—New York Times
“A PUZZLING, SCARY DETECTIVE STORY ... a picture of the dark side of 14th century monasticism ... rich in philosophical and theological arguments ... demanding ... gripping ... (not) easily forgotten.”
—Wall Street Journal
“A KIND OF NOVEL THAT CHANGES OUR MIND, replaces our reality with its own. We live in a new world … a time of multiple popes and multiple anti-Christs, a time when a man would trade sexual favors for a book, when the papal palace in Avignon displayed ‘crucifixes where Christ is nailed by a single hand while the other touches a purse hanging from his belt, to indicate that he authorizes the use of money for religious ends. …’ The plot is as neat as Conan Doyle or Christie. … We accept the tale as Eco submits it, ‘for sheer narrative pleasure’: ‘For it is a tale of books, not of everyday worries.’ ”
—Los Angeles Times
“A LONG, RICH, MULTILAYERED NOVEL about murder, dogma, heresy and the pursuit of knowledge, both sacred and profane, in 14th century Italy. And he has given us that rare gift, a truly popular novel that has been accepted by critics as well. … The mystery in itself is intriguing, but the real pleasure is in the richness of context and character. Eco has written a novel that celebrates imagination and skepticism, faint but important lights in dark times. He also makes it clear that such qualities are needed just as much now, in our own times.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“SPLENDID … AN EXCITING DETECTIVE STORY, a colorful evocation of medieval life and a lively morality tale on fanaticism, books and the search for truth ... Eco is a superb practitioner of the art of creating character, dialogue, setting and plot. And for all its erudition, the book moves with the pace of a thriller.”
—Newsday
“PRODIGIOUS NECROMANCY. ... An alchemical marriage of murder mystery and Christian mystery. It conveys remarkably the desperation of a dying culture, while at the same time touching on perennial issues of love, religion, scholarship and politics.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A MASTERWORK by a scholar who knows how to play ... dazzling ... delightful ... masterfull.”
—Houston Chronicle
“A BRILLIANTLY CONCEIVED ADVENTURE into another time, an intelligent and complex novel and a lively and well-plotted mystery.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A PAGE-TURNER ABOUT IDEAS. ... A brilliant match of method and material, The Name of the Rose is that rarest of literary blossoms.”
—Pittsburgh Press
“AMAZINGLY COMPLEX, RICHLY TEXTURED AND UNAPOLOGETICALLY INTELLIGENT ... ambitious, creative, thought provoking. Like the best books from any age, it opens up a new world and helps us understand our old one—and ourselves—a little better.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“ABSORBING AND PROVOCATIVE … one begins to understand how medieval clerics reasoned. Then one begins to think in the same way. Finally, with a certain discomfort, one realizes that these antique habits of thought are still present and active, working under modern aliases. This is the real purpose of Mr. Eco’s novel—to make the reader see the similarities between the fourteenth century and today. The mystery, while not irrelevant, is frosting on a rather rich cake.”
—Atlantic Monthly
“A RARE EXPEDITION into an age when the word was still divine, when language was a weapon and books were treasures of untold worth. The Name of the Rose is a book of concealment and revelation ... Eco revels in his creation. Like any Renaissance man, he will not only teach but must also delight ... Machiavelli would be intrigued. And Boccaccio (no mean philosopher himself) could only be charmed.”
—Vogue
“THIS ROSE IS MANY-PETALED ... Eco’s learning is prodigious. Fortunately, it does not interfere with his keen satiric sense. … The Name of the Rose is a first-class mystery, but it does have higher claims as well. Eco asserts these by using the genre itself as a trope; the mystery is a figure for all epistemological questioning—how do we know things, what can we know?”
—New Republic
“WHOLLY ENGROSSING as a mystery. It also gives a brilliant picture of the late Middle Ages. … Wonderful passages describe the physical realities of those times, while others reflect the dazzling testaments and debates that later would lead both to the Renaissance and to the Reformation.”
