1327. An elderly Franciscan monk, William, and a young Benedictine, Adson, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy to participate in theological disputations. This abbey serves as neutral ground in an irreconcilable dispute between Pope John XXII and the Franciscans, who have been accused of heresy.

The peace of the abbey is disturbed by the sudden death of an artist monk. The abbot commissions Wilhelm to look into the tragedy. Over the course of several days, the Franciscan interviews the monastery’s inhabitants and debates the theological significance of laughter with the oldest monk in the abbey, the blind Jorge. At the same time, new murders of scholarly ministers occur one after another. Wilhelm and Adson follow the trail of a brutal criminal: they penetrate into the forbidden section of the monastery scriptorium and discover there are secret rooms …

Inquisitor Bernard Guy soon arrives at the abbey. Instead of catching the real murderer, he arrests the peasant girl Adson is in love with and plans to burn her at the stake as a heretic. Will Wilhelm manage to find the culprit before it is too late? What happens when all seven trumpets of the angels of the Apocalypse sound? And how are Aristotle’s writings involved in the case?

Author: Umberto Eco
Published:  1980
Original language:  English
Literary Genre: Novel, History, Drama, Detective, Modern Prose, Philosophy