The Name of the Rose

“The truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us.” 

In the Prologue, Adso of Melk, writing as an old man, introduces his manuscript and his intentions in sharing it with his unknown readers. This passage reflects the novel’s participation in postmodernism, a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late-twentieth century across philosophy, the arts, and architecture. While the movement encompasses a broad range of ideas, it can be typically defined by a rejection of universal truths and ideologies, and asserts that any claims to knowledge and truth are really only products of social, historical, and political circumstances.

While Adso himself would never espouse such a philosophy, there are many instances in which his master, William of Baskerville, does make such claims. Adso’s resulting confusion about the knowability of truth is a theme running throughout the novel. William’s assertion that human knowledge can only be fragmentary is an idea that can be found in Scripture, but only as a vehicle to man’s reliance on God. William, however, appears to question man’s capacity to interpret divine signs, too, much to Adso’s dismay.

"There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond…is established between you and him." 

In this passage, William describes what happens to an individual who is being tortured. He and Ubertino of Casale are debating the many heresies with which the Catholic Church has struggled, and they lament the current conflicts threatening the Church’s stability. Ubertino is relating the many barbarous confessions he has heard during the trials of heretics, but William cautions him not to believe all of these things. William has renounced his former role as an inquisitor, for he has grave doubts about the authority of the Inquisition itself. Its primary vehicles, fear and pain, are insufficient tools for discerning truth.

Physical punishment is a stark motif of the novel, and appears many times. We hear about the Dolcinian heretics who are captured and tortured, and the gruesome death of their leader, Fra Dolcino. We learn that Salvatore, the cellarer’s assistant, is tortured by Bernard Gui’s men; and we learn that Adso himself, a few weeks before the events of the novel, witnessed an execution that will forever remain emblazoned on his memory.

The crux of William’s point in this passage is that torture—pain of any kind—is not a method of extracting truth, but rather a perversion of truth. The larger implications of this point of view are quite subversive, and complicate our view of William as a representative of the Church.

“William, you know I love you. You know I have great faith in you. Mortify your intelligence, learn to weep over the wounds of the Lord, throw away your books.” 

Here, Ubertino scolds William, albeit lovingly, for they are dear friends and brother monks. They are discussing heresy, and the pitiful heretics who are condemned by the Catholic Church. Ubertino is very certain of his point of view, whereas William is ambivalent, and often embraces ambiguity. While he does not question belief in God, he is aware of the various corrupt systems of belief that exist in this world. As a way of orienting himself in a chaotic world, William relies on his “books,” by which Ubertino means his education at Oxford. In particular, Ubertino is skeptical about the theologian and philosopher Roger Bacon, whom William reveres. Bacon was one of the earliest European advocates for the modern scientific method, and he placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. Throughout the novel, both in his investigation of the murders, and in his world view, William espouses this philosophy while others question and even subvert it.

“Ubertino could have become one of the heretics he helped burn, or a cardinal of the holy Roman church. He came very close to both perversions. When I talk with Ubertino I have the impression that hell is heaven seen from the other side….it is a matter of knowing whether there are sides and whether there is a whole.” 

William and Adso are here discussing Ubertino, whom Adso has just met for the very first time. Adso finds the elderly monk to be “odd,” but William says that all great men are odd, and “it is only petty men who seem normal.” In this world, there are renowned men such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, but the novel critiques the excesses of both the imperial and the papal courts. The Abbot too is considered a pious man at the helm of a very rich Benedictine community, but in the end, he cares too much for the honor of the abbey, and perishes. The nature of greatness, and power itself, is being interrogated here, and in particular, the nature and limitations of those men who fulfil divine functions, as God’s representatives on earth. 

“In summer or spring, through the variety of its plants, each then adorned with its flowers, this garden sings…the praises of the Creator…But even now, in winter, the herbalist’s eye sees through the dry branches the plants that will come, and he can tell you that this garden is richer than any herbal ever was, and more varicolored, beautiful as the illuminations in those volumes.” 