—Boston Ledger
“ELOQUENT ... an antidetective-story detective story ... it is superbly entertaining; it is also an extraordinary work of novelistic art.”
—Harper’s
“SUCCEEDS IN BEING AMUSING AND AMBITIOUS AT THE SAME TIME. It can be regarded as a philosophical novel masked as a detective story, or as a detective story masked as a historical novel, or even better as a blend of all three. The venture sounds improbable, but Eco carries it out ... with brio and irony ... a delightful humor. William Weaver’s translation brings out the eloquence of the original.”
—New York Review of Books
“IT HAS BOTH A SENSE OF HUMOR AND A SENSE OF EXCITEMENT, a combination of qualities that is quite rare. But it also has moral and philosophical implications about liberty and tolerance.”
—Newark Star-Ledger
“WONDERFUL ... Eco’s plot unfolds on many levels, at once comic, historical, philosophical and mythic. … A book with simultaneous popular and esoteric appeal, The Name of the Rose can be read as a sophisticated murder mystery—who killed the seven monks, and why?—or as a philosophical fable about—among other things—the stupidity of censorship, the necessity of tolerance, the vitality of ideas and the condition of man.”
—The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
“A GOOD READ WELL WORTH THE TIME IT TAKES. It is a book filled with digressions, spreading over an ocean of time, of ideas, and of human prejudices. There is a bit of sex, a touch of science, a smattering of philosophy, a stench of political intrigue. It repays each and every intellectual stretch that it demands.”
—Toledo Blade
“INDEED A WHODUNIT, but be prepared to turn pages in both directions. It demands a strenuous exercise of the imagination, and a reader who is in shape for this will linger over the vibrant textures of daily life in the 14th century, over the evocation of dramatic heresies and schisms, that sundered the medieval Christian community. Some will delight in catching allusions to modern personalities, among them John Paul II, Stalin and Che Guevera.”
—San Antonio Light
“MAGICAL ... Far more than unraveling a mystery, Eco’s tale, painstakingly translated by William Weaver, reveals a wondrous, if forgotten, world with more than faint echoes for those who still enjoy thinking today.”
—Rochester Post-Bulletin (Minnesota)
“NO SIMPLE DETECTIVE STORY ... the author writes with both erudition and wit. ... The book was a bestseller in Europe and scooped up several major literary awards. Read it and you’ll have no problem discovering why.”
—Wichita Eagle-Beacon
“A MANY-FACETED GEM OF A NOVEL ... Through Eco’s brilliant use of the language, the 14th century comes alive. ... You are transported effortlessly back in time to an era of doubts, suspicions, upheaval and madness. You feel, taste, touch and become a part of one of the most colorful and frightening periods of history. This beautifully written, philosophical as well as intriguing investigation is no mere detective tale.”
—Worcester Telegram (Massachusetts)
“The Name of the Rose follows the Sherlock Holmes form: a series of baffling crimes which can only be solved through the intervention of a master detective who opposes his scientific methods to the prevailing emotionalism and superstition. ... But was there ever a mystery story like this? Eco demonstrates what many fans of the genre have always suspected, that sometimes a “low’ form of literature can provide the best solution to the labyrinth of the human heart.”
—Rochester Times-Union (New York)
“FASCINATING. … What Eco has given us beneath the guise of a complex murder
mystery is a moral, intellectual, and spiritual guided tour of a time in human history that seems, for all its crudity of creature comforts, more richly textured than our own. ... We come away enriched by seeing contemporary questions unraveled through a parallel, but distinctive, historical period.”
—Seattle Weekly
“EXTRAORDINARILY FASCINATING with numerous levels of interest. ... Mystery enthusiasts will love its unusual setting and medievalists will breathe a sigh of pleasure at its convivial rendering of life in the early part of the 14th century.”
—Santa Cruz Sentinel
“A RICHLY TEXTURED PORTRAIT OF THE TIMES; the pungent foods, herbal medicines, sexual mores. This masterful, far-ranging novel—narrated with elegance, spirit, and wit—has won top literary awards in Europe.”
