Umberto Eco, the author of the book of the same title obviously intended it to be a survey of medieval culture and an exegesis of the workings of the medieval mind. To do this, he used the well-worn genre of the cloak and dagger mystery through the character of a monk who is a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown.
Alas! The makers of the film obviously didn't understand the purpose of the book for it became a tawdry imitation of a Conan Doyle yarn. You would be better off watching a re-run of the classic series that starred Jeremy Brett, the best and most faithful Holmes ever. With this treatment, the plot - thin as it was - became obvious and humdrum; quite unlike in the book when you felt that the detective monk was truly up against an evil supernatural power.
In any case, the pleasure of the book was in satisfying one's intellectual curiosity especially in areas of medieval theology and history. Isn't it useful to understand the cause of the splintering of the Franciscans, one of the greatest religious orders of the Church, into factions led by the Spirituals versus the Conventuals? What was all the fuss about heresies in those days? What were the differences and similarities among the Waldensians, Bogomils, Albigensians and Cathars? How were they related to the early Christian Gnostics? How did they affect art? What's the difference between the art of Fra Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico? Who was that Fra Dolcino who led a peasants' revolt a la Spartacus? How could the professors of the University of Paris censure a Pope (John XXII) and warn him that what he was teaching was heresy (and he retracted!)? He taught that the faithful do not gain the full beatific vision upon death and will have to wait until the Last Judgment before they could see God. He got this idea from a misreading of the Apocalypse.
The Benedictine monastery was presented as filthy and sloppy which was far from the way it was described in the book. After all, the monasteries were the repositories and transmitters of the civilized aspects of the ancient world which were lost to much of the known world during the Dark Ages. Even the illustrations in Eco's book show the monastery in the story as an oasis of order in a confused era.
Michael of Cesena, leader of the condemned Spirituals was portrayed badly as an ineffectual fanatic, almost senile, while in the book he had a magnetic personality that attracted Adso and impressed Fra William (Sean Connery).
The rollicking humor in the book was passed over too as missing was that scene in the treasury of religious relics where Fra William of Baskerville cracked a joke about the holy skull of St. John the Baptist when he was a boy.
Alas! The makers of the film obviously didn't understand the purpose of the book for it became a tawdry imitation of a Conan Doyle yarn. You would be better off watching a re-run of the classic series that starred Jeremy Brett, the best and most faithful Holmes ever. With this treatment, the plot - thin as it was - became obvious and humdrum; quite unlike in the book when you felt that the detective monk was truly up against an evil supernatural power.
In any case, the pleasure of the book was in satisfying one's intellectual curiosity especially in areas of medieval theology and history. Isn't it useful to understand the cause of the splintering of the Franciscans, one of the greatest religious orders of the Church, into factions led by the Spirituals versus the Conventuals? What was all the fuss about heresies in those days? What were the differences and similarities among the Waldensians, Bogomils, Albigensians and Cathars? How were they related to the early Christian Gnostics? How did they affect art? What's the difference between the art of Fra Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico? Who was that Fra Dolcino who led a peasants' revolt a la Spartacus? How could the professors of the University of Paris censure a Pope (John XXII) and warn him that what he was teaching was heresy (and he retracted!)? He taught that the faithful do not gain the full beatific vision upon death and will have to wait until the Last Judgment before they could see God. He got this idea from a misreading of the Apocalypse.
The Benedictine monastery was presented as filthy and sloppy which was far from the way it was described in the book. After all, the monasteries were the repositories and transmitters of the civilized aspects of the ancient world which were lost to much of the known world during the Dark Ages. Even the illustrations in Eco's book show the monastery in the story as an oasis of order in a confused era.
Michael of Cesena, leader of the condemned Spirituals was portrayed badly as an ineffectual fanatic, almost senile, while in the book he had a magnetic personality that attracted Adso and impressed Fra William (Sean Connery).
The rollicking humor in the book was passed over too as missing was that scene in the treasury of religious relics where Fra William of Baskerville cracked a joke about the holy skull of St. John the Baptist when he was a boy.