The Rose Corruption

The film The Name of The Rose was released in 1986 and stars Sean Connery and Christian Slater as a monk and his novice, respectively. The film does a very good job presenting a historically accurate representation of what monastic life could have been like during the mid to late Middle Ages. Specifically, the film well represents power and corruption among the order, as well as the influence the hierarchy has on the order’s understanding of controversial topics. The Name of the Rose’s primary focus is within the story and its concepts. The film is shot pretty straightforwardly, as there are no grand effects or stylizations. The set and props themselves are terrific, looking very realistic and even going so far to have detailed paintings

In the film, the abbot is very adamant about letting nobody in the secret library, as it contains “sensitive” material that could corrupt the order’s purity. There is also much questioning of Williams intellectual mind, and it is considered harmful. One such item is a piece by Aristotle, discussing the power that laughter and comedy have towards learning. Seeing laughter as an arbitrary vice that brings about sin, the Venerable Judge poisons anyone who reads the piece, and dies trying to prevent it from getting leaked. This concept is also apparent in the film watched in class, Visions. In the film, Hildegard’s work is seen by the abbot as something that could lead the monastic people astray, so he attempts to block her from publishing the work. In Monodies Book 1, Guibert explains a time when he wrote a questioning on the story of the creation of the world as in Genesis. He explains how the project became disapproved by his abbot, and how he had to then write in secret. Guibert writes: “As soon as my abbot saw that I was annotating that part of sacred history, he took a less sober view of the project, and sharply warned me to put an end to it (Monodies

In order to seem less threatening, upon arrival William and Adso claim how they are Franciscans, and share similar viewpoints on poverty, as to show they can be trusted. As learned in class, the extent of what poverty those in a monastic order should endure was the cause of much debate, and caused different reforms and orders to form. “Gold, silver, and church ornaments they accept from no one,” Guibert writes on poverty in the order by Bruno of Reims (Monodies 51). “The numerous examples all around them aroused a desire in the nobility to accept voluntary poverty (Monodies 54). This statement can then be used to point out the church’s hypocrisy, as the order in the film claims to be impoverished, yet has an entire attic storehouse of grains so large that members became obese, while the secular poor below continued to