now, that works for fancy manuscripts. What happens when you’re reading a plain manuscript? Something more like a chronicle, like this:
You see a lot of glossing, but you also see a lot of plain text. Often chronicles go page after page after page with no place-markers. You can get lost easily.
During the 19th century, in the first real explosion of medieval studies, (think Early English Text Society) the main goal of scholarship was to transcribe manuscripts and publish them so scholars could study them. To make it easier for readers to keep their place in the text and to help with the unfamiliar languages, the early transcribers often stuck glosses that explained what was happening in the text. So that became a feature of 19th century editions of medieval texts, and something that Samuel Taylor Coleridge played with in his pseudo-ancient “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
Thus Eco, in giving us these little glosses, nods toward the 19th century Abbé Vallon edition of Adso’s manuscript, and another detail that establishes textual veracity.
I’ve probably tormented you enough for one week. On to discussion of the chapter! And resources for Monday, Day 2, are below the fold.
The Hours
The monastic day is marked by a rhythm of prayer and work. Our unnamed abbey is located high in the mountains of Northern Italy, and the hours and relative times are adjusted for the season. Remember, although rudimentary timepieces existed in the early fourteenth century, nothing like a clock was yet in use, and certainly not in so conservative a place as a Benedictine monastery.
The Hours refer to the services of prayer:
- Matins: a.k.a. Vigilae (holding vigil) 2:30 — 3:00 a.m.
- Lauds: 5:00 — 6:00 a.m.
- Prime: 7:30 a.m. (around daybreak)
- Terce: 9:00 a.m.
- Sext: noon
- Nones: 2:00 — 3:00 p.m.
- Vespers: 4:30 p.m. (around sunset)
- Compline: 6:00 p.m.
The monks go to bed around 7:00 p.m.
Dramatis Personae
The monastery is truly an international community. Here’s who’s who:
Adso of Melk: Benedictine Novice, from Germany
William of Baskerville: Franciscan monk, from England
Severinus of Sankt Wendel: German, herbalist.
Remigio of Varagine: cellerar, Italian. Varagine is present-day Varazze. Ref. to Jacobus de Varagine: wrote Legenda Aurea, collection of saints' lives
Abo of Fossanova: abbot, from Cistercian monastery of Fossanova
Adelmo of Otranto: marginal art, named for "Castle of Otranto"
Ubertino of Casale: Clunaic (a reform-minded sub-group of Cistercian order): Theologian
Salvatore: Italian peasant, serf.
Berengar of Arundel: assistant librarian, English
Malachi of Hildesham: librarian, German
Venantius of Salvemec: translator from Greek and Arabic, (There’s no place called Salvamec. Pun on “Salva me” - Help me)
Benno of Uppsala: Swedish, rhetorician
Aymaro of Alessandria: Italian, from the Piedmont
Patrick of Clonmacnois: Irish, illuminator
Rabano of Toledo: Spanish, illuminator
Magnus of Iona: Pictish, illuminator
Waldo of Hereford: English, illuminator
Jorge of Burgos: Spanish, confessor, blind
Alinardo of Grottaferrata: Italian, scholar
Nicholas of Morimondo: Italian, master glazier of the abbey, added plus: Mori mundi, death of the world. Another pun.
William of Baskerville references Sherlock Holmes and detective fiction, Jorge of Borges references Jorge Luis Borges, blindness, libraries and labyrinths; and three of the monks bear punning names: Nicholas of Morimondo, Venantius of Salvemec, and Adelmo of Otranto (clio2 probably has opinions about it). Morimondo and Salvemec — “death of the world” and “save me” — and Otranto references horrific gothic mystery.
All these little winks and nods are usually called “intertextual references” in literary criticism. They’re not idle references or little easter eggs; each one comments on the plot and/or the action.
Translations for Day 2, Monday
Matins
- Benedicamus Domino…Deo gratias: We bless the Lord…Thanks be to god
- Domine labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam: Lord, open my lips and my mouth will announce your praise. “Annuntiabit” related to Annunciation: as when the Holy Spirit came to the Virgin Mary and announced to her that she would bear Christ.
- Venite exultemus: Come let us rejoice
- Te Deum: Thee, O God. “Note: this hymn, formerly attributed to St. Ambrose, was probably written at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century by the Rumanian bishop Nicetas.” (Key, p.115)
- Deus qui est sanctorum splendor mirabilis: God who is the wonderful splendor of the saints
- Iam lucis orto sidere: Already the light of the rising star (this hymn survives in Carmina Burana)
- Omnis mundi creatura, quasi liber et scriptura…: All creatures of the world, like the Scripture and the book.
