Skip to main content

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.

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanNovember 11, 2022 at 9:06 PM

    Hari OM
    I too have read this novel more than once - though not, now, for about a decade. Your reminder of it is a fine prompt! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathNovember 11, 2022 at 10:53 PM

    Nice...Thriller set in a unusual ambience.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
22 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Sardar Patel and Unity

All pro-PM newspapers carried this ad today, 31 Oct 2025 No one recognised Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as he stood looking at the 182-m tall statue of himself. The people were waiting anxiously for the Prime Minister whose eloquence would sway them with nationalistic fervour on this 150 th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. “Is this unity?” Patel wondered looking at the gigantic version of himself. “Or inflation?” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi chuckled standing beside Patel holding a biodegradable iPhone. “The world has changed, Sardar ji. They’ve built me in wax in London.” He looked amused. “We have become mere hashtags, I’d say.” That was Jawaharlal Nehru joining in a spirit of camaraderie. “I understand that in the world’s largest democracy now history is optional. Hashtags are mandatory.” “You know, Sardar ji,” Gandhi said with more amusement, “the PM has released a new coin and a stamp in your honour on your 150 th birth anniversary.”  “Ah, I watched the function too,” ...
15 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
12 comments
Read more