Original subtitles

[Soldiers yelling]

[Speaks Latin]

[Continues speaking Latin]

[Stabbing, man moans]

[Groans]

[Praying man] Father!

I brought you here for one reason.

To learn to fight.

He's finished.

Let's go.

[Soldiers yelling]

[Old man] Having reached the end of my sinful life,

I prepare to leave my testimony

as to the wondrous and terrible events

that I happened to witness in my youth.

I was a novice in the Benedictine abbey of Melk.

My father, a general to the Holy Roman Emperor,

coerced me away from my studies to fight with him in Italy.

Take her!

He said that we were fighting a righteous war.

There are no such things as righteous wars.

You cannot change the world by killing.

I was 17 years old at the time

and my life was about to change forever.

[Theme music]

[Church bells ringing]

[Man] Remember: when you leave this earth

you can take nothing you have received,

but only what you have given.

We are all God's children.

Each one is our brother.

The world is like a great book.

We must learn to read it correctly.

There is only one way to battle against ignorance and hatred:

use knowledge to better the human race.

[Small bells jingle]

[Monk] Come, brother.

Come, join us.

[Bells jingle as he moves]

[Moans] Don't touch me.

[Moans]

[Monk] You're welcome here.

[Monk] The outcast...

[Old Adso] I was moved by the desire for truth

and by the suspicion that, until now,

it was not what I was told.

The Franciscan's words struck me, as my father's never had.

Why are you following me?

Because you're interesting.

That's not a good reason for following anyone.

I'm afraid I must continue my journey alone, my friend.

[Muted chatter, laughter]

[Adso's father] William of Baskerville,

the Emperor thanks you for your service.

-General. -Be seated.

This is what he hopes will be achieved from the debate.

We have beaten the Pope with steel,

now it's your turn with words.

I am making this journey to serve and protect my Order.

I'm perfectly aware that you're backing the Franciscans

to use us against the Pope.

[Adso's father] Who intends to destroy you!

By accepting the Emperor's support, you give him yours.

Eat.

Religious people think they can ignore politics.

Nonsense. Religion is politics.

I keep trying to get that into my son's head.

To no avail, of course.

He wants to be a monk.

I'm sure he has his reasons.

And I have mine. Pig headed.

Stubborn like his late mother.

Or perhaps he's simply a coward.

Why did you become a Franciscan?

I heard the story of Giovanni di Bernardino,

a rich young man and his conversion.

How he rejected his father and mother,

threw off his velvet clothes, rolled them into a bundle

and placed them at his father's feet and said:

"These belong to you, take them, we are equals now."

As you must know, this is the man who became Saint Francis.

What, may I ask, is your son's name?

Adso. Why are you asking?

Curious.

You know him?

Not that I know of.

Why did you come so far to meet with that bastard?

When I was a philosopher I doubted the world had an order.

Now I am consoled to discover, if not an order,

at least a series of connections

in small areas of the world's affairs.

Follow me if you want to.

-My name is Adso. -I know, your father told me.

[Old Adso] We had been walking for days, from dawn to dusk.

Often in silence.

We were heading to a famous Benedictine abbey

on a mountain range in northern Italy.

During our journey, William's mission remained unknown to me.

"While we imagine a better world," he told me,

"blind leaders drive blind people toward the abyss."

[Man] You see the figure of Christ has a purse at his waist.

Just to remind people that our Lord did not worship poverty.

Not even when he was on the cross.

A church of paupers has no future.

And that's precisely the ruin

the damned Franciscans want to drag us into.

Your Holiness, this is no ruin for the Franciscans.

On the contrary, to them it is the very rebirth of the Church.

In Florence we burned a follower of Dolcino.

[Sporadic shouting]

[People shouting "Burn him!"]

I, Brother Bernard Gui,

Dominican Inquisitor,

invested with authority by His Holiness the Pope,

sentence the prisoner,

follower of the forbidden sect of Fra Dolcino,

poisoned fruit of the Franciscan Order,

to death.

You are the Antichrist!

I see God everywhere but in you,

bastard son of Satan.

Dolcino told you when you tried to destroy us.

Saint Francis was only the beginning.

Penitenziagite!

[Bernard] William of Baskerville was there as well.

I had arranged for him to meet with the heretic

before I passed my judgement.

I need him to recant. You could help me.

Why would you imagine I have a chance of succeeding?

You are two brothers...

