Medieval libraries and Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose"

Abstract

The mystery which surrounds the monks' deaths in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, emanates from the Monastery's library and scriptorium. Eco goes to great pains in order to describe faithfully what a monastic library and scriptorium in the late Middle Ages looked like and what were the activities which went on inside them. Apart from alterations to its size and scope, Eco's library is accurately depicted and based on historical research. What this Long Essay seeks to answer is whether, in the first third of the 14th century, there were any Benedictine monasteries in northern Italy, or anywhere else in Europe, whose approach to knowledge and its dissemination or incarceration mirror that found in the novel. It is clear that the novel's fictitious character, Jorge de Burgos, is an utterly credible and true representative of that dark aspect of the Middle Ages which sought to keep knowledge firmly in the hands of the few, even at the cost of destroying it rather than allowing its dissemination. Despite his preference for the 12th and 13th centuries, Eco was obliged to base his novel in the 14th for purposes of historical accuracy. This sacrifice, however, obliged him to foist an anachronistic Burgos upon the 14th century, when his ilk is likely to have disappeared with the dissemination of vernacular literature and the birth of lay institutions for the dissemination of knowledge in the 11th and 12th centuries.