"Name of the Rose" in 15 minutes. Summary of the novel by U. Eco

Summary
Various authors
Eco Umberto - Name of the Rose

The author cites the story of a certain monk of the first quarter of the 14th century, Adson, recorded in a dubious book of the 17th century, which was discovered in 1968 in Prague. At that time, in 1327, the Pope was opposed on several fronts, including Emperor Louis and the Franciscan friars. The latter decided to join forces and formed a serious opposition to the pope. At that time, Adson, being very young, was considered a novice and served under William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan, a student of Roger Bacon, with incredible intellectual abilities.

By order of Louis, Adson and William arrived at the Abbey, where a meeting between the papal curia and the Franciscan monks supported by the Emperor was to take place a few days earlier. The abbot of the Abbey, seeing William's considerable abilities in deduction, asks him to investigate the death of the monk Adelmo, who decorates the margins of manuscripts with miniatures in the local library.

Wilhelm and Adson take up the investigation - they have permission to interrogate all the monks and access to the entire monastery, except for the secret library, where only selected monks could enter. In the following days, Venantius, the translator, died, he was found in a barrel of pig's blood, and Berengar, the librarian's assistant, he was found with a black tongue and traces of some substance on his fingers in the bathhouse. Inquisitor Bernard Guy arrives and accuses the village girl and the doctor of crimes. They decide to burn the girl at the stake as a witch. The meeting between the papal curia and the monks fails - everyone argues, accusing each other of various absurdities.

During a disrupted meeting, the body of Severin, a herbalist, is found with a broken head. The murder weapon is found nearby - a globe. And after some time, Malachi, the librarian himself, dies, with a black tongue and marks on his fingers. Wilhelm, with the help of Adson, finds the key to a secret room called “Africa's End” and there they encounter the blind monk Jorge. Wilhelm realizes that Jorge is the cause of all the deaths in the monastery - he hid the book of Aristotle, 1 part of poetics, revealing laughter and the funny in art, he soaked it with poison to prevent the knowledge described in the book from spreading. Jorge eats the poisonous pages, a fight ensues, an oil lamp falls and a fire starts, which burns the entire monastery in 3 days. Neither the monks, nor Wilhelm, nor Adson can do anything; all the monks leave this place as if it were damned.

The author initially questions the veracity of this story, but the detective story turned out to be interesting and exciting, very much reminiscent of the stories about Holmes and Watson.

You can use this text for a reader's diary

Rose name

The Notes of Father Adson from Melk fell into the hands of a future translator and publisher in Prague in 1968. On the title page of the French book from the middle of the last century it is stated that it is an adaptation from a Latin text of the 17th century, allegedly reproducing, in turn, the manuscript , created by a German monk at the end of the 14th century. Investigations undertaken regarding the author of the French translation, the Latin original, as well as the identity of Adson himself, did not bring results. Subsequently, the strange book (possibly a fake, existing in a single copy) disappears from the view of the publisher, who added another link to the unreliable chain of retellings of this medieval story.

Continued after advertisement:

In his declining years, the Benedictine monk Adson recalls the events that he witnessed and participated in in 1327. Europe was rocked by political and church strife. Emperor Louis confronts Pope John XXII. At the same time, the pope is fighting the monastic order of the Franciscans, in which the reform movement of non-acquisitive spiritualists, who had previously been subjected to severe persecution by the papal curia, prevailed. The Franciscans unite with the emperor and become a significant force in the political game.

During this turmoil, Adson, then still a young novice, accompanies the English Franciscan William of Baskerville on a journey through the cities and largest monasteries of Italy. William - a thinker and theologian, a natural scientist, famous for his powerful analytical mind, a friend of William of Ockham and a student of Roger Bacon - carries out the emperor's task to prepare and conduct a preliminary meeting between the imperial Franciscan delegation and representatives of the Curia. William and Adson arrive at the abbey where it is to take place a few days before the arrival of the embassies. The meeting should take the form of a debate about the poverty of Christ and the church; its goal is to find out the positions of the parties and the possibility of a future visit of the Franciscan general to the papal throne in Avignon.

