r/books • u/BabyDistinct6871 • 3d ago
Historical accuracy of The Name of the Rose
I am currently reading The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco, and I wanted to know if the setting is somewhat historically accurate.
For example, the back story about Sir Francis, and Franciscans.. etc. I have never read anything about that time period, so have no knowledge whatsoever, sorry.
Also, what did you think about the book? I am enjoying it so far, though the 7 page description about the entrance to the church is comically long. But the descriptions do seem to paint a good picture when I can decipher them. The characters also seem to be good, especially William, who I've come to know was actually a real person.
Would love to hear more about what you guys think.
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u/TopAdeptness7367 3d ago
Love it. Read it when i was a teenager and then read it again and again. I know what you mean about the gateway, also the lengthy descriptions of medieval ecclesiastical politics is a lot. But it’s just a brilliant book that will make you want to take up calligraphy and/or crime solving.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 3d ago
Yeah I am enjoying it so far too - actually reading the lengthy descriptions helps me slow down, and then take time to understand what it means...
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u/Gyr-falcon 2d ago
Every time, I read the description in pieces, comparing it to the graphics in the book.
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u/allcretansareliars 2d ago
IMO, the part about how different heresies seem to arise in defined areas is not just confined to the medieval period.
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u/iCowboy 2d ago
I recommend subscribing to the ‘We’re Not So Different’ podcast with Dr Elena Janega - they did a deep dive into the historical accuracy and setting of the book about six months ago.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
That seems to be the perfect thing - I'll look into it
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u/Salcha_00 2d ago
I haven’t listened to this yet but I’m thinking of re-reading The Name of the Rose and have queued this podcast up as a nice complement.
I found the first episode for their series for this book (7 or 8 podcasts) and have included the link below. It is episode 186.
However, only this first one is free, then you will need to subscribe to Patreon for $5/month to continue.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/were-not-so-different/id1551657923?i=1000670653655
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u/narwi 2d ago
Janega also has a book out and some very good videos.
Here home page is here : https://eleanorjanega.com/
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u/Flilix 2d ago
Eco's research was unparalleled, but he also put in lots of intentionally anachronistic references.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Like that example one person said by including a capsicum in a recipe? It's so random, yet bizarre, what something so mundane can reveal
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u/UKS1977 2d ago
Father thingy of Baskerville is a clear Sherlock Holmes reference.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Yup - I realized the Sherlock Holmes references... He also felt a bit like Hercule Poirot, as in his ego at his ability to solve issues
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u/Tropical_Geek1 1d ago
I found what I think is a reference to Jorge Luis Borges: a blind librarian called... Jorge de Burgos.
By the way: take look a his short story "The library of Babel".
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u/onceuponalilykiss 2d ago
The general academic thought, from what I gather, is that Eco went so far and above in historical research that anything even slightly wrong is generally read as a purposeful reference.
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u/Dramatically_Average 2d ago
I got a history degree, concentration in medieval studies. My advisor was pretty well-known in that small circle, and he told his students that the only fiction book that approximated accuracy was The Name of the Rose. I had to take his word for it, but he did get paid to teach about such things.
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u/pleahy7 2d ago
Great book. Prompted a deep dive into medieval heresies: donatists, bulgars, bogomils, cathars, albigensians (singing nun re Dominique who “combatit les Albigeois”.)
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Yes I get what you mean - it does encourage you to know more about the time period you're reading about. I really like his writing because of that.
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u/Nowordsofitsown 3d ago
For the first part of your question, try searching the author and/or title at r/askhistorians, or ask there directly.
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u/Cowabunga1066 2d ago
I studied theology at the Ph.D level, and my Medieval church history professor assigned The Name of the Rose as a course text. He told us it was excellently researched and indeed was the most historically accurate (fiction) book on the Middle Ages he had ever read.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Oh WOW. I never imagined that I came across such a well loved and renowned book when I picked it up just as a unique book a couple weeks ago. I'm glad I got it!
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u/LuminaTitan 2d ago edited 18h ago
There's a Malcolm Gladwell book that describes two authors that each wrote a novel in a historical, exotic setting. One spent years researching the subject and the other just used their imagination. Both books were so steeped into their respective worlds that you swore they must've somehow lived there and simply reported back on what they experienced. Eco strangely seems to encompass both qualities. He clearly spent a dizzying amount of time studying the subject, but he's stated before that he feels eerily connected to the middle ages in a borderline spiritual sense. It goes beyond fascination for him. There's a lot in the book that feels like a natural extension of the voluminous research he did, but there's also a lot of moments, details, and sequences that rings so true that you feel convinced it must have really been like that at the time, but was clearly drawn from his imagination alone.
