~Knowledge, Power, and Forbidden Truth
When I first began researching the material culture behind The Name of the Rose, I focused mostly on how medieval books were physically made: parchment, vellum, inks, scriptoria, and libraries. But the deeper I went into Umberto Eco’s world, the more I realized something important.
In the novel, books are never simply books. Instead, they are political weapons, spiritual threats, and instruments of power.
The abbey library functions almost like a fortress designed to regulate knowledge itself. Whoever controls access to books controls what people are allowed to think. And once I started viewing the library that way, the novel suddenly felt far more modern than medieval.
Even today, people who “know too much” can place themselves in dangerous positions. Certain knowledge still threatens institutions, governments, corporations, or belief systems. Human beings often cling to power by controlling information. That instinct is not uniquely medieval.
So I became curious. Why were some forms of knowledge considered dangerous in the medieval world?
Eco explores this question brilliantly through the abbey library. The library is not merely a storage room for manuscripts. It is a controlled system of intellectual authority. Knowledge is filtered, hidden, restricted, and sometimes erased entirely.
Very Foucauldian, honestly.
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