by Umberto Eco
“But it is a story of theft and vengeance among monks of scant virtue!” I cried, dubiously.
“Because of a forbidden book, Adso. A forbidden book!” William replied.
By now the monks were heading for supper. Our meal was half over when Michael of Cesena sat down beside us and told us Ubertino had left. William heaved a sigh of relief.
At the end of the meal, we avoided the abbot, who was conversing with Bernard, and noted Benno, who greeted us with a half smile as he tried to gain the door. William overtook him and forced him to follow us to a corner of the kitchen.
“Benno,” William asked him, “where is the book?”
“What book?”
“Benno, neither of us is a fool. I am speaking of the book we were hunting for today in Severinus’s laboratory, which I did not recognize. But you recognized it very well and went back to get it. . . .”
“What makes you think I took it?”
“I think you did, and you think the same. Where is it?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Benno, if you refuse to tell me, I will speak with the abbot.”
“I cannot tell by order of the abbot,” Benno said, with a virtuous air. “Today, after we saw each other, something happened that you should know about. On Berengar’s death there was no assistant librarian. This afternoon Malachi proposed me for the position. Just half an hour ago the abbot agreed, and tomorrow morning, I hope, I will be initiated into the secrets of the library. True, I did take the book this morning, and I hid it in the pallet in my cell without even looking at it, because I knew Malachi was keeping an eye on me. Eventually Malachi made me the proposal I told you. And then I did what an assistant librarian must do: I handed the book over to him.”
I could not refrain from speaking out, and violently.
“But, Benno, yesterday and the day before you . . . you said you were burning with the curiosity to know, you didn’t want the library to conceal mysteries any longer, you said a scholar must know. . . .”
Benno was silent, blushing; but William stopped me: “Adso, a few hours ago Benno joined the other side. Now he is the guardian of those secrets he wanted to know, and while he guards them he will have all the time he wants to learn them.”
“But the others?” I asked. “Benno was speaking also in the name of all men of learning!”
“Before,” William said. And he drew me away, leaving Benno the prey of confusion.
“Benno,” William then said to me, “is the victim of a great lust, which is not that of Berengar or that of the cellarer. Like many scholars, he has a lust for knowledge. Knowledge for its own sake. Barred from a part of this knowledge, he wanted to seize it. Now he has it. Malachi knew his man: he used the best means to recover the book and seal Benno’s lips. You will ask me what is the good of controlling such a hoard of learning if one has agreed not to put it at the disposal of everyone else. But this is exactly why I speak of lust. Roger Bacon’s thirst for knowledge was not lust: he wanted to employ his learning to make God’s people happier, and so he did not seek knowledge for its own sake. Benno’s is merely insatiable curiosity, intellectual pride, another way for a monk to transform and allay the desires of his loins, or the ardor that makes another man a warrior of the faith or of heresy. There is lust not only of the flesh. Bernard Gui is lustful; his is a distorted lust for justice that becomes identified with a lust for power. Our holy and no longer Roman Pontiff lusts for riches. And the cellarer as a youth had a lust to testify and transform and do penance, and then a lust for death. And Benno’s lust is for books. Like all lusts, including that of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground, it is sterile and has nothing to do with love, not even carnal love. . . .”
“I know,” I murmured, despite myself. William pretended not to hear. Continuing his observations, he said, “True love wants the good of the beloved.”
“Can it be that Benno wants the good of his books (and now they are also his) and thinks their good lies in their being kept far from grasping hands?” I asked.
“The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity. The cellarer says he betrayed. So has Benno. He has betrayed. Oh, what a nasty day, my good Adso! Full of blood and ruination. I have had enough of this day. Let us also go to compline, and then to bed.”
Coming out of the kitchen, we encountered Aymaro. He asked us whether the rumor going around was true, that Malachi had proposed Benno as his assistant. We could only confirm it.
“Our Malachi has accomplished many fine things today,” Aymaro said, with his usual sneer of contempt and indulgence. “If justice existed, the Devil would come and take him this very night.”
Compline
In which a sermon is heard about the coming of the Antichrist, and Adso discovers the power of proper names.
Vespers had been sung in a confused fashion while the interrogation of the cellarer was still under way, with the curious novices escaping their master’s control to observe through windows and cracks what was going on in the chapter hall. Now the whole community was to pray for the good soul of Severinus. Everyone expected the abbot to speak, and wondered what he would say. But instead, after the ritual homily of Saint Gregory, the responsory, and the three prescribed psalms, the abbot did step into the pulpit, but only to say he would remain silent this evening. Too many calamities had befallen the abbey, he said, to allow even the spiritual father to speak in a tone of reproach and admonition. Everyone, with no exceptions, should now make a strict examination of conscience. But since it was necessary for someone to speak, he suggested the admonition should come from the oldest of their number, now close to death, the brother who was the least involved of all in the terrestrial passions that had generated so many evils. By right of age Alinardo of Grottaferrata should speak, but all knew the fragile condition of the venerable brother’s health. Immediately after Alinardo, in the order established by the inevitable progress of time, came Jorge. And the abbot now called upon him.
