Until you read a pretty accurate historical novel it is quite easy to underestimate the power of the printing press. As bloodandsands has said, many monks would come to an Abbey just to copy a book for their own Abbey. A local church would only have had a Bible if someone had copied it and given it to them. No ordinary household would have had a book of any type, and wouldn't have been able to read one even if they had access to it. That's why the church had so much power at this time. As is clear from The Name of The Rose they controlled knowledge. The old saying of knowledge is power was well and truly understood by the Church hierarchy. If something conflicted with etablished doctrine it was supressed.

I've just finished Mr Finkler's Question, which was very good, and have started The Name of the Rose. In reading the forward or preface, I was surprised to find out how many times a day the monks prayed, but then, of course, they saw their purpose in life as to praise and serve god. When the Benedictine monastery at Melk was mentioned I was quite excited as I there in 2010 and saw the magnificent library. I was disappointed that the story would not be set there, but in an unknown place. It is the young monk who is from Melk, which is now in Austria.

As I read more, I'll put in my thoughts.

Hi Bev, nice to catch up with you again.

Laughter and comedy. Is it heretical, is it in line with church doctrine. A very interesting thought. The Bible tells us to praise God joyfully, but does joyfully in this context mean what we take it to mean these days.

I have to be careful here because of *spoilers*, as I have read the novel before, but you are right, Christinap, in terms of what joyfully means to the brothers of the Abbey. The differences between the orders, Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican etc and their various offshoots, are brought out in great detail. I found this novel not only a wonderful *read* but a wonderful learning experience.

Hi Ann, thanks for the greeting!

Bev

I'm trying to be careful because of *spoilers" as well. I think these days we have lost sight of the differences that there were between the various orders.

Too true, Christinap. I think that's why I enjoy this novel so much, I learn each time and it's learning through enjoyment/interest and not because I have to!

I'm not too far in the book either but like you am learning an immense amount about monasteries and life back then. Plus getting some great information from Chris and Bev.

The great religious debate of the time centred on poverty. Mendicant orders, such as the Dominicans and Francicans, held to a life of poverty. They relied on charity from the general population, and did not believe in owning property, either individually or communaly. The monastic orders on the other hand, such as the Benedictines, held great estates, rich churches and were often extremely wealthy. Many Abbots of these great monasteries had enormous wealth in their control. In the period in which the book is set various schisms were arising even within orders themselves centering around whether or not the Church should abandon all wealth.

How that chimes with Puritanism and Roman Catholicism in later years! (Is chimes the right word here, I've had a couple of glasses of the red stuff!)

Oh, oh. Been into the sacrificial wine?

Chimes is a good word for it. Yes it does doesn't it

The fantaticism of the Church seems to translate into violence against any who oppose the current power holders' views of what is correct dogma. We don't see priests or laypeople burnt today as the secular powers wouldn't allow it. Then I thought that some extremist Muslims think that it is holy to kill those that they see as the enemy of their faith.

Ubertino is an unexpected friend of Brother William. His invoking of sexual imagery to describe what he disapproves of is disconcerting. Talking about the young man whose death is what William is asked to investigate he says, "There was something ... feminine, and therefore diabolical about that young man who is dead. He had the eyes of a maiden seeking commerce with an incubus."

It makes me wonder how much the Church has progressed when homosexuality and contraception are still regarded as sins.

Another point I wondered about was that in the book John XXII was regarded as a bad pope. If this is so I wonder why John XXIII chose that name when he is considered to have been a pope that tried to modernise and humanise doctrines and the liturgy. He was the one who allowed services to be said in the vernacular, rather than Latin.

I am finding the intricacies of the politics both religious and secular very interesting.

Totally agree, Ann. We start to see the separation of church and state and the problems, especially for the religious orders, that this entailed.

After about a week of no time to read, I finally managed to get back the The Name of the Rose.

I loved the part where William and Adso sneak into the library at night. It gave me quite a chuckle when William told Adso to "linger in the kitchen at dinner hour" and get a lantern for them to use. Adso: "A theft?" William: "A loan, to the greater glory of the Lord." Adso: "If that is so, then count on me."

I did have a moment of trepidation about William, who is supposed to be a mentor to Adso, leading him astray by breaking a rule of the monastery. Was he wrong to enlist Adso's aid? Is he sending him a signal that it's ok to break the rules?

Dagny

I don't think he's wrong, Dagny. He has been asked to help solve the murders and to go into the library is the only way William feels he can make some headway in doing this. I think the way he's looking at is very much that the *borrowing* of a lamp as a sin pales into insignificance when weighed against several murders. I think if I were Adso, I'd tend to agree with him!

It is also in part a commentary on the theological thinking of the time. "To the greater glory of the Lord" excused a lot of sins in that era.

I find the development of Adso interesting. He is less naive, less unwordly, than when his journey with William started. He has been exposed to "evil" in a way he hasn't been before and it has changed him.

LOL, for sure.

I loved that entire bit with the library and the labyrinth, especially the encounter with the mirror.

It certainly set Adso's mind at ease. I hadn't thought of it as being a commentary; thank you for pointing that out.

I agree with Christinap's point about the development of Adso. He matures (in more ways than one)throughout the novel and gains in confidence, yet still maintains an almost childlike naivety in some aspects of his understanding.

I'm not sure how much exposure to the outside world, other monasteries etc. someone in his position would normally have had at the time. A lot of the monks entered the monastery at a very young age, and, depending on the order, never set foot outside it again. A lot of them were very self contained communities, and if any contact with the world outside the walls was needed it was done by senior, older members of the ocmmunity who would not be "tempted" by distractions. Our Adso is getting an education denied to most monks of the time.

Can't say much without spoiling it for people who haven't finished the book yet. What I can say though is that ths is a fascinating multi-layered book that bears reading more than once (as I think bloodandsands will testify to). I also think it is interesting that overall we have tended to focus on the historical accounts of monastery life, the religious influences of the day etc. rather than on the murders and who-dun-it. I think that shows how very thought provoking a lot of the descriptive writing is.

Yes, Chris, it is interesting the way our conversation has gone so far. There's all these little details that catch my interest. And thanks to some of the great posts here, I'm learning a lot.

I am just up to where they are about to go into the library. I agree that, like others, I have focused on the religious and political background of the story rather than the murders. I have gone to wiki to look the background and learnt a lot. I hadn't known why there were two popes and had assumed that the one in Avignon was the false one. Fascinating stuff for one who loves European history.

The writing is brilliant in creating atmosphere and the sense of the superstitious dread in which medieval people lived. One criticism, I wish that there were translations, as a footnote, of those sections written in Latin. I find it unfriendly of writers to make part of their work inaccessible to general readers when a book is not published for a specialised group. It is easy now to get a translation through google, but it was not so at the time the book was written.

Eco presents some theories about power through the voices of his characters. When Salvatore is asked by Adso why he killed Jews he replied that it was because he was told that they had all the wealth. When Adso pointed out that the lords and the bishops also had great wealth and that they were the true enemies of the poor Salvatore said that when your true enemies are too strong you must choose weaker ones.

In his discussion with Adso about heresy William points out that because of the structure of religious power Francis could never make the outsiders a part of the community.

I was fascinated by the fact that the monks were not supposed to read the manuscripts that they were copying. If they became curious it degraded the sanctity their work. Was this a belief because Adam and Eve were supposed to have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? The powerful in the Catholic Church were opposed to science as God was the explanation for all things.

I think that's certainly a part of it, Ann, but I also feel that power, for the church, was almost an end in itself. The church wanted to maintain its power over the populace and the control of knowledge and/or learning was vital in helping the church achieve this aim.