- Credo in unum Deum: I believe in one God (the opening of the Nicene Creed)
Prime
- Infima doctrina: Iower (inferior) learning
- Naturalier: naturally
- Est domus in terris, clara quae cove resultat. / Ipsa domus resonat, tacitus sed non sonat hospes. / Ambo tamen currunt, hospes simul et domus una. : There is a house on earth, that speaks with a clear voice./The house itself echoes, but the guest makes no sound. / Yet both run on, the house and its guest as one.
- Finis Africae: the end of Africa
Terce
- Filii Dei they are, etc. Sons of God they are…Jesus has said that you do for him what you do for one of these children!
- Merdre à toy: shit on you
- Filii de Francesco non sunt hereticos….Ille menteur, puah!: The sons of [St] Francis are not heretics. That liar, puah!
- Fabulas poetae a fando nominaverunt, quia non sun res factae sed tantum loquendo fictae: Poets named them stories, because they are not true things, but spoken fictions. “Note: From Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 1.40.1” (Key, p. 118)
- Stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam: The fool raises his voice in laughter. “Note: From the Rule of Saint Benedict, chapter 7, “De humilitate,” “On humility.” (Key, p. 119)
- Scurrilitates vero vel verba otiose et risum moventia aeterna clausura in omnibus locis damnamus, et ad talia eloquia discipulum aperire os non permittitur: However useless joking and idle words that incite laughter we condemn at all times and in all places, and the disciple is not allowed to open his mouth for such speech. “Note: from the Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 6, “De taciurnitate,” “On Silence.” This same passage was part of the sacred reading at the evening meal on the First Day: ‘But vulgarities, nonsense, and jests we condemn to perpetual imprisonment, in every place, and we o not allow the disciple to open his mouth for speech of this sort.” (Key, p.119)
- Spiritualiter salsa: Do I really need to translate this?
- De habitu et conversatione monachorum: On the robes and conversation of monks. In other words: On monastic decorum.
- Admittenda tibi ioca sunt post seria quaedam, sed tamen et dignis et ipsa gerenda modis: After serious matters, you should allow some jokes, as long as they are both worthy and appropriate.
- Deus non est: There is no God.
- Tu es petrus: You are the rock. Ref. to Jesus’ words to Peter: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” A pun on the Latin word: Petrus, meaning “rock.” The foundation of the Petrine theory.
- Speculum stultorum: the Mirror of Fools
- Tum podex carmen extulit horridulum: Then his ass expelled a horrible song.
Nones
After Vespers
- Hunc mundum tipice labyrinthus denotata ille …. Intranti largus, redeunti sed nimis artus: The labyrinth allegorically represents this world… Wide upon entry, but narrow upon exit. “Note: This inscription, dated 903 A.D., appears, together with the signs of the zodiac, in the church of San Savion in Piacena. It goes on to say that he who is captivated by this world and weighed down by the burden of his vices is able to return only with difficulty to the doctrine of life.” (Key, p. 122)
- Ossarium: Tomb of bones.
- Aqua fons vitae: Water, the source of life. You’re going to see a lot of fons. It means “fountain,” but also “birthplace,” “source,” “beginning.”
Compline
- Mane, Tekel, Peres: the words of the “handwriting on the wall from the Book of Daniel. The end is at hand
- Secretum finis Africa: The secret at the end of Africa
- Graecum est, non legitur: It’s Greek, I can’t read it. Really. That’s what it said. I can read Greek, although poorly.
After Compline
- Super thronos viginti quatuor: On their thrones, twenty-four Rev. 4:4
- Nomen illi mors: His name was death. Rev 6:8
- Obscuratus est sol et aer: The sun and air were made dark. Rev. 9:2
- Facta est grand et ignis: There were hail and fire. Rev 8:7
- In diebus illis: In those days. Rev. 9:6
- Primogenitus mortorum: the eldest of the dead (the firstborn, referring to Jesus). Rev. 1:5
- Cecidit de coelo stella magna: A bright star fell from heaven. Rev. 8:10
- Equus albus: A white horse. Rev. 6:2
- Gratia vobis et pax: Grace and peace be with you. Rev. 1:4
- Tertia pars terrae combusta est: A third part of the earth was burned. Rev. 8:7
- De aspectibus: About images (Key translates as “optics,”)
- Oculi ad legendum: eyes for reading
- De oculis…De radiis stallatis: About eyes, About starlight
- Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus: The book of Monsters of Various Sorts.
- Requiescant a laboribus suis: May they find rest after their labors. Rev. 14:13
- Mulier amicta sole: A woman robed in sunlight. Rev. 12:1
Sources
1. Eco, Umberto. Postscript to The Name of the Rose. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1984.
2. Eco, Umberto. Postscript to The Name of the Rose. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1984.
3. Haft, Adele J., and Jane G. White and Robert J. White. The Key to “The Name of the Rose.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Previous Diaries
The Language of the Night Crossover/Daily Kos Book Club: Signs, Nature, and Signs of the Apocalypse.
Daily Kos Book Club: The Name of the Rose, Starting Off