We heard a murmuring from the section of the stalls where Aymaro and the other Italians usually sat. I suspected the abbot had entrusted the sermon to Jorge without discussing the matter with Alinardo. My master pointed out to me, in a whisper, that the abbot’s decision not to speak had been wise, because whatever he might have said would have been judged by Bernard and the other Avignonese present. Old Jorge, on the other hand, would confine himself to his usual mystical prophecies, and the Avignonese would not attach much importance to them. “But I will,” William added, “because I don’t believe Jorge agreed, and perhaps asked, to speak without a very precise purpose.”
Jorge climbed into the pulpit, with someone’s help. His face was illuminated by the tripod, which alone lighted the nave. The glow of the flame underlined the darkness shrouding his eyes, which seemed two black holes.
“Most beloved brothers,” he began, “and all of our guests, most dear to us. If you care to listen to this poor old man . . . The four deaths that have afflicted our abbey—not to mention the sins, remote and recent, of the most abject among the living—are not, as you know, to be attributed to the severity of nature, which, implacable in its rhythms, ordains our earthly day, from cradle to grave. All of you no doubt believe that, though you have been overwhelmed with grief, these sad events have not involved your soul, because all of you, save one, are innocent, and when this one has been punished, while you will, to be sure, continue to mourn the absence of those who have gone, you will not have to clear yourselves of any charge before the tribunal of God. So you believe. Madmen!” he shouted in an awful voice. “Madmen and presumptuous fools that you are! He who has killed will bear before God the burden of his guilt, but only because he agreed to become the vehicle of the
decrees of God. Just as it was necessary for someone to betray Jesus in order for the mystery of redemption to be accomplished, yet the Lord sanctioned damnation and vituperation for the one who betrayed him. Thus someone has sinned in these days, bringing death and ruination, but I say to you that this ruination was, if not desired, at least permitted by God for the humbling of our pride!”
He was silent, and turned his blank gaze on the solemn assembly as if his eyes could perceive its emotions, as in fact with his ear he savored the silence and consternation.
“In this community,” he went on, “for some time the serpent of pride has been coiled. But what pride? The pride of power, in a monastery isolated from the world? No, certainly not. The pride of wealth? My brothers, before the known world echoed with long debates about poverty and ownership, from the days of our founder, we, even when we had everything, have never had anything, our one true wealth being the observation of the Rule, prayer, and work. But of our work, the work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery, a part—indeed, the substance—is study, and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of, I say, not search for, because the property of knowledge, as a divine thing, is that it is complete and has been defined since the beginning, in the perfection of the Word which expresses itself to itself. Preservation, I say, and not search, because it is a property of knowledge, as a human thing, that it has been defined and completed over the course of the centuries, from the preaching of the prophets to the interpretation of the fathers of the church. There is no progress, no revolution of ages, in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous and sublime recapitulation. Human history proceeds with a motion that cannot be arrested, from the creation through the redemption, toward the return of Christ triumphant, who will appear seated on a cloud to judge the quick and the dead; but human and divine knowledge does not follow this path: steady as a fort that does not cede, it allows us, when we are humble and alert to its voice, to follow, to predict this path, but it is not touched by the path. I am He who is, said the God of the Jews. I am the way, the truth, and the life, said our Lord. There you have it: knowledge is nothing but the awed comment on these two truths. Everything else that has been said was uttered by the prophets, by the evangelists, by the fathers and the doctors, to make these two sayings clearer. And sometimes an apposite comment came also from the pagans, who were ignorant of them, and their words have been taken into the Christian tradition. But beyond that there is nothing further to say. There is only to continue meditation, to gloss, preserve. This was and should be the office of our abbey with its splendid library—nothing else. It is said that an Oriental caliph one day set fire to the library of a famous and glorious and proud city, and that, as those thousands of volumes were burning, he said that they could and should disappear: either they were repeating what the Koran already said, and therefore they were useless, or else they contradicted that book sacred to the infidels, and therefore they were harmful. The doctors of the church, and we along with them, did not reason in this way. Everything that involves commentary and clarification of Scripture must be preserved, because it enhances the glory of the divine writings; what contradicts must not be destroyed, because only if we preserve it can it be contradicted in its turn by those who can do so and are so charged, in the ways and times that the Lord chooses. Hence the responsibility of our order through the centuries, and the burden of our abbey today: proud of the truth we proclaim, humble and prudent in preserving those words hostile to the truth, without allowing ourselves to be soiled by them. Now, my brothers, what is the sin of pride that can tempt a scholar-monk? That of considering as his task not preserving but seeking some information not yet vouchsafed mankind, as if the last word had not already resounded in the words of the last angel who speaks in the last book of Scripture: ‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.’ There . . . does it not seem to you, my unfortunate brothers, that these words only adumbrate what has recently happened within these walls, whereas what has happened within these walls adumbrates only the same vicissitude as that afflicting the century in which we live, determined in word and in deed, in cities as in castles, in proud universities and cathedral churches, to seek anxiously to discover new codicils to the words of the truth, distorting the meaning of that truth already rich in all the scholia, and requiring only fearless defense and not foolish increment? This is the pride that lurked and is still lurking within these walls: and I say to him who has labored and labors to break the seals of the books that are not his to see, that it is this pride the Lord wanted to punish and will continue to punish if it is not brought down and does not humble itself, for the Lord has no difficulty in finding, always and still, thanks to our fragility, the instruments of His vengeance.”