In this passage, Severinus, the abbey’s herbalist, who is in charge of the balneary, infirmary, and gardens, is taking William and Adso on a tour of the gardens. William believes that nature can be studied, like a book, and can enhance man’s life on earth. Severinus agrees, and the two men engage in a learned discussion of nature, the plants in the garden, and the uses of plants for culinary and medicinal purposes. They also discuss the many great books written on these subjects—an “herbal” is a book of herbology—and marvel at the abbey’s wonderful collection of these tomes. Additionally, this passage is important because the garden exemplifies the ‘book of nature,’ that man, using his reason, is given by God to read, study and learn from. The knowledge gleaned from this ‘text,’ i.e., the garden, is vital to human life. But nature is also dangerous so man must use his reason to apply this knowledge wisely. 

“Little by little, the man who depicts monsters and portents of nature to reveal the things of God…comes to enjoy the very nature of the monstrosities he creates, and to delight in them.” 

Here, Jorge of Burgos rebukes the use of humor and spectacle in the illuminations of holy texts which he finds to be subversive of God’s divine meanings. This is an important moment in the novel because it sets up the theme of artistic representation, its limitations and its dangers. Jorge vehemently opposes monastic overreliance on images, such as the illuminations of sacred manuscripts. He believes that such artistry leads to sin, for it seduces the beholder to enjoy rather than denounce “the monstrosities” (90) that the artist has depicted. He even objects to the evocative carvings that decorate the entire abbey, saying: “now it is more pleasurable for a monk to read marble than manuscript, and to admire the works of man than to meditate on the law of God. Shame! For the desire of your eyes and for your smiles!” (90). This debate about the dangers of laughter is one of the central moral and aesthetic conflicts of the entire novel; this passage, which take place early in the book, and is the first time that readers meet Jorge, is an important one both thematically and aesthetically. 

“There is a magic that is divine, where God’s knowledge is made manifest through the knowledge of man, and it serves to transform nature, and one of its ends is to prolong man’s very life. And this is holy magic, to which the learned must devote themselves more and more, not only to discover new things but also to rediscover many secrets of nature that divine wisdom had revealed to the Hebrews, the Greeks, to other ancient peoples, and even, today, to the infidels.” 

In this passage, William is speaking with Nicholas of Morimondo, the abbey’s master glazier, who is “dumfounded” when he first sees William’s eyeglasses. The technology is very old, but was unknown to the Western world until recently, and Nicholas fearfully wonders if such “secrets” are a sign of witchcraft. William responds that these are a kind of “magic,” but they are wonders of science, a product of man’s inquiry and reason. They discuss these fruits of man’s learning, and the dangers of displaying such knowledge in a world where anyone can be suspected by the Inquisition. The two men then discuss who is qualified to be the keepers of such knowledge in a world where it is often difficult to tell an enemy from an ally.

“Every creature…visible or invisible, is a light, brought into being by the father of lights. This ivory, this onyx, but also the stone that surrounds us, are a light, because I perceive that they are good and beautiful, that they exist according to their own rules of proportion, that they differ in genus and species from all other genera and species, that they are defined by their own number, that they are true to their order, that they seek their specific place according to their weight. And the more these things are revealed to me…the better illuminated is the divine power of creation, for if I must strive to grasp the sublimity of the cause, inaccessibly in its fullness, through the sublimity of the effect, how much better am I told of the divine causality by an effect as wondrous as gold and diamond…And then, when I perceive in these stones such superior things, the soul weeps, moved to joy, and not through the purest love of the prime, uncaused cause.” 

Here, Abo of Fossanova is speaking to William and Adso about the wealth of his abbey. When Adso admires the gold and jewels that adorn the alter, Abo proceeds to describe those riches in great detail. The precious metals and stones, he says, magnify God’s glory on earth by inspiring reverence in man. As God’s own creations, jewels and other treasures exemplify God’s power and goodness. For Abo, these objects move his very soul, but although his words are beautiful, his character is shown to be limited. In the end, it is the honor of the abbey that he cares about, and not finding out the truth. In fact, he believes that limiting access to the truth is the best way to shore up his own authority, which is absolute in the Benedictine Order.