Briefly exists thanks to advertising:

Before even entering the monastery, Wilhelm surprises the monks who went out in search of the runaway horse with precise deductive conclusions. And the abbot of the abbey immediately turns to him with a request to conduct an investigation into the strange death that happened in the monastery. The body of the young monk Adelmo was found at the bottom of the cliff; perhaps he was thrown out of the tower of a tall building hanging over the abyss, called here the Temple. The abbot hints that he knows the true circumstances of Adelmo's death, but he is bound by secret confession, and therefore the truth must come from other, unsealed lips.

Wilhelm receives permission to interview all monks without exception and examine any premises of the monastery - except for the famous monastery library. The largest in the Christian world, comparable to the semi-legendary libraries of the infidels, it is located on the top floor of the Temple; Only the librarian and his assistant have access to it; only they know the layout of the storage facility, built like a labyrinth, and the system for arranging books on the shelves. Other monks: copyists, rubricators, translators, flocking here from all over Europe, work with books in the copying room - the scriptorium. The librarian alone decides when and how to provide a book to the person who requested it, and whether to provide it at all, for there are many pagan and heretical works here. In the scriptorium, William and Adson meet the librarian Malachi, his assistant Berengar, the translator from Greek, an adherent of Aristotle, Venantius, and the young rhetorician Benzius. The late Adelm, a skilled draftsman, decorated the margins of manuscripts with fantastic miniatures. As soon as the monks laugh, looking at them, blind brother Jorge appears in the scriptorium with a reproach that laughter and idle talk are indecent in the monastery. This man, glorious in years, righteousness and learning, lives with the feeling of the onset of the last times and in anticipation of the imminent appearance of the Antichrist. Examining the abbey, Wilhelm comes to the conclusion that Adelm, most likely, was not killed, but committed suicide by throwing himself down from the monastery wall, and the body was subsequently transferred under the Temple by a landslide.

Continued after advertisement:

But that same night, the corpse of Venantius was discovered in a barrel of fresh blood from slaughtered pigs. Wilhelm, studying the traces, determines that the monk was killed somewhere else, most likely in Khramin, and thrown into a barrel already dead. But meanwhile there are no wounds, no damage or signs of struggle on the body.

Noticing that Benzius is more excited than others, and Berengar is openly frightened, Wilhelm immediately interrogates both. Berengar admits that he saw Adelm on the night of his death: the draftsman’s face was like the face of a dead man, and Adelm said that he was cursed and doomed to eternal torment, which he described to the shocked interlocutor very convincingly. Benzius reports that two days before Adelmo’s death, a debate took place in the scriptorium about the admissibility of the ridiculous in the depiction of the divine and that holy truths are better represented in rude bodies than in noble ones. In the heat of the argument, Berengar inadvertently let slip, although very vaguely, about something carefully hidden in the library. The mention of this was associated with the word “Africa”, and in the catalog, among the designations understandable only to the librarian, Benzius saw the “limit of Africa” visa, but when, becoming interested, he asked for a book with this visa, Malachi stated that all these books were lost. Benzius also talks about what he witnessed while following Berengar after the dispute. Wilhelm receives confirmation of the version of Adelm's suicide: apparently, in exchange for some service that could be related to Berengar's capabilities as an assistant librarian, the latter persuaded the draftsman to the sin of Sodomy, the severity of which Adelm, however, could not bear and hastened to confess to the blind Jorge, but instead absolution received a formidable promise of inevitable and terrible punishment. The consciousness of the local monks is too excited, on the one hand, by a painful desire for book knowledge, on the other, by the constantly terrifying memory of the devil and hell, and this often forces them to literally see with their own eyes something they read or hear about. Adelm considers himself to have already fallen into hell and, in despair, decides to take his own life.

Briefly exists thanks to advertising:

William tries to examine the manuscripts and books on Venantius's desk in the scriptorium. But first Jorge, then Benzius, under various pretexts, distract him. Wilhelm asks Malachi to put someone on guard at the table, and at night, together with Adson, he returns here through the discovered underground passage, which the librarian uses after he locks the doors of the Temple from the inside in the evening. Among the papers of Venantius, they find a parchment with incomprehensible extracts and cryptographic signs, but on the table there is no book that William saw here during the day. Someone makes their presence known in the scriptorium with a careless sound. Wilhelm gives chase and suddenly a book that fell from the fugitive falls into the light of the lantern, but the unknown person manages to grab it before Wilhelm and escape.

At night, fear guards the library stronger than locks and prohibitions. Many monks believe that terrible creatures and the souls of dead librarians wander among books in the dark. Wilhelm is skeptical about such superstitions and does not miss the opportunity to study the vault, where Adson experiences the effects of illusion-generating distorting mirrors and a lamp soaked in a vision-inducing composition. The labyrinth turns out to be more complicated than Wilhelm expected, and only by chance they manage to discover the exit. From the alarmed abbot they learn about the disappearance of Berengar.

Advertising:

The dead assistant librarian is found only a day later in the bathhouse located next to the monastery hospital. The herbalist and healer Severin draws Wilhelm's attention to the fact that Berengar has traces of some substance on his fingers. The herbalist says that he saw the same ones at Venantius, when the corpse was washed from the blood. In addition, Berengar's tongue turned black - apparently the monk was poisoned before he drowned in the water. Severin says that once upon a time he kept an extremely poisonous potion, the properties of which he himself did not know, and it later disappeared under strange circumstances. Malachi, the abbot and Berengar knew about the poison. Meanwhile, embassies are coming to the monastery. Inquisitor Bernard Guy arrives with the papal delegation. Wilhelm does not hide his dislike for him personally and his methods. Bernard announces that from now on he himself will investigate incidents in the monastery, which, in his opinion, strongly smack of the devil.

Wilhelm and Adson again enter the library to draw up a plan for the labyrinth. It turns out that the storage rooms are marked with letters, from which, if you go through in a certain order, conventional words and names of countries are formed. The “limit of Africa” is also discovered - a disguised and tightly closed room, but they do not find a way to enter it. Bernard Guy detained and accused of witchcraft the doctor's assistant and a village girl, whom he brings at night to gratify the lust of his patron for the remains of the monastery meals; Adson had also met her the day before and could not resist the temptation. Now the girl’s fate is decided - as a witch she will go to the stake.

Advertising:

A fraternal discussion between the Franciscans and representatives of the pope turns into a vulgar fight, during which Severin informs Wilhelm, who remained aside from the battle, that he found a strange book in his laboratory. Their conversation is heard by the blind Jorge, but Benzius also guesses that Severin discovered something left from Berengar. The dispute, which resumed after a general pacification, was interrupted by the news that the herbalist was found dead in the hospital and the murderer had already been captured.

The herbalist's skull was crushed by a metal celestial globe standing on the laboratory table. Wilhelm is looking for traces of the same substance on Severin’s fingers as Berengar and Venantius, but the herbalist’s hands are covered with leather gloves used when working with dangerous drugs. The cellarer Remigius is caught at the scene of the crime, who tries in vain to justify himself and declares that he came to the hospital when Severin was already dead. Benzius tells William that he was one of the first to run in here, then watched those entering and was sure: Malachi was already here, waited in a niche behind the curtain, and then quietly mixed with other monks. Wilhelm is convinced that no one could have taken the big book out of here secretly and, if the murderer is Malachi, it must still be in the laboratory. Wilhelm and Adson begin their search, but lose sight of the fact that sometimes ancient manuscripts were bound several times into one volume. As a result, the book goes unnoticed by them among others that belonged to Severin, and ends up with the more perceptive Benzius.

Advertising:

Bernard Guy holds a trial over the cellarer and, having convicted him of once belonging to one of the heretical movements, forces him to accept the blame for the murders in the abbey. The inquisitor is not interested in who actually killed the monks, but he seeks to prove that the former heretic, now declared a murderer, shared the views of the Franciscan spiritualists. This allows him to disrupt the meeting, which, apparently, was the purpose for which he was sent here by the pope.

To William’s demand to give the book back, Benzius replies that, without even starting to read, he returned it to Malachi, from whom he received an offer to take the vacant position as an assistant librarian. A few hours later, during a church service, Malachi dies in convulsions, his tongue is black and there are marks on his fingers that are already familiar to Wilhelm.

The abbot announces to William that the Franciscan did not live up to his expectations and the next morning he must leave the monastery with Adson. Wilhelm objects that he has known about the sodomy monks, the settling of scores between whom the abbot considered the cause of the crimes, for a long time. However, this is not the real reason: those who know about the existence of the “limit of Africa” in the library are dying. The abbot cannot hide that William’s words led him to some kind of guess, but he insists all the more firmly on the Englishman’s departure; Now he intends to take matters into his own hands and under his own responsibility.