...under the skin. Hmm?

[Bernard] With a flourish of that grand hypocrisy of his,

he said to me...

"Why should I judge my brother?"

[Pope John] You should know that Baskerville was chosen

by the Emperor to lead the debate.

[Knife scraping]

-[Adso] What's this? -[William] An astrolabe.

For one to catch heavenly bodies.

It gives us a picture of the sky.

Astronomers and navigators use it

to measure the inclined position in the sky of a celestial body,

day or night.

To help see the visible and the invisible.

[William] Yes.

She looks hungry.

Here. Food.

[Speaks Occitan] I come from Puegvert.

Not far from Limos.

Do you know my land?

The soldiers, may God damn them,

burnt my home and killed my family.

-I don't-- -They burnt my entire village!

Take it.

[William] She is from Occitane.

The King of France is making war on her people.

Like many others, she's fleeing from her home.

[Man] There is no need for us to wander around

like a flock of sheep.

Three or four of you should take that path.

The others...

May your day be blessed, Brother Franciscan.

And yours as well, young brother.

I'm the cellarer of the Abbey. We are looking for...

Thank you for interrupting your search, brother.

The horse came this way and took the path to the right.

He will not get far.

[Cellarer] Have you seen him?

We haven't seen him at all. Have we, Adso?

But if you are searching for Brunellus,

the horse can only be where I have said.

Brunellus? How did you know his name?

Come, come, it's obvious you're hunting for Brunellus,

the abbot's favorite horse.

Fifteen hands with a dark coat, a full tail,

small round hoofs and a very steady gait.

Small head, sharp ears, big eyes.

He went to the right, but hurry,

you should continue your search.

Have we met somewhere before, brother?

Not that I recall.

There is always a sinful pleasure

in being proved right, I find.

Come, come, Adso, it was not so difficult.

You yourself must have seen the horse's footprints.

He broke off those twigs at about five feet.

And I found these...

And I know the right-hand path leads to the cliffs

because I saw it on the way up.

And the detailed description of the animal?

I imagined a horse I had not yet seen.

I am not sure he has these features,

but no doubt the monks firmly believe he does.

They would only be so concerned about a horse

if it was important to their abbot.

So I gave it the ideal features

good Benedictines would expect of their master's animal.

What about the name?

May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind, son.

What other name could he possibly have?

Brunellus: "brunus." Latin...

-...for brown. -Yes.

[Bell ringing]

[Indistinct voices]

[Horse footsteps]

The abbot will be forever grateful to you, brother.

He loves this horse.

You are William of Baskerville.

So you do know me.

Ah, not exactly.

It's that the abbot was speaking about you, you see.

He was expecting your visit. But not so soon.

That explains everything.

[Bell chiming]

Our brother Adelmo fell to his death last night.

We still do not know how or why he died.

I will call together the whole monastery

after we read the psalms at Sext.

Brother William of Baskerville is here.

Perhaps, Berengar, you could prepare the body for burial?

[Sobs]

William of Baskerville!

What unfortunate timing.

God has decided to put me to the test!

I was very pleased to learn,

when once you acted as inquisitor,

that in numerous cases you decided

the accused were innocent.

Inquisitors often,

to demonstrate their zeal,

will wrest a confession at all costs.

Inquisitors can be impelled by the devil,

so I have abandoned that noble activity

and now I concern myself with other delicate questions.

And I would like to deal with the one that is distressing you,

if you will speak to me about it.

In the dark hours of last night,

one of our finest illustrators, Adelmo of Otranto,

well, you have seen...

He likely fell during this great snowstorm,

which blew in so furiously from the west.

God have mercy on him.

Given the battering that his poor body suffered,

determining the precise point from which he had fallen

was not easy: certainly from one of the windows

that opened in rows on the sides of the tower.

I see. I see that your problem is the following.

If that unhappy youth, God forbid, committed suicide,

you'd not allow the body into the church.

And I believe that this morning

you would have found the windows open,

whereas you found them closed

with no sign of water at the foot of any of them.

-Who told you this? -You told me.

If the window had been open you would immediately have thought

he had thrown himself out of it.

From what I could tell from the outside,

they are large windows,

and windows of that sort in buildings of this size

are not usually placed at a man's height.

So even if the window had been open

it would have been impossible for the unfortunate man

to lean out and lose his balance;

thus suicide would have been the only conceivable explanation.