—Mystery News
“A REMARKABLE READING EXPERIENCE ... a novel that reeks of the spicy magic of an illuminated manuscript recovered from a well-sealed treasure chest.”
—Portland Oregonian
“WONDERFUL ... MAGNIFICENT ... WELL-WRITTEN, WELL-CONCEIVED, AN EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT BOOK Readers who enjoyed Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror will also enjoy this.”
—Tulsa World
“ENLIGHTENING AS IT ENTERTAINS. Eco’s novel reads like Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Mann combined forces. Once you begin it, you will certainly finish it.”
—Greensboro News
“BOTH AN ENTERTAINING DETECTIVE STORY AND A TOUR-DE-FORCE OF MEDIEVAL SCHOLARSHIP ... BOTH AN ENTERTAINING PUZZLE AND A RICHLY DETAILED PORTRAIT OF ANOTHER WORLD.”
—Grand Rapids Press
THE NAME
OF THE ROSE
UMBERTO ECO
Translated from the Italian by
William Weaver
A Warner Communications Company
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1980 by Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri-Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas S.p.A .
English translation copyright © 1983 by Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc. and Martin Secker & Warburg Limited.
This Warner Books Edition is published by arrangement with
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
1250 Sixth Avenue
San Diego, Ca. 92101
Illustration on title by Rita Grasso
Cover Design by Jackie Merri Meyer Cover art by Sanjultan
Additional cover illustration from a manuscript of the Apocalypse;
photography authorized by El Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid.
Warner Books, Inc.
666 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10103
A Warner Communications Company
Printed in the United States of America
First Warner Books Printing: June, 1984
Reissued: September, 1986
10 9
ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND CORPORATIONS
WARNER books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: SPECIAL SALES DEPARTMENT, WARNER BOOKS, 666 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10103.
ARE THERE WARNER BOOKS
YOU WANT BUT CANNOT FIND IN YOUR LOCAL STORES?
You can get any WARNER BOOKS title in print. Simply send title and retail price, plus 50¢ per order and 50¢ per copy to cover mailing and handling costs for each took desired. New York State and California residents add applicable sales tax. Enclose check a money order only, no cash please, to: WARNER BOOKS, P.O. BOX 690, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10019.
NATURALLY, A MANUSCRIPT
PREFACE
ON AUGUST 16, 1968, I WAS HANDED A BOOK WRITTEN by a certain Abbé Vallet, Le Manuscrit de Dom Adson de Melk, traduit en français d’après l’édition de Dom J. Mabillon (Aux Presses de l’Abbaye de la Source, Paris, 1842). Supplemented by historical information that was actually quite scant, the book claimed to reproduce faithfully a fourteenth-century manuscript that, in its turn, had been found in the monastery of Melk by the great eighteenth-century man of learning, to whom we owe so much information about the history of the Benedictine order. The scholarly discovery (I mean mine, the third in chronological order) entertained me while I was in Prague, waitin for a dear friend. Six days later Soviet troops invaded that unhappy city. I managed, not without adventure, to reach the Austrian border at Linz, and from there I journeyed to Vienna, where I met my beloved, and together we sailed up the Danube.
In a state of intellectual excitement, I read with fascination the terrible story of Adso of Melk, and I allowed myself to be so absorbed by it that, almost in a single burst of energy, I completed a translation, using some of those large notebooks from the Papeterie Joseph Gibert in which it is so pleasant to write if you use a felt-tip pen. And as I was writing, we reached the vicinity of Melk, where, perched over a bend in the river, the handsome Stift stands to this day, after several restorations during the course of the centuries. As the reader must have guessed, in the monastery library I found no trace of Adso’s manuscript.
Before we reached Salzburg, one tragic night in a little hotel on the shores of the Mondsee, my traveling-companionship was abruptly interrupted, and the person with whom I was traveling disappeared—taking Abbé Vallet’s book, not out of spite, but because of the abrupt and untidy way in which our relationship ended. And so I was left with a number of manuscript notebooks in my hand, and a great emptiness in my heart.
