Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

“Amen,” William said in a devout tone. “But what does this have to do with the fact that the library may not be visited?”

“You see, Brother William,” the abbot said, “to achieve the immense and holy task that enriches those walls” — and he nodded toward the bulk of the Aedificium; which could be glimpsed from the cell’s windows, towering above the abbatial church itself — “devout men have toiled for centuries, observing iron rules. The library was laid out on a plan which has remained obscure to all over the centuries, and which none of the monks is called upon to know. Only the librarian has received the secret, from the librarian who preceded him, and he communicates it, while still alive, to the assistant librarian, so that death will not take him by surprise and rob the community of that knowledge. And the secret seals the lips of both men. Only the librarian has, in addition to that knowledge, the right to move through the labyrinth of the books, he alone knows where to find them and where to replace them, he alone is responsible for their safekeeping. The other monks work in the scriptorium and may know the list of the volumes that the library houses. But a list of titles often tells very little; only the librarian knows, from the collocation of the volume, from its degree of inaccessibility, what secrets, what truths or falsehoods, the volume contains. Only he decides how, when, and whether to give it to the monk who requests it; sometimes he first consults me. Because not all truths are for all ears, not all falsehoods can be recognized as such by a pious soul; and the monks, finally, are in the scriptorium to carry out a precise task, which requires them to read certain volumes and not others, and not to pursue every foolish curiosity that seizes them, whether through weakness of intellect or through pride or through diabolical prompting.”

“So in the library there are also books containing falsehoods…”

“Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the Creator is revealed. And by divine plan, too, there exist also books by wizards, the cabalas of the Jews, the fables of pagan poets, the lies of the infidels. It was the firm and holy conviction of those who founded the abbey and sustained it over the centuries that even in books of falsehood, to the eyes of the sage reader, a pale reflection of the divine wisdom can shine. And therefore the library is a vessel of these, too. But for this very reason, you understand, it cannot be visited by just anyone. And furthermore,” the abbot added, as if to apologize for the weakness of this last argument, “a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth.”

“And so no one, except for two people, enters the top floor of the Aedificium…”

The abbot smiled. “No one should. No one can. No one, even if he wished, would succeed. The library defends itself, immeasurable as the truth it houses, deceitful as the falsehood it preserves. A spiritual labyrinth, it is also a terrestrial labyrinth. You might enter and you might not emerge. And having said this, I would like you to conform to the rules of the abbey.”

“But you have not dismissed the possibility that Adelmo fell from one of the windows of the library. And how can I study his death if I do not see the place where the story of his death may have begun?”

“Brother William,” the abbot said, in a conciliatory tone; “a man who described my horse Brunellus without seeing him, and the death of Adelmo though knowing virtually nothing of it, will have no difficulty studying places to which he does not have access.”

William bowed. “You are wise also when you are severe. It shall be as you wish.”

“If ever I were wise, it would be because I know how to be severe,” the abbot answered.

“One last thing,” William asked. “Ubertino?”

“He is here. He is expecting you. You will find him in church.”

“When?”

“Always,” the abbot said, and smiled. “You must know that, although very learned, he is not a man to appreciate the library. He considers it a secular lure… For the most part he stays in church, meditating, praying…”

“Is he old?” William asked, hesitating.

“How long has it been since you saw him?”

“Many years.”

“He is weary. Very detached from the things of this world. He is sixty-eight. But I believe he still possesses the spirit of his youth.”

“I will seek him out at once. Thank you.”

The abbot asked him whether he wanted to join the community for the midday refection, after sext. William said he had only just eaten — very well, too — and he would prefer to see Ubertino at once. The abbot took his leave.

He was going out of the cell when from the courtyard a heartrending cry arose, like that of someone mortally wounded, followed by other, equally horrible cries. “What is that?” William asked, disconcerted. “Nothing,” the abbot answered, smiling. “At this time of year they slaughter the pigs. A job for the swineherds. This is not the blood that should concern you.”

He went out, and he did a disservice to his reputation as a clever man. Because the next morning … But curb your impatience, garrulous tongue of mine. For on the day of which I am telling, and before its night, many more things happened that it would be best to narrate.

The church was not majestic like others I saw later at Strasbourg, Chartres, Bamberg, and Paris. It resembled, rather, those I had already seen in Italy, with scant inclination to soar dizzyingly toward the heavens, indeed firmly set on the earth, often broader than they were high; but at the first level this one was surmounted, like a fortress, by a sequence of square battlements, and above this story another construction rose, not so much a tower as a solid, second church, capped by a pitched roof and pierced by severe windows. A robust abbatial church such as our forefathers built in Provence and Languedoc, far from the audacity and the excessive tracery characteristic of the modern style, which only in more recent times has been enriched, I believe, above the choir, with a pinnacle boldly pointed toward the roof of the heavens.

Two straight and unadorned columns stood on either side of the entrance, which opened, at first sight, like a single great arch; but from the columns began two embrasures that, surmounted by other, multiple arches, led the gaze, as if into the heart of an abyss, toward the doorway itself, crowned by a great tympanum, supported on the sides by two imposts and in the center by a carved pillar, which divided the entrance into two apertures protected by oak doors reinforced in metal. At that hour of the day the weak sun was beating almost straight down on the roof and the light fell obliquely on the facade without illuminating the tympanum; so after passing the two columns, we found ourselves abruptly under the almost sylvan vault of the arches that sprang from the series of lesser columns that proportionally reinforced the embrasures. When our eyes had finally grown accustomed to the gloom, the silent speech of the carved stone, accessible as it immediately was to the gaze and the imagination of anyone (for images are the literature of the layman), dazzled my eyes and plunged me into a vision that even today my tongue can hardly describe.