But since you will give him a Christian burial,

the windows must have been closed. And if they were closed

then obviously the presumed suicide was, on the contrary,

pushed, and you are wondering who was capable,

I will not say of pushing him into the abyss,

but of hoisting him to the sill.

This is it. But how do you know

there was no water at the foot of any windows?

Because you told me the wind was blowing from the west.

So the water could not be driven

against windows that open to the east.

[Chuckles]

I have been told of your great intelligence, dear brother...

but report does not do you justice, I see.

It is all just as you have said.

And no one commits murder without a reason,

however perverse.

Nothing else?

[Abbot] Nothing else I can say to you.

You mean there is nothing else you have the power to say?

Brother William.

Brother William. Please help me to find Adelmo's assassins

before the delegates arrive.

Imagine if the Pope were to learn that here,

-in God's house which he... -[William] Who has access

to the tower at night?

No one. It is absolutely forbidden to everyone.

-And who has the keys? -[Abbot] The librarians.

Malachi of Hildesheim and his assistant, Berengar.

May I question the monks?

You may.

May I move freely about the abbey?

I grant you that power.

I must confess that I already had a great desire

to visit the library which is spoken of with admiration

in all the abbeys of Christendom.

No, no. I cannot allow you to enter.

No one may; no one can.

Even if you managed to enter,

this library can protect itself.

It is as unfathomable as the truths it harbors

and as cleverly deceptive as the falsehoods it protects.

It is a maze.

You might enter and then you might never get out again.

No one but the librarians can enter.

It has always been this way.

In Crete they built a maze to hide a monster.

[Scoffs]

No monsters in the library.

Books. Only books. Lots of books.

How can I study Adelmo's death if I do not see the place

where the story of his death may have begun?

Brother William,

a man who has described my horse without seeing it,

and the death of Adelmo knowing virtually nothing of the case

should have no difficulty studying places

to which he does not have access.

As you wish.

You are wise and you are severe.

If I were ever wise, it was because I know how to be severe.

Why is the Pope sending his people here?

You said something about protecting your Order.

The Order of St. Francis.

And yes, the Pope's envoys

are connected to my business here.

And to the very future of the Church.

[Pig squealing violently]

It was the pig. They're killing the pig.

When I was a little boy, my father made me do it.

To learn to be a man.

I had to bury a knife in its heart

while I held it down with my knee on its neck.

[Monks singing]

Made me deaf for days.

[They sing]

[William] There's been a landslide, obviously,

during the night, caused by the storm.

So the earth moved and carried this poor young man's body

down below the east tower where he was found, broken.

[Stone scuffling]

[William] The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced

that Adelmo threw himself of his own free will

from the parapet of this wall.

Why is that?

If Adelmo fell from the east tower,

he must have got into the library,

someone must have struck him

and then, this person must have somehow

climbed up to the window

with a lifeless body on his back,

opening it, and pitched the hapless monk down.

With my hypothesis, we need only Adelmo, his decision

and some shift of land.

Everything is explained using a fewer numbers of causes.

But why would he have killed himself?

[William] Was Adelmo disturbed about something?

Why do you ask?

You were his confessor,

so you could not discuss his sins with me.

But you could discuss his state of mind.

I'm not sure I care to have this conversation with you,

Brother William.

He may have taken his own life.

[Birds squawking]

Welcome. I am Malachi of Hildesheim, chief librarian.

It's an honor to meet a man of your distinction,

brother William.

You have been librarian here for a long time?

Thirty years.

One is always appointed by one's predecessor

when he becomes abbot.

The rule is that when an abbot dies,

it's the librarian who replaces him.

So you will be the next abbot.

May God grant our abbot a long life.

-Naturally. -The kitchen's through there

and here, the scriptorium.

[Malachi] Here is the heart of the abbey.

Here we create the most precious gems of culture

within the entire world: our books.

Toiling over their work, you can see translators,

copyists, illuminators and miniaturists

who instill into the smallest of paintings on a page

the most elaborate and magnificent images.

This is Berengar of Arundel, my assistant.

[Malachi] And here we have Venanzio of Salvamec,

a famous Greek scholar.

Doing wonderful work on the great Aristotle.

[Malachi] And Aymaro, master of copyists.

How do the monks get to the books?

We have catalogs. When a monk finds a book there

he asks me or my assistant to find it for him.

Books are arranged by a code known only to the two of us.

Only we are allowed to get through that door.

