“The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth…” That’s one of the concluding lines in Umberto Eco’s fabulous novel, The Name of the Rose . I’m celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the publication of the English translation of the novel. The original Italian version was published in 1980. The novel is set in a Christian monastery in Italy in the early 14 th century. The plot unfolds in seven days in the year 1327 though the background will span many years earlier. Those were the years in which many people were burnt as heretics and witches by the Catholic Church, the most powerful religion of those days. Eco’s novel illustrates in its own subtle way how a very innocent woman was burnt as a witch simply because she had to sell her body to two monks in the monastery in return for the food she could take home for people at home. The monks in question are tortured as heretics, and they are not innocent any...
Cerebrate and Celebrate