Advertising:

But Wilhelm is not going to retreat, because he has come close to the decision. By a chance hint from Adson, he manages to read the key that opens the “limit of Africa” in the secret writing of Venantius. On the sixth night of their stay in the abbey, they enter the secret room of the library. Blind Jorge is waiting for them inside.

Wilhelm expected to meet him here. The very omissions of the monks, entries in the library catalog and some facts allowed him to find out that Jorge was once a librarian, and when he felt that he was going blind, he first taught his first successor, then Malachi. Neither one nor the other could work without his help and did not take a single step without asking him. The abbot was also dependent on him, since he received his position with his help. For forty years the blind man has been the sovereign master of the monastery. And he believed that some of the library's manuscripts should forever remain hidden from anyone's eyes. When, due to the fault of Berengar, one of them - perhaps the most important - left these walls, Jorge made every effort to bring her back. This book is the second part of Aristotle’s Poetics, considered lost, and is dedicated to laughter and the funny in art, rhetoric, and the skill of persuasion. In order for its existence to remain a secret, Jorge does not hesitate to commit a crime, because he is convinced: if laughter is sanctified by the authority of Aristotle, the entire established medieval hierarchy of values will collapse, and the culture nurtured in monasteries remote from the world, the culture of the chosen and initiated, will swept away by the urban, grassroots, area.

Advertising:

Jorge admits that he understood from the very beginning: sooner or later Wilhelm would discover the truth, and watched how step by step the Englishman approached it. He hands Wilhelm a book, for the desire to see which five people have already paid with their lives, and offers to read it. But the Franciscan says that he has unraveled this devilish trick of his, and restores the course of events. Many years ago, having heard someone in the scriptorium expressing interest in the “limit of Africa,” the still sighted Jorge stole poison from Severin, but did not immediately use it. But when Berengar, out of boasting to Adelm, one day behaved unrestrainedly, the already blind old man goes upstairs and saturates the pages of the book with poison. Adelmo, who agreed to a shameful sin in order to touch the secret, did not take advantage of the information obtained at such a price, but, seized with mortal horror after confessing to Jorge, he tells Venantius about everything. Venantius gets to the book, but in order to separate the soft parchment sheets, he has to wet his fingers on his tongue. He dies before he can leave the Temple. Berengar finds the body and, fearing that the investigation will inevitably reveal what happened between him and Adelm, transfers the corpse to a barrel of blood. However, he also became interested in the book, which he snatched almost from Wilhelm’s hands in the scriptorium. He brings it to the hospital, where he can read at night without fear of being noticed by anyone. And when the poison begins to take effect, he rushes into the bath in the vain hope that the water will quench the flames that are devouring him from the inside. This is how the book gets to Severin. Jorge's messenger, Malachi, kills the herbalist, but dies himself, wanting to know what is so forbidden in the item that made him a murderer. The last in this row is the abbot. After a conversation with Wilhelm, he demanded an explanation from Jorge, moreover: he demanded to open the “limit of Africa” and put an end to the secrecy established in the library by the blind man and his predecessors. Now he is suffocating in a stone bag of another underground passage to the library, where Jorge locked him and then broke the door control mechanisms.

Advertising:

“So the dead died in vain,” says Wilhelm: now the book has been found, and he managed to protect himself from Jorge’s poison. But in fulfillment of his plan, the elder is ready to accept death himself. Jorge tears the book and eats the poisoned pages, and when Wilhelm tries to stop him, he runs, accurately navigating the library from memory. The lamp in the hands of the pursuers still gives them some advantage. However, the overtaken blind man manages to take away the lamp and throw it aside. Spilled oil starts a fire; Wilhelm and Adson rush to get water, but return too late. The efforts of all the brethren, raised by alarm, lead nowhere; The fire bursts out and spreads from the Temple, first to the church, then to the rest of the buildings.

Before Adson’s eyes, the richest monastery turns into ashes. The abbey burns for three days. By the end of the third day, the monks, having collected the little that they managed to save, leave the smoking ruins as a place cursed by God.