“Did you hear that, Adso?” William murmured to me. “The old man knows more than he is saying. Whether or not he had a hand in this business, he knows, and is warning, that if certain curious monks continue violating the library, the abbey will not regain its peace.”
Jorge, after a long pause, now resumed speaking.
“But who, finally, is the very symbol of this pride, of whom the proud are the illustration and messengers, the accomplices and standard-bearers? Who in truth has acted and is perhaps acting also inside these walls, so as to warn us that the time is at hand—and to console us, because if the time is at hand, the sufferings will surely be intolerable, but not infinite, since the great cycle of this universe is about to be fulfilled? Oh, you have all understood very well, and you fear to utter the name, for it is also yours and you are afraid of it, but though you have fear, I shall have none, and I will say this name in a loud voice so that your viscera may twist in fright and your teeth chatter and cut off your tongue, and the chill that forms in your blood make a dark veil descend over your eyes. . . . He is the foul beast, he is the Antichrist!”
He paused for a long time. The listeners seemed dead. The only moving thing in the whole church was the flame in the tripod, but even the shadows it formed seemed to have frozen. The only sound, faint, was Jorge’s gasping, as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Then Jorge went on.
“You would perhaps like to say to me: No, he has not yet come; where are the signs of his coming? Fool who says this! Why, we have them before our eyes, day after day, in the great amphitheater of the world and in the narrower image of the abbey, the premonitory catastrophes. . . . It has been said that when the moment is near, a foreign king will rise in the West, lord of immense deceits, atheist, killer of men, fraudulent, thirsting for gold, skilled in tricks, wicked, enemy and persecutor of the faithful, and in his time he will not hold silver dear but will esteem only gold! I know well, you who listen to me hasten now to make your calculations to see whether he of whom I speak resembles the Pope or the Emperor or the King of France or whomever you will, so that you will be able to say: He is my enemy and I am on the right side! But I am not so ingenuous; I will not single out one man for you. The Antichrist, when he comes, comes in all and for all, and each is a part of him. He will be in the bands of brigands who sack cities and countryside, he will be in unforeseen signs in the heavens whereby suddenly rainbows will appear, horns and fires, while the moaning of voices will be heard and the sea will boil. It has been said that men and animals will generate monsters, but this means that hearts will conceive hatred and discord. Do not look around you for a glimpse of the animals of the illuminations you so enjoy on parchments! It has been said that young wives not long wed will give birth to babes already able to speak perfectly, who will bring word that the time is at hand and will ask to be killed. But do not search the villages down below us, the too-wise babes have already been killed inside these very wal
ls! And like those babes of the prophecies, they had the appearance of men already old, and in the prophecy they were the quadruped children, and the ghosts, and the embryos that were to prophesy in the mothers’ wombs uttering magic spells. And all has been written, do you know that? It has been written that many will be the agitations among those of rank, and among the peoples, the churches; that wicked shepherds will rise up, perverse, disdainful, greedy, pleasure-seeking, lovers of gain, enjoyers of idle speech, boastful, proud, avid, arrogant, plunged in lewdness, seekers of vainglory, enemies of the Gospel, ready to repudiate the strait gate, to despise the true word; and they will hate every path of piety, they will not repent their sins, and therefore will spread among all peoples disbelief, fraternal hatred, wickedness, hardness of heart, envy, indifference, robbery, drunkenness, intemperance, lasciviousness, carnal pleasure, fornication, and all the other vices. Affliction will vanish, and humility, love of peace, poverty, compassion, the gift of tears. . . . Come, do you not recognize yourselves, all of you here present, monks of this abbey and mighty visitors from the outside world?”
In the pause that followed a rustling was heard. It was Cardinal Bertrand wriggling on his bench. After all, I thought, Jorge was behaving like a great preacher, and as he lashed his brothers he was not sparing the guests, either. I would have given anything to know what was going through Bernard’s mind at that moment, or the minds of the fat Avignonese.