“Here, I said to myself, is the greatness of our order: for centuries and centuries, men like these have seen the barbarian hordes burst in, sack their abbeys, plunge kingdoms into chasms of fire, and yet they have gone on cherishing parchments and inks, have continued to read…words that have been handed down…and which they will hand down to the centuries to come.” 

Adso celebrates the seat of medieval learning, the medieval scriptorium, in this passage. The heart of the scriptorium is the study of Scripture. Monastic scriptoria flourished from the ninth through the twelfth centuries, and the Benedictine order in particular participated in this important work, because Benedictines pledged to live and work their entire lives at the same abbey. This passage vividly describes the vicissitudes of history—the barbarous invaders who destroy institutions of learning—but these incursions cannot destroy the quest for knowledge that dominates the life of man on earth. Monks, in particular, are called upon by God to carry on this important tradition, despite the destructive vagaries of history. This passage is particularly evocative stylistically in its repetition of the word “centuries,” reinforcing the idea that learning has gone on since time immemorial, continuing the traditions of the ancients, and will endure, despite life’s obstacles.

“I was not surprised that the mystery of the crimes should involve the library. For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world on the border between terra incognita and Hades. They were dominated by the library, by its promises and prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets. Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own.” 

Having just celebrated the glories of the scriptorium in the previous passage (#9), Adso now worries about the crimes that have been committed in this sacred place. Leafing through the library’s catalogue, he glimpses “mysterious titles,” and contemplates why some works are prohibited (214). The library is a symbol of the human desire for knowledge, even at the expense of sin, and Adso shudders at the “intellectual pride” that must course through some of these men’s souls (214). He contemplates his “sainted founder,” Saint Benedict (c. 480 – 550 AD), who imagined a “scribe-monk…capable of copying without understanding, surrendered to the will of God, writing as if praying, and praying inasmuch as he was writing” (214). This passage sets up an explicit contrast with the passage above about the scriptorium: the former is an idealized version of medieval learning and monastic life. In this passage, by contrast, Adso worries and wonders, is the ideal scholar-monk one who “surrenders” or one who goes on desiring more and more knowledge? 

“As I listened to those voices, no longer knowing what to think myself, it so happened that I looked straight at the condemned man’s face…And I saw the face of a man looking at something that is not of this earth…And I understood that, madman or seer as he might be, he knowingly wanted to die because he believed that in dying he would defeat his enemy, whoever it was….And I remain amazed by the possessors of such steadfastness only because I do not know, even today, whether what prevails in them is a proud love of the truth they believe, which leads them to death, or a proud desire for death, which leads them to proclaim their truth, whatever it may be. And I am overwhelmed with admiration and fear.”

Here Adso reflects on the execution he witnessed in Florence just a few weeks ago, before he joined William on this journey. This passage elides the issue of whether this man, Michael, is a “madman or [a] seer,” and focuses solely on Adso’s ambivalence about the nature of truth and the virtue of utter certainty. Michael’s “steadfastness” is celebrated here, even in the face of impending death. At other points in the novel, such utter certainty is problematic, as for example, in the inquisitor Bernard Gui. And William himself admits that he gave up being an inquisitor because he could not summon the hardened certainty that is required for the job. When Adso uses the phrase “even today,” it becomes clear that he is speaking to the reader on two levels, e.g., at two different chronological times: first, he is commenting in the present time, as the young novice trying to understand what he has witnessed; and second, he speaks as his elder self, looking back at this experience and admitting that he thinks about this man (Michael) even today. The final sentence of the passage elides this time difference, for it implies that Adso remains, and will continue to remain, “overwhelmed with admiration and fear.”

“[It was] just as [if] the whole universe is surely like a book written by the finger of God, in which everything speaks to us of the immense goodness of its Creator, in which every creature is description and mirror of life and death, in which the humblest rose becomes a gloss of our terrestrial progress….If the whole world is destined to speak to me of the power, goodness, and wisdom of the Creator, and if that morning the whole world spoke to me of the girl, who (sinner though she may have been) was nevertheless a chapter in the great book of creation, a verse of the great psalm chanted by the cosmos…it could only be a part of the great theophanic design that sustains the universe, arranged like a lyre, miracle of consonance and harmony.”  