Umberto Eco. Rose's name

Wilhelm receives permission to interview all monks without exception and examine any premises of the monastery - except for the famous monastery library. The largest in the Christian world, comparable to the semi-legendary libraries of the infidels, it is located on the top floor of the Temple; Only the librarian and his assistant have access to it; only they know the layout of the storehouse, built like a labyrinth, and the system for arranging books on the shelves. Other monks: copyists, rubricators, translators, flocking here from all over Europe, work with books in the copying room - the scriptorium. The librarian alone decides when and how to provide a book to the person who requested it, and whether to provide it at all, for there are many pagan and heretical works here. In the scriptorium, William and Adson meet the librarian Malachi, his assistant Berengar, the translator from Greek, an adherent of Aristotle, Venantius, and the young rhetorician Benzius. The late Adelm, a skilled draftsman, decorated the margins of manuscripts with fantastic miniatures. As soon as the monks laugh, looking at them, blind brother Jorge appears in the scriptorium with a reproach that ridicule and idle talk are indecent in the monastery. This man, glorious in years, righteousness and learning, lives with the feeling of the onset of the last times and in anticipation of the imminent appearance of the Antichrist. Examining the abbey, Wilhelm comes to the conclusion that Adelm, most likely, was not killed, but committed suicide by throwing himself down from the monastery wall, and the body was subsequently transferred under the Temple by a landslide.

Noticing that Benzius is more excited than others, and Berengar is openly frightened, Wilhelm immediately interrogates both. Berengar admits that he saw Adelm on the night of his death: the draftsman’s face was like the face of a dead man, and Adelm said that he was cursed and doomed to eternal torment, which he described to his shocked interlocutor very convincingly. Benzius reports that two days before the death of Adelmus, a debate took place in the scriptorium about the admissibility of the ridiculous in the depiction of the divine and that it is better to represent holy truths in rude bodies than in noble ones. In the heat of the argument, Berengar inadvertently let slip, although very vaguely, about something carefully hidden in the library. The mention of this was associated with the word “Africa”, and in the catalog, among the designations understandable only to the librarian, Benzius saw the “limit of Africa” visa, but when, becoming interested, he asked for a book with this visa, Malachi stated that all these books were lost. Benzius also talks about what he witnessed while following Berengar after the dispute. Wilhelm receives confirmation of the version of Adelm's suicide: apparently, in exchange for some service that could be related to Berengar's capabilities as an assistant librarian, the latter persuaded the draftsman to the sin of Sodomy, the severity of which Adelm, however, could not bear and hastened to confess to the blind Jorge, but instead absolution received a formidable promise of inevitable and terrible punishment. The consciousness of the local monks is too excited, on the one hand, by a painful desire for book knowledge, on the other, by the constantly terrifying memory of the devil and hell, and this often forces them to literally see with their own eyes something they read or hear about. Adelm considers himself to have already fallen into hell and, in despair, decides to take his own life.

The dead assistant librarian is found only a day later in a bathhouse located next to the monastery hospital. The herbalist and healer Severin draws Wilhelm's attention to the fact that Berengar has traces of some substance on his fingers. The herbalist says that he saw the same ones at Venantius, when the corpse was washed from the blood. In addition, Berengar's tongue turned black - apparently the monk was poisoned before he drowned in the water. Severin says that once upon a time he kept an extremely poisonous potion, the properties of which he himself did not know, and it later disappeared under strange circumstances. Malachi, the abbot and Berengar knew about the poison. Meanwhile, embassies are coming to the monastery. Inquisitor Bernard Guy arrives with the papal delegation. Wilhelm does not hide his dislike for him personally and his methods. Bernard announces that from now on he himself will investigate incidents in the monastery, which, in his opinion, strongly smack of the devil.

Wilhelm and Adson again enter the library to draw up a plan for the labyrinth. It turns out that the storage rooms are marked with letters, from which, if passed in a certain order, conventional words and names of countries are formed. The “limit of Africa” is also discovered - a disguised and tightly closed room, but they do not find a way to enter it. Bernard Guy detained and accused of witchcraft the doctor's assistant and a village girl, whom he brings at night to gratify the lust of his patron for the remains of the monastery meals; Adson had also met her the day before and could not resist the temptation. Now the girl’s fate is decided - as a witch she will go to the stake.

