Heretics and Hard-Ons (The Name of the Rose "Third Day")

TMBC Week 3

John’s Comments:

What can I say. This part was extremely tough for me to get through. The discussions Adso had with William and Ubertino (which really just seem like excuses for Eco to show off his history chops) took every ounce of muscle my eyes have to keep from dozing off. The plot is fun, the murder mystery is intriguing, but the history dumps really pull you out of the story. I can see why Eco said that he didn’t think it was his best work. He shows great prowess for storytelling here, but loses the reader in these long slogs.

As for the murder mystery, I think Benno is next to go. I’m surprised Berengar didn’t make it past this part, but it seems like everyone involved in the evening surrounding Adelmo’s death is getting picked off. Him and Jorge are the last to go and as of now I’m picking Jorge as the murderer. If Jorge is next, I’ll say Benno is our man. Let’s see where the story takes us. I will say this, if the murderer is a yet-to-be introduced character I will feel mildly cheated. So what do you think. Have we met the culprit yet?

Here’s to Fourth Day being more palatable to all of us layreaders. See you next week!

Melissa’s Comments:

I keep flipping back and forth about how I feel about this book. I usually like it when I pick it up—the problem is that I never want to. The book is interesting, for sure. But it’s hard. Eco is definitely intelligent; unfortunately, he’s still casting doubt as to whether the same thing can be said about me.

Eco said that he tried to write this book like it was actually written in the 1300s, and that is very apparent here. A decent chunk of Third Day is written like a classic philosophical dialogue—one character poses an abstract, verbose argument, another character inquires further, the first character continues, his conversational partner either inquires or refutes the argument, and so on.

I actually really enjoyed it. John found these discussions to be a slog (and I did tend to ‘tune out’ the minutiae about which monastic orders believed what and why), but I enjoyed the large-scale questions that they posed. Plus, you can tune in and out of a conversation about abstract concepts—when dealing with an actual murder mystery, you have to know what’s going on.

There are some interesting topics that warrant a mention:

• The idea that ‘heretics’ are simply people who threaten the church’s power.

• The idea of the ‘simple’ (i.e. un-learned) being used as pawns in the games of the powerful, as exemplified in the conversation between Adso and Salvatore about how Jews were offered as a scapegoat to distract Christians from their true enemies.

  • Also note the irony that Salvatore was able to describe this while firmly believing that this hatred was morally just).

• The feud between science and theology. Consider this quote (spoken by William) about science: “To believe it I must assume that there are universal laws. Yet I cannot speak of them, because the very concept that universal laws and an established order exist would imply that God is their prisoner, whereas God is something absolutely free, so that if He wanted, with a single act of His will He could make the world different.”

• The gatekeeping of knowledge—what is in that library? Could this be alluding to the secret knowledge hoarded by the Vatican?

Umberto Eco obviously doesn’t like the Church very much. Perhaps this is for good reason; The Name of the Rose certainly doesn’t portray it in a good light (although, admittedly, this is only one side of the story).

Presumably, his characters are mouthpieces of how monks at that time would have thought. It is interesting when their unusual way of thinking makes itself apparent. Brother William, a self-proclaimed man of God, does not appear to be very pious; Adso considers sex to be the utmost crime; Salvatore preaches peace yet supports hatred and war if it is sanctioned by the Church. Plus there’s the whole William being an inquisitor thing (and isn’t murder in the name of God the greatest irony out there?).

Things got ‘spicy’ at the end of this part (a twist I was certainly not expecting), so we’ll see if the Fourth Day is a little easier to get through.

As always, if we got anything wrong, or if you have something you’d like to add, please comment.