In this passage, Adso contemplates his sexual encounter with the peasant girl from the village below the abbey. Although she is a sinner who trades sexual favors for food, when she makes sexual advances to Adso, it is because she finds him young and handsome. Her desire for him is therefore pure. The entire encounter is described through his ecstatic eyes, in rhapsodic tones. Afterwards, he basks in his feelings of desire and love. Later he is remorseful; he confesses his sin and is absolved by William. This absolution frees Adso to contemplate the larger resonance of the encounter. He and the girl are God’s creations, and so is sexual passion–it has a place in God’s world. And although he knows he will never again break his vows of celibacy, he is able to see the beauty in this experience, which is part of the “book” of creation.

“Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke amongst themselves. In light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” 

Here, Adso and William are discussing the notes—written in a secret code with invisible ink on a piece of parchment—made by Venantius before he was killed. They speculate that he had found the secret book, and was reading it and taking notes in Greek. When the book was stolen from Venantius’s desk, along with William’s eyeglasses, the thief did not see this parchment fall out. William has spent a great deal of time deciphering Venantius’s secret code, and now he and Adso are struggling to understand the meaning of the words. William explains to Adso that “books speak of other books,” an idea that is new to the young novice. Adso has a more straightforward idea, that books speak of things either “human or divine,” but not about each other. This idea of an intertextual conversation is thematic and hearkens to the postmodernism of the novel, as well as its investigation of semiotics. Intertextuality is at times presented as a force for good, but in this passage, it takes on a more sinister connotation, as Adso worries that this feature of books makes meaning more elusive.

“Dear Adso, these seem like the words of a holy text, whose meaning goes beyond the letter. Reading them this morning, after we had spoken to the cellarer, I was struck by the fact that here, too, there are references to the simple folk and to peasants as bearers of a truth different from that of the wise.” 

Adso and William are discussing the secret parchment on which Venantius took notes while reading the forbidden book right before he was murdered. Venantius could not resist stealing the book from Adelmo’s desk, and likewise, Berengar stole it from Venantius, but he did not notice this parchment fall out. William and Adso find the parchment when examining Venantius’s desk, and they immediately realize its importance, when a secret code—written in invisible ink—appears upon holding it up to the heat of the lamp. Venantius has used some kind of “zodiacal alphabet,” and William has cracked the code. The words are now translated but their meaning is unclear, a fact which dismays Adso greatly. William, for his part, is confident he will decipher the meaning as well. In this passage, he begins to analyze the text, and he realizes that “the simple,” by which he means the common people or the unlearned, are the subject being discussed. These folks do not have access to education, or the knowledge available in books. Rather, they live day in and day out in the world of lived experience, and these people are just as much “bearers of truth” as the writers—and readers—from learned institutions. Neither William nor Adso has yet realized that the secret book is Aristotle’s lost work on comedy, which is thought to elevate laughter as a means to knowledge. This famous book, now lost, argues that the rightful subjects of comedy are everyday folks, common people in humorous situations that elicit laughter, and thus teach through merriment. This passage also relates to the confrontation in the finis Africae between William and Jorge. Jorge insists that comedy is dangerous, and that “the simple should not speak.”

“I had the impression that William was not at all interested in in the truth, which is nothing but the adjustment between the things and the intellect. On the contrary, he amused himself by imagining how many possibilities were possible. At that moment, I confess, I despaired of my master and caught myself thinking, ‘Good thing the inquisitor has come.’ I was on the side of that thirst for truth that inspired Bernard Gui. And in this culpable mood, more torn than Judas on the night of Holy Thursday, I went with William into the refectory to eat my supper.” 

After listening to the angry rantings of the elderly and somewhat senile Alinardo, William tells Adso that the old monk’s words contain a great deal of truth, a statement that mystifies the young novice. Adso begins contemplating William’s methods of investigation, and worries about his line of reasoning. Adso finds himself wondering if the methods and world view of the Inquisition are the superior ones. He craves a certainty that is much like that of the heretic Michael in the previous passage (#13). But in the end, the novel seems to uphold ambiguity over certainty, and the elder Adso understands this ambiguity, since he refers to his young ruminations as “culpable,” and calls himself a “Judas” for doubting William.