It's a labyrinth. Anyone who enters it will be lost.

Benno of Uppsala.

He is studying rhetorics and the art of calligraphy.

Where did Adelmo work?

Down there.

We haven't touched a thing.

The desk is just the way he left it.

Yesterday you saw him leave?

-Absolutely, we all did. -We all ate together.

[William] And in church for the evening prayers?

[William] Hm.

A new invention. Which can magnify images

for those whose eyes have grown weak.

[Berengar] Poor Adelmo.

[Malachi] He would sometimes lose himself

in his weird imaginations.

I am glad I'm blind.

I do not have to witness such stupidity.

Jorge of Burgos,

one of the abbey's most erudite scholars.

You will agree, brother Jorge,

that not seeing something does not make it disappear.

You're talking to William of Baskerville.

-The Franciscan. -Hm.

So now we will be preaching to the birds,

singing and dancing

to show the sympathy we have for the world.

Adelmo,

he took such pleasure in the monsters he painted

he lost sight of the truth.

The images Adelmo drew were not mere foolishness.

God is named through the most distorted things.

How else does he show us the truth?

With respect, Jorge, you know Adelmo did not lose his faith.

When we were here talking about this very question

-I reminded you that-- -[Jorge] I don't know

what you're talking about, young man.

[Venanzio] Malachi was there too...

If brother Jorge does not remember,

he does not remember.

But you do, Berengar.

After all, you paid great attention to any discussion

involving your dear, dear friend Adelmo.

Venanzio!

[Berengar] We have lost a brother

who was greatly loved by all of us.

And who was here, as we all are,

to live out his life praising and glorifying God.

[William] I've always wanted to read

Tertulliano's Apologeticum

but I've never been able to find it.

It's here. I have it.

I'd be delighted to find it for you.

[William] I'd be terribly grateful.

Boy. Boy.

Yes?

So... you are William of Baskerville's novice?

Can you think of anyone who might have had

some kind of grudge against Adelmo?

Not at all. Such a fine young man...

with a true passion for his work.

Hm.

Do not let your master

lead you down the wrong road.

We are living in an age

far more frightening than any miniaturist could imagine.

[Crow cawing]

Penitenziagite!

Watch out for the draco who comes in the futurum

to gnaw at your soul!

La muerte is supra nos!

[Chuckles] Pray the Santo Pater.

You like this Negromanzia?

Libera nos a malo and free us from all sin!

Flesh... [Chuckles]

Flesh. [Chuckles]

Beautiful. Huh?

But Salvatore not stupidus.

He like to... [Grunts]

Penitenziagite. Penitenziagite!

You're a student of rhetoric?

Yes, I am,

but I also enjoy studying poetry.

I have read many pagan poets.

I believe their words also convey truths.

Well, then, what was said that day

when you were discussing Adelmo's illuminations

with Berengar, Venanzio, Malachi, and Jorge?

May I remind you that I am carrying out an inquiry

at the abbot's behest?

Jorge was saying that it is not licit to use ridiculous images

to decorate books that contain the truth.

Venanzio spoke of other books and Jorge became very angry.

-Which books? -I don't remember.

What does it matter which books were spoken of?

It matters a great deal because here we are

trying to understand what has happened

among men who live among books, with books, from books,

and so their words on books are also important.

Yes. It's true,

we live for books,

a sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

What did they say?

Venanzio said that when it comes to witty riddles,

no one surpasses the African poets.

And then?

And then something happened I didn't understand.

Berengar began to laugh

and said if one sought carefully amongst the Africans,

quite different riddles would be found.

Jorge became very angry and said

that it did not seem wise to him to take the Africans as models.

And after that?

[Sighs]

Malachi became furious,

took Berengar by the cowl and sent him off to his tasks.

But later I saw Adelmo approaching Berengar

asking for something and in the evening

the two of them were in the cloister confabulating.

That's all I know.

What did Berengar mean

about seeking among the Africans?

[Door closing]

I do know one thing:

anyone leafing through the catalog of books

will often find among the classifications

that unfortunately only the librarian understands,

one that says "Africa."

I have even found one that says "finis Africae,"

the end of Africa.

This is what I know.

And this is why I say: check on Berengar.

[Snoring]

Franciscanus William dangerous!

Je ne l'aime pas. Mala bestia est...

I know.

You must tell him nothing.

No.

We Italians are victims of the foreigners in here.

They are led by Malