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The Name Of The Rose
he is only drawing us far away from the scriptorium?”
“We will soon find out,” William said. In fact, a short while later Benno joined us.

SEXT

In which Benno tells a strange tale from which unedifying things about the life of the abbey are learned.

What Benno told us was quite confused. It really seemed that he had drawn us down there only to lure us away from the scriptorium, but it also seemed that, incapable of inventing a plausible pretext, he was telling us fragments of a truth of vaster dimensions than he knew.

He admitted he had been reticent that morning, but now, on sober consideration, he felt William should know the whole truth. During the famous conversation about laughter, Berengar had referred to the “finis Africae.” What was it? The library was full of secrets, and especially of books that had never been given to the monks to read. Benno had been struck by William’s words on the rational scrutiny of propositions.

He considered that a monk-scholar had a right to know everything the library contained, he uttered words of fire against the Council of Soissons, which had condemned Abelard, and while he spoke we realized that this monk was still young, that he delighted in rhetoric, was stirred by yearnings toward freedom, and was having a hard time accepting the limitations the discipline of the abbey set on his intellectual curiosity. I have learned always to distrust such curiosity, but I know well this attitude did not displease my master, and I saw he was sympathizing with Benno and giving him credence.

In short, Benno told us he did not know what secrets Adelmo, Venantius, and Berengar had discussed, but he would not be sorry if as a result of this sad story a bit more light were to be cast on the running of the library, and he hoped that my master, however he might unravel the tangle of the inquiry, would have reason to urge the abbot to relax the intellectual discipline that oppressed the monks—some from far places, like himself, he added, who had come for the express purpose of nourishing the mind on the marvels hidden in the vast womb of the library.

I believe Benno was sincere in expecting of the inquiry what he said. Probably, however, as William had foreseen, he wanted at the same time to retain for himself the possibility of rummaging in Venantius’s desk first, devoured as he was by curiosity, and in order to keep us away from that desk, he was prepared to give us information in exchange. And here is what it was.

Berengar was consumed, as many of the monks now knew, by an insane passion for Adelmo, the same passion whose evils divine wrath had castigated in Sodom and Gomorrah. So Benno expressed himself, perhaps out of regard for my tender years. But anyone who has spent his adolescence in a monastery, even if he has kept himself chaste, often hears talk of such passions, and at times he has to protect himself from the snares of those enslaved by them. Little novice that I was, had I not already received from an aged monk, at Melk, scrolls with verses that as a rule a layman devotes to a woman? The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors.

Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden’s?

I say these things not to cast doubt on the choice I made to devote myself to monastic life, but to justify the error of many to whom this holy burden proves heavy. Perhaps to justify Berengar’s horrible crime. But, according to Benno, this monk apparently pursued his vice in a yet more ignoble fashion, using the weapon of extortion to obtain from others what virtue and decorum should have advised them against giving.

So for some time the monks had been making sarcastic observations on the tender looks Berengar cast at Adelmo, who, it seems, was of great comeliness. Whereas Adelmo, enamored only of his work, from which he seemed to derive his sole pleasure, paid little attention to Berengar’s passion. But perhaps—who knows?—he was unaware that his spirit, secretly, tended toward the same ignominy. The fact is, Benno said, he had overheard a dialogue between Adelmo and Berengar in which Berengar, referring to a secret Adelmo was asking him to reveal, proposed a vile barter, which even the most innocent reader can imagine. And it seems that from Adelmo’s lips Benno heard words of consent, spoken as if with relief.

As if, Benno ventured, Adelmo at heart desired nothing else, and it sufficed for him to find some excuse other than carnal desire in order to agree. A sign, Benno argued, that Berengar’s secret must have concerned arcana of learning, so that Adelmo could harbor the illusion of submitting to a sin of the flesh to satisfy a desire of the intellect. And, Benno added with a smile, how many times had he himself not been stirred by desires of the intellect so violent that to satisfy them he would have consented to complying with others’ carnal desires, even against his own inclination.

“Are there not moments,” he asked William, “when you would also do shameful things to get your hands on a book you have been seeking for years?”
“The wise and most virtuous Sylvester II, centuries ago, gave as a gift a most precious armillary sphere in exchange for a manuscript, I believe, of Statius or Lucan,” William said. He added then, prudently, “But it was an armillary sphere, not his virtue.”

Benno admitted that his enthusiasm had carried him away, and he resumed his story. The night before Adelmo’s death, Benno followed the pair, driven by curiosity, and he saw them, after compline, go off together to the dormitory. He waited a long time, holding ajar the door of his cell, not far from theirs, and when silence had fallen over the sleep of the monks, he clearly saw Adelmo slip into Berengar’s cell.

Benno remained awake, unable to fall asleep, until he heard Berengar’s door open again and Adelmo flee, almost running, as his friend tried to hold him back. Berengar followed Adelmo down to the floor below. Cautiously Benno went after them, and at the mouth of the lower corridor he saw Berengar, trembling, huddled in a corner, staring at the door of Jorge’s cell. Benno guessed that Adelmo had flung himself at the feet of the venerable brother to confess his sin. And Berengar was trembling, knowing his secret was being revealed, even if under the seal of the sacrament.

Then Adelmo came out, his face pale, thrust away Berengar, who was trying to speak to him, and rushed out of the dormitory, moving behind the apse of the church and entering the choir from the north door (which at night remains open). Probably he wanted to pray. Berengar followed him but did not enter the church; he wandered among the graves in the cemetery, wringing his hands.
Benno was wondering what to do when he realized that a fourth person was moving about the vicinity. This person, too, had followed the pair and certainly had not noticed the presence of Benno, who flattened himself against the trunk of an oak growing at the edge of the cemetery. The fourth man was Venantius. At the sight of him Berengar crouched among the graves, as Venantius also went into the choir. At this point, fearing he would be discovered, Benno returned to the dormitory. The next morning Adelmo’s corpse was found at the foot of the cliff. And more than that, Benno did not know.

Dinner hour was now approaching. Benno left us, and my master asked him nothing further. We remained for a little while behind the balneary, then strolled briefly in the garden, meditating on those singular revelations.
“Frangula,” William said suddenly, bending over to observe a plant that, on that winter day, he recognized from the bare bush. “A good infusion is made from the bark, for hemorrhoids. And that infusion is burdock, which cicatrizes skin eczemas.”
“You are cleverer than Severinus,” I said to him, “but now tell me what you think of what we have heard!”

“Dear Adso, you should learn to think with your own head. Benno probably told us the truth. His story fits with what Berengar told us early this morning, for all its hallucinations. Berengar and Adelmo do something very evil together: we had already guessed that. And Berengar must reveal to Adelmo that secret that remains, alas, a secret. Adelmo, after committing his crime against chastity and the law of nature, thinks only of confiding in someone who can absolve him, and he rushes to Jorge. Whose character is very stern, as we know from experience, and he surely attacks Adelmo with distressing reprimands. Perhaps he refuses absolution, perhaps he imposes an impossible penance: we don’t know, nor would Jorge ever tell us. The fact remains that Adelmo rushes into church and prostrates himself before the altar, but doesn’t quell his remorse.

At this point, he is approached by Venantius. We don’t know what they say to each other. Perhaps Adelmo confides in Venantius the secret received as a gift (or as payment) from Berengar, which no longer matters to him, since he now has a far more terrible and burning secret. What happens

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he is only drawing us far away from the scriptorium?”“We will soon find out,” William said. In fact, a short while later Benno joined us.SEXT In which Benno tells a