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn, as these books speak of him, embodies a moral truth, or allegorical, or analogical, but one that remains true, as the idea that chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But for the literal truth that sustains the other three truths, we have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter.” 

William and Adso have penetrated the maze that guards the library, but have not yet been able to find the secret room. They have, however, deciphered the complex system of organization by which the books are ordered in the labyrinth. In one of the rooms, they find books about “monsters and falsehoods,” including the Koran, which William calls a wise book. Adso is surprised, and then he is dismayed to learn that the unicorn may not be real, but in fact just “a fable.” William then explains to his protégé the difference between truth and meaning, which is the hallmark of the study of semiotics. As a semiotician, Eco suggests that truth is elusive, and meaning is contingent upon many different things, concepts that William espouses as well.

“I would have foresworn a thousand religions that day. And for years, many years, I have told myself how base I was, and how happy I was to be base, and yet I was always hoping that I could demonstrate to myself that I was not a coward. Today you have given me this strength, Lord Bernard; you have been for me what the pagan emperors were for the most cowardly of the martyrs. You have given me the courage to confess what I believe in my soul, as my body falls away from it. But do not demand too much courage of me, more than this mortal frame can bear. No, not torture. I will say whatever you want. Better the stake at once: you die of suffocation before you burn. Not torture like Dolcino’s. No. You want a corpse, and to have it you need me to assume the guilt for other corpses. I will be a corpse soon in any case. And so I will give you what you want.” 

This complex passage occurs during the trial of Remigio, the cellarer of the abbey. On the face of it, this is a straightforward confession. Remigio has just admitted that he and Salvatore were followers of the notorious heretic, Fra Dolcino. He has described the capture and torture of Dolcino in excruciating detail. These details echo other places in the novel where torture—and the use of pain to extract truth—are vividly described, as well as the psychological effects of such methods.

In this passage, Remigio goes on to describe why, after witnessing Dolcino’s torture, he decided to lie and cover up his past. He decided he would be “base” in order to live, and yet living with the lie has had a degrading effect on him. On this day, at his trial, he thanks the inquisitor Bernard Gui for ending the lie, for now he has found the “courage” to tell the “truth.” He will no longer be a “coward” and will die honorably. While the surface meaning of the words is clear, this passage is actually quite subversive. Remigio positions himself as a holy “martyr” in days of old, persecuted by “pagan emperors,” and he uses the elevated language of bravery when making this confession. However, he subtly undercuts his own message when he claims to be like “the most cowardly of the martyrs”; this suggests that he is aligning himself with those men and women who gave false confessions in order evade torture and receive a quick death instead.

The moral murkiness of this passage reflects the character of the Remigio himself, who started out life in “a city family,” but turned away from that world to embrace the “freedom” of the heretical Dolcinian cult. Then, when about to be caught, he turned himself back into an upright citizen, pretending to be someone he was not. But this false identity degraded him even further, and only now, when facing death, has he achieved the ultimate freedom.

This passage also implicates the inquisitor, Bernard Gui, whom Remigio thanks for ‘freeing’ him. In his speech, Remigio acknowledges what is an open secret, that Gui wishes to find a “corpse,” any corpse will do, in order to complete his mission.

“The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity.” 

After Benno has been made the assistant librarian, he begins to “observe the laws,” as the chapter heading scathingly says. He will no longer have to search for the forbidden book because he is now keeper of all the books. William explains to an exasperated Adso that Benno has a “lust” for knowledge, but such feelings are only “insatiable curiosity [and] intellectual pride,” not a genuine yearning for truth. That is why Benno now seeks to deny others access to the forbidden book for which so many have already died. And a book is meant to be read, William insists, not hidden away. Again, the novel participates in the semiotic study of meaning-making, in which a sign system—in this case, the book—is rendered mute unless it is seen by human eyes. In this passage, the act of suppression (i.e., hiding the book) is tantamount to “iniquity,” because it “buries” the meaning contained therein.