A few months later, in Paris, I decided to get to the bottom of my research. Among the few pieces of information I had derived from the French book, I still had the reference to its source, exceptionally detailed and precise:
Vetera analecta, sive collectio veterum aliquot operum & opusculorum omms generis, carminum, epistolarum, diplomaton, epitaphiorum, &, cum itinere germanico, adnotationibus & aliquot disquisitionibus R.PD. Joannis Mabillon, Presbiteri ac Monachi Ord. Sancti Benedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri—Nova Editio cui accessere Mabiloii vita & aliquot opuscula, scilicet Dissertatio de Pane Eucharistico, Azymo et Fermentato ad Eminentiss. Cardinalem Bona. Subiungitur opusculum Eldefonsi Hispaniensis Episcopi de eodem argumento Et Eusebii Romani ad Theophilum Gallum epistola, De cultu sanctorum ignotorum, Parisiis, apud Levesque, ad Pontem S. Michaelis, MDCCXXI, cum privilegio Regis.
I quickly found the Vetera analecta at the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, but to my great surprise the edition I came upon differed from the description in two details: first, the publisher, who was given here as “Montalant, ad Ripam P.P. Augustinianorum (prope Pontem S. Michaelis),” and also the date, which was two years later. I needn’t add that these analecta did not comprehend any manuscript of Adso or Adson of Melk; on the contrary, as anyone interested can check, they are a collection of brief or medium-length texts, whereas the story transcribed by Vallet ran to several hundred pages. At the same time, I consulted illustrious medievalists such as the dear and unforgettable Étienne Gilson, but it was evident that the only Vetera analecta were those I had seen at Sainte Geneviève. A quick trip to the Abbaye de la Source, in the vicinity of Passy, and a conversation with my friend Dom Arne Lahnestedt further convinced me that no Abbé Vallet had published books on the abbey’s presses (for that matter, nonexistent). French scholars are notoriously careless about furnishing reliable bibliographical information, but this case went beyond all reasonable pessimism. I began to think I had encountered a forgery. By now the Vallet volume itself could not be recovered (or at least I didn’t dare go and ask it back from the person who had taken it from me). I had only my notes left, and I was beginning to have doubts about them.
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past (“en me retraçant ces détails, j’en suis à me demander s’ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés”). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
If something new had not occurred, I would still be wondering where the story of Ad
so of Melk originated; but then, in 1970, in Buenos Aires, as I was browsing among the shelves of a little antiquarian bookseller on Corrientes, not far from the more illustrious Patio del Tango of that great street, I came upon the Castilian version of a little work by Milo Temesvar, On the Use of Mirrors in the Game of Chess. It was an Italian translation of the original, which, now impossible to find, was in Georgian (Tbilisi, 1934); and here, to my great surprise, I read copious quotations from Adso’s manuscript, though the source was neither Vallet nor Mabillon; it was Father Athanasius Kircher (but which work?). A scholar—whom I prefer not to name—later assured me that (and he quoted indexes from memory) the great Jesuit never mentioned Adso of Melk. But Temesvar’s pages were before my eyes, and the episodes he cited were the same as those of the Vallet manuscript (the description of the labyrinth in particular left no room for doubt).
I concluded that Adso’s memoirs appropriately share the nature of the events he narrates: shrouded in many, shadowy mysteries, beginning with the identity of the author and ending with the abbey’s location, about which Adso is stubbornly, scrupulously silent. Conjecture allows us to designate a vague area between Pomposa and Conques, with reasonable likelihood that the community was somewhere along the central ridge of the Apennines, between Piedmont, Liguria, and France. As for the period in which the events described take place, we are at the end of November 1327; the date of the author’s writing, on the other hand, is uncertain. Inasmuch as he describes himself as a novice in 1327 and says he is close to death as he writes his memoirs, we can calculate roughly that the manuscript was written in the last or next-to-last decade of the fourteenth century.
The name of the rose Page 56