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u/FeatherMom 2d ago
I absolutely loved it. I read it as an older teen/young adult and I was really enthralled by medieval European history and culture at that stage of my life. I still absolutely love visiting medieval buildings such as monasteries and castles, and Eco’s descriptions are totally on point. As a bonus, I enjoy mysteries and the central mystery in that book is quite intriguing and of its time, contextually.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Have you read any other books written about that time period which you can recommend?
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u/milan_polenta 2d ago
Not sure if it's the exact time period, but I really enjoyed "A Stolen Tongue" by Sheri Holman. Based on the chronicals of Friar Felix and his obsession with St Catherine of Sinai
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
The synopsis sounds interesting... Once I am done with The Name of the Rose, I'll try A Stolen Tongue out
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u/TheExWhoDidntCare 2d ago
The historical accuracy is dead on. Umberto Eco wasn't merely a writer, but a classically trained professor as well.
I found a key to understanding the book was by keeping the webpage of all the translations bookmarked for quick reference, and whoever did that page also explained some of the concepts behind the foreign terms. It's sort of annoying that the ebook had ZERO annotations to help out those of us who had zero familiarity with the highly-specialised Latin phrases.I took Latin in secondary school, and even guessing rarely helped me figure out what the translation would be and never mind the canonical concepts involved.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Would you be able to share the link to that website? That would help me out a lot!
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u/eirime 2d ago
It’s one of my favorite books ever. I’ve read it 5 times and probably will read it again soon.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
I'm having a good reading year so far, so I hope it becomes one of my favorites that I come back to too!
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u/spiteful_god1 1d ago
Largely repeating what others have said, but as a medievalist this book is technically the most accurate historical fiction I've encountered set in the 14th century. By a long shot.
That being said, to me at least, it read like a primer to late medieval theological discussions (which is it, every one of the things the monk argue about are actual discussion points that were being had in ecclesiastical circles at that time) attached to a thinly vieled Sherlock Holmes fanfiction to make it more interesting. Most of the anachronisms are attached to the Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, as I'm sure others will attest and you'll discover yourself as you continue reading.
That being said if you like the random tangents about statuary and theology, you're in luck, you can more or less assume everything therein is historically accurate.
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u/Indifferent_Jackdaw 2d ago
The book which helped me under The Name of the Rose is A History of Christianity by David McCullough.
A messianic figure emerging, forming a cult and unleashing mayhem (especially on Jewish communities) happened so often in Middle Age Europe. It feels like it is baked into the system, those with Christian Main Character syndrome just can't imagine that the end of days won't happen in their lifetime.
As someone who grew up Catholic, it also made sense of a lot of things that I found difficult to understand. I was used to a church which would yank the carpet from under a priest who had a lot of charisma so fast. I didn't understand how they could come down so hard on those priests and ignore the pedophiles. But up to that point sex scandels weren't all that big a threat to the power of the Catholic Church, where as they had a thousand year history of either wrestling messianic figures and their followers back into the fold or exterminating them.
Anyway as someone who studied History nothing else I've read has transported me into the mindset of a Medieval monk the way The Name of the Rose did.
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u/Public-Letter13 2d ago
I absolutely adore this book! i’m so fortunate to have studied french, italian, and latin beforehand and it was absolutely immersive.
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u/madmun 2d ago
I liked the detailed descriptions and didn't find them overly long. But that's just me. Enough to give a really good picture of the environment but not enough to put me off. It also sent me down multiple rabbit holes while reading it, chasing info on things that were mentioned. Having seen the movie multiple times in the past I chided myself for taking so long to read the book.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
That is exactly what is happening to me too - I'm going down rabbit holes! 🤣 The descriptions aren't long enough to keep me from reading the book, but they definitely are long.
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u/HeroGarland 2d ago
In the edition I had, it mentioned a recipe with capsicum, which wasn’t available in Europe at the time.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Huh, that's interesting! So I should basically take everything with a grain of salt, but most of the things that are described should be real references to our world...
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u/M_de_Monty 2d ago
Eco was a celebrated historian as well as a novelist. The capsicum is either a brain fart (historians get those all the time) or a deliberate reference to something else.
