Faith without smile

“Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt,” says William to Jorge. William and Jorge are respectively the protagonist and the antagonist of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, which sold over 50 million copies since its publication in 1983. The original was published in Italian in 1980. William and Jorge are both Catholic monks. One is a hero and the other is a villain. You can be a hero or a villain irrespective of the system you belong to. The problem is not with the system but with you. That is the quintessential message of Eco’s novel.

The novel begins with the journey of William and his young disciple Adso to an abbey in Italy in Nov 1327. William is a monk and Adso is a novice. They belong to two different congregations: Franciscans and Benedictines respectively. It was the time when Pope John XXII and King Louis IV were at loggerheads with each other and the Franciscans had the support of the king while the Benedictines chose to kiss the Pope’s ring. William’s journey to the abbey has something to do with this Pope-King conflict.

But that conflict is relegated to the background when a series of deaths takes place in the abbey. No less than five monks are found dead in the abbey one by one under very mysterious circumstances all of which find associations with the Antichrist of the biblical Revelation in Jorge’s interpretation. William’s shrewd mind is determined to find out the truth about the deaths/murders. William was an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church until he realised the folly and villainy of Inquisition.

The Pope’s delegate who comes to solve the current problem between the King and the Pope is a leading Inquisitor. He doesn’t solve the problem. Instead, he finds three individuals to be burnt at the stake: two monks who became monks out of poverty and a village girl who gratified the lust of the monks out of poverty. The Church never understands poverty or any issue of the common people. As long as the Church can burn someone at the stake and thus assert its authority, it is contended. “Bernard (the Inquisitor) is interested, not in discovering the guilty, but in burning the accused,” as William tells Adso. William is not interested in witch-hunt, however. He will prove what is actually wrong with the whole system. That is what this novel is about.

“You are the Devil,” William tells Bernard, the Pope’s representative. The Catholic Church was a diabolic institution in the medieval period. Eco’s novel shows how it behaved like a devil rather than a spiritual enterprise. It had no heart. And no brain, either. It had power. It lusted after power. The deadliest lust is not sex. In fact, sex can be an ecstasy as Adso realises during his intercourse with the girl who later is burned at the stake as a heretic for earning her bread by selling her body to the monks. Woman is the source of too many evils in the scriptures of the Semitic religions.

Happiness is evil, according to Jorge and most other monks. Did Jesus ever smile? Did Jesus laugh? The novel has some interesting discussions on that. The issue is quite serious. Murderous, in fact. I don’t want to bring in spoilers for those who would like to read the novel now.

This is the third time I’m reading this novel. I read it first in the late 1980s when its English translation was available in India. My second reading was when my school in Delhi was under siege due to the greed of a religious organisation called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB]. RSSB has always reminded me of medieval Christianity. If you visit their headquarters in Beas, Punjab, you may be reminded of the abbey in this novel in spite of many differences. Differences are superficial. The spirit is diabolic. Faith without smile. Truth without doubt.

Those who love mankind must make people laugh at the truth, says William. What is truth? Is it what the evangelists preach in Bible Conventions? Is it what the godmen and godwomen preach from their perches in quirky ashrams? What about the madrassas with their straitjacket-truths? The devil is a product of piety, says Eco boldly in the novel. “Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them.”

I think this novel is still relevant though it is not an easy read at all with its excesses of Latin, theology, history, and philosophy. But it has plenty of suspense. It is a thriller with a difference. Something that today’s thriller writers must read to understand how thrillers can be good literature too. Something that today’s patriots must read to know that their truths, like anybody’s truths, are never absolute. Something that cynics like me must read to remind themselves that there should be tenderness even in the hearts of intellectuals.