Confusing Love with Lust – As William and Adso depart, Adso encounters the girl, stops for a few seconds, but eventually chooses to go with William.

The much older Adso states that he never regretted his decision, as he learned many more things from William before their ways parted.

He also says that the girl was the only earthly Love of his life, although he never learned her name.

I have never regretted my decision, for I learned from my master much that was wise and good and true.

When at last we parted company, he presented me with his eyeglasses. I was still young – he said – but someday they would serve me well. And in fact, I’m wearing them now on my nose as I write these lines. Then he embraced me fondly – like a father – and sent me on my way.

I never saw him again, and know not what became of him, but I pray always that God received his soul, and forgave the many little vanities to which he was driven by his intellectual pride.

And yet, now that I am an old, old man, I must confess that of all the faces that appear to me out of the past, the one I see most clearly is that of the girl of whom I’ve never ceased to dream these many long years.

She was the only earthly Love in my life, yet …

Adso of Melk recounts how, as a young novice in 1327, he and his mentor, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, traveled to a benedectine abbey in northern Italy.

The Franciscans were to debate with Papal emissaries the poverty of Christ.

William is reluctantly drawn in by the intellectual challenge and his desire to disprove fears of a demonic culprit.

William also worries the abbot will summon officials of the Inquisition if the mystery of the death of the monk Andelmo remains unsolved.

Adso encounters a beautiful peasant girl who has sneaked into the abbey to trade sexual favours for food, and is seduced by her.

Adso of Melk: Master? Have you ever been in Love?

William of Baskerville: In Love? Yeah, many times.

Adso of Melk: You were?

William of Baskerville: Yes, of course. Aristotle, Ovid, Vergil …

Adso of Melk: No, no, no. I meant with a…

William of Baskerville: Oh. Ah. Are you not confusing Love with lust?

Adso of Melk: Am I? I don’t know. I want only her own good. I want her to be happy. I want to save her from her poverty.

William of Baskerville: Oh, dear.

Adso of Melk: Why “oh dear”?

William of Baskerville: You are in Love.

Adso of Melk: Is that bad?

William of Baskerville: For a monk, it does present certain problems.

Adso of Melk: But doesn’t St. Thomas Aquinas praise Love above all other virtues?

William of Baskerville: Yes, the Love of God, Adso. The Love of God.

Adso of Melk: Oh … And the Love of woman?

William of Baskerville: Of woman? Thomas Aquinas knew precious little, but the scriptures are very clear. Proverbs warns us, “Woman takes possession of a man’s precious soul”, while Ecclesiastes tells us, “More bitter than death is woman”.

Adso of Melk: Yes, but what do you think, Master?

William of Baskerville: Well, of course I don’t have the benefit of your experience, but I find it difficult to convince myself that God would have introduced such a foul being into creation without endowing her with some virtures. Hmm? How peaceful life would be without Love, Adso, how safe, how tranquil, and how dull.

Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community.

Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.

Umberto Eco was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, and university professor.

He is best known for his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose. During his university studies, Eco stopped believing in God and left the Catholic Church.

He divided his time between an apartment in Milan and a vacation house near Urbino. He had a 30,000 volume library in the former and a 20,000 volume library in the latter. 

Eco died at his Milanese home of pancreatic cancer on the night of 19th February 2016.