Introduction

While reading the Bible to better understand Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a few urgent questions suddenly popped up: Should dangerous knowledge be hidden from people? Having previously worked on a banned books project, I know that literature is frequently banned and censored. However, the issue gets much trickier when the knowledge itself is considered inherently dangerous.

From my reading, it seems medieval society had a vastly different approach to how knowledge should be sought, discovered, and handled. To better understand the novel, I began investigating how various medieval and classical thinkers might answer its central question.

In this project, I investigate the perspectives of four major medieval thinkers:

• Thomas Aquinas: Explored how faith and reason can coexist.
• Augustine of Hippo: Focused on inner struggle, sin, and the unstable nature of humanity.
• Averroes: Championed the rational interpretation of Aristotle.
• Avicenna: Unified fields of logic, medicine, and metaphysics.