A fraternal discussion between the Franciscans and representatives of the pope turns into a vulgar fight, during which Severin informs Wilhelm, who remained aside from the massacre, that he found a strange book in his laboratory. Their conversation is heard by the blind Jorge, but Benzius also guesses that Severin discovered something left from Berengar. The dispute, which resumed after a general pacification, was interrupted by the news that the herbalist was found dead in the hospital and the murderer had already been captured.

But Wilhelm is not going to retreat, because he has come close to the decision. By chance, Adson manages to read the key in the secret writing of Venantius that opens the “limit of Africa.” On the sixth night of their stay in the abbey, they enter the secret room of the library. Blind Jorge is waiting for them inside.

Jorge admits that he understood from the very beginning: sooner or later Wilhelm would discover the truth, and watched how step by step the Englishman approached it. He hands Wilhelm a book, for the desire to see which five people have already paid with their lives, and offers to read it. But the Franciscan says that he has unraveled this devilish trick of his, and restores the course of events. Many years ago, having heard someone in the scriptorium expressing interest in the “limit of Africa,” the still sighted Jorge steals poison from Severin, but does not immediately use it. But when Berengar, out of boasting to Adelmo, one day behaved unrestrainedly, the already blind old man goes upstairs and saturates the pages of the book with poison. Adelmo, who agreed to a shameful sin in order to touch the secret, did not take advantage of the information obtained at such a price, but, seized with mortal horror after confessing to Jorge, he tells Venantius about everything. Venantius gets to the book, but in order to separate the soft parchment sheets, he has to wet his fingers on his tongue. He dies before he can leave the Temple. Berengar finds the body and, fearing that the investigation will inevitably reveal what happened between him and Adelm, transfers the corpse to a barrel of blood. However, he also became interested in the book, which he snatched almost from Wilhelm’s hands in the scriptorium. He brings it to the hospital, where he can read at night without fear of being noticed by anyone. And when the poison begins to take effect, he rushes into the bath in the vain hope that the water will quench the flames that are devouring him from the inside. This is how the book gets to Severin. Jorge's messenger, Malachi, kills the herbalist, but dies himself, wanting to find out what is so forbidden in the item that made him a murderer. The last in this row is the abbot. After a conversation with Wilhelm, he demanded an explanation from Jorge, moreover: he demanded to open the “limit of Africa” and put an end to the secrecy established in the library by the blind man and his predecessors. Now he is suffocating in a stone bag of another underground passage to the library, where Jorge locked him and then broke the door control mechanisms.

Information about the work “Umberto Eco. Rose's name"

Section: Summary of works Number of characters with spaces: 16423 Number of tables: 0 Number of images: 0

Similar works

Roman Umberto Eco name of the rose

46099

… we are living". Yes, undoubtedly, many particular situations of the novel and its main conflict can be fully “read” as an allegorical reflection of the situation of the current, twentieth century [3,5].2. Umberto Eco's novel “The Name of the Rose” is a historical novel. Events in the novel lead us to believe that this is a detective story. The author, with suspicious persistence, offers just such an interpretation. Lotman Yu. writes that “...

Postmodernism U. Eco “The Name of the Rose”

24351

... I wanted to send a monk. I think that every novel is born from such thoughts. The rest of the pulp grows by itself”[9,434]. The novel is accompanied by “Marginal Notes” of “The Name of the Rose”, in which W. Eco explains the basic concepts of postmodernism, its historical and aesthetic origins. The author notes that he sees the Middle Ages “in the depths of any subject, even one that seems not to be connected with...

Umberto Eco

35151

... transfers and whether some of these communities are using them to gain special power.” It is clear that books and other means of communication as repositories of knowledge, in the model analyzed by Umberto Eco, are a means of gaining power in any type of culture: both traditional and modern. It can only be in a postmodern society characterized by the public availability of information that occurs...

Nonequilibrium symbolic systems and “psycholasers” (about Umberto Eco’s novel “Foucault’s Pendulum”)

30094

... predictability and reversibility of nonequilibrium processes. It is possible to create a technology for directed explosive development, predicting the unpredictable, and realizing the incredible. 8. The development of an open non-equilibrium symbolic (psychological) system changes not only the internal, but also the external environment - and the EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT, IN RESPONSE, ACTS ACTIVELY, AS POSSESSING PURPOSE, MIND, CONSCIOUSNESS OF BOTH...