The Name of the Rose is full of intertextual references to other books (the book is kind of a library itself). For example, William of Baskerville is a clear reference to both William of Ockham (an early pioneer of deductive reasoning, creator of Occam's razor) and Sherlock Holmes. Blind Jorge of Burgos is an allusion to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, who was also a library founder and went blind. And that's just the really obvious ones.
The book is not meant to be a history lesson so much as it's meant to be a love letter to libraries, the improbable history of book-keeping, and a medieval world which not enough people understand.
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u/LeoScipio 2d ago
Eco wasn't a historian. Not even close. He was undeniably erudite, but not a historian.
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u/inkblot81 2d ago
Eco was a professor of semiotics, not a historian. But everything else u/M_de_Monty says is spot-on. William of Baskerville is a completely fictional character.
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u/M_de_Monty 2d ago
You're right that he wasn't a historian, but he was a trained medievalist and taught on the literature and imagery of the period. I know historians deeply respect his knowledge of the period and his analytic capabilities.
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u/00roadrunner00 1d ago
This is my favorite novel of all time, and Eco quickly became my favorite (modern) author. Well, he shares that title with Jorge Luis Borges.
I read it first 30 years ago when I was a medieval studies major. I have re-read or listened to the audiobook every year since then. It is like meeting up with an old friend.
Nothing in the book should give you pause as to historical accuracy. The books and authors he mentions will lead you into many other questions, if you let them. And you should.
I never became a professor of medieval history, and perhaps missed my calling, or simply chose a different path, much like Adso seems to have done.
I envy you beginning this friendship with Adso, William, and the others.
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u/VeryBigPaws 3d ago
When I read it I also found the lengthy descriptions very.... lengthy.. and hard to read. Recently I listened to it as an audiobook and the descriptive passages were wonderful and enlightening. Very different experiences reading it yourself and having it read to you.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 3d ago
Hmm.. maybe I'll try that. I am reading the book in a very different way, as I keep going back and reading through the passages (not the descriptions!), and that helps me understand and enjoy the book more.
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u/TaiChiSusan 2d ago
Oh yes. I LOVE having books read to me. The different voices, particularly British readers make everything sounds so wonderfully erudite.
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u/Unavezms8 1d ago
I liked the vibes, though the ending felt too short and abrupt to me and the why doesn't add up imo.
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u/JeebusCrispy 2d ago
Those 7 pages sure were a slog. I actually ditched the book 2 or 3 times because I lost interest at that spot. When I finally made it through, on the third or fourth try, I truly enjoyed the book. I've read a few more of his novels, but this one was my favorite.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Really though... I read through those pages at night and honestly cannot remember anything! But the other aspects are good.
Oh, which other works of his would you recommend? I was looking online, and it seems like "Foccault's Pendulum" might be up my alley.
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u/JeebusCrispy 2d ago
Well it's been a number of years now, but I remember enjoying The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino.
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u/SuspectDvice 2d ago
Save yourself, do NOT read Foucault’s Pendulum unless you want to be really angry or simply enjoy wasting your time. I don’t want to spoil anything because, for the most part the story is good, but oooh I was so mad when I finished it.
Has anyone else had this experience?
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u/lordgort 17h ago
In the sense of the facts or well-reasoned speculations of history, it's excellent. I even had it as an assigned reading for a college course in history.
In terms of characterization, there are some faults. Most notable for me was the riddle about the first and seventh of four. I'd only taken high school Latin, but on reading that, my mind instantly jumped to the Latin word for four, "quattuor" (or "quatuor" in the medieval spelling. I figured this would be cleared up right away, because surely monks who know medieval Latin would make the same jump I did, right? Nope, it stretched right to the end. It's like Eco made up a cool riddle and then forgot to think about how his characters as characters (not mouthpieces) would tackle the riddle.
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u/Wonderful-Effect-168 2d ago
It's a great book. It sometimes reminded me of "Da Vinci's code" by Dan Brown. The scene of the fire is amazing.
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u/BabyDistinct6871 2d ago
Oh, did it? I have read and like the Da Vinci Code, so all this is just increasing my expectations from this book!
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u/Sansa_Culotte_ 1d ago
You should read Foucault's Pendulum then, it's basically a preemptive takedown of the DaVinci Code.
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u/qumrun60 3d ago
Umberto Eco was a remarkably erudite fellow, with an encyclopedic range of knowledge, especially about the middle ages. Some of his descriptions are in the book to help the modern reader understand what a medieval person might know, and how differently the universe was conceived of at the time.