“The language of gems is multiform; each expresses several truths, according to the context in which they appear. And who decides what is the level of interpretation and what is the proper context…It is authority, the most reliable commentator of all and the most invested with prestige, and therefore with sanctity. Otherwise how to interpret the multiple signs that the world sets before our sinner’s eyes.” 

Abo of Fossanova is angry that William has failed to solve the mystery of the murders, and he grows even angrier when William asks too many questions about the library’s secrets. Abo shows Adso his holy ring, attempting to change the subject, and Adso is “dazzled” by its sparkling jewels, which symbolize the abbot’s worship of earthly power. In this passage, the abbot reasserts his authority over the entire abbey, and bans William from continuing his investigation. He flashes his ring at Adso and says “I am an abbot, and you are under my jurisdiction. Hear my command: forget, and may your lips be sealed forever. Swear.” Adso is “subjugated” by these commands, but William sweeps away the abbot’s words and breaks the spell. It is William’s methods, and not the abbot’s, that are held up as exemplary in this text, despite his limitations and errors in judgement. 

“The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.” 

William and Adso are devastated as they watch the abbey burn to the ground. Adso tries to comfort his master, telling William that he did his best to solve the mystery of the murders in the abbey. My “human best,” William says, which, in the end, was not good enough to stop this tragedy. Adso lists all the things that William discovered “with the help of [his] learning,” but William interrupts his pupil: “I have never doubted the truth of signs…what I did not understand was the relation among [them]” (599). William imposed his own order on the clues that he gathered, and the order he imagined was an “erroneous” one. For all his theorizing, his empirical method, his gathering of “signs,” none of it was enough to prevent this calamity.

The imagery of the “ladder” and the “net” in this passage is significant: both are stand-ins for a sign system, whether it is language or faith or music, by which human beings express themselves and understand their world. But change is inevitable and life unpredictable; therefore, the sign systems must evolve or they become meaningless. People sin, languages die, and civilizations end. William cites an expression in the common German vernacular, the language of Adso’s home country, which (loosely translated in medieval German) is: ‘You have to throw the ladder away in order to climb up.’ Here he is explaining to Adso that no sign system is foolproof, and human use of these systems is prone to error, a reality which makes the quest for meaning and truth that much more precarious.

“The Aedificium, except for the south wall, which was in ruins, seemed yet to stand and defy the course of time. The two outer towers, over the cliff, appeared almost untouched, but all the windows were empty sockets whose slimy tears were rotting vines. Inside, the work of art, destroyed, became confused with the work of nature, and across vast stretches of the kitchen the eyes ran to the open heavens through the breach of the upper floors and roof, fallen like fallen angels.” 

Adso, when he is older, is sent to Italy by his own abbot, and he cannot resist visiting the ruined abbey during his travels. The magnificent art and architecture lie in ruins, and nature has overtaken man’s creations. As if to symbolize the power of nature over the power of man, the buildings are anthropomorphized, windows as “empty [eye] sockets” with “rotting vines” as the “slimy tears.” Architectural structures, like most of the sign systems man makes, are finite. Nature, however, is eternal, an expression of God’s power.

“I spent many, many hours trying to decipher those remains. Often from a word or a surviving image I could recognize what the work had been. When I found, in time, other copies of those books, I studied them with love…as if having identified the destroyed copy were a clear sign from heaven that said to me: Tolle et lege. At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.” 

Adso, in his elder years, after having visited the ruined abbey and collected the burned remnants from the demolished library, endeavors to reconstruct those beloved texts. This effort becomes a lifelong quest, which symbolizes the human endeavor to make meaning out of the disparate experiences of everyday life. In the world of this novel, reading is one of the surest paths to knowledge. The monks of the abbey have precious few experiences–their entire lives are spent in prayer and study. Those in authority, namely, the abbot and his librarian, attempt to withhold access to certain books. But in the passage above, it is as if heaven itself assents to this quest for knowledge. “Tolle et lege” means ‘take and read,’ and Adso complies because he must comply. He, like the monks of the scriptoria, is bound to read, to learn, and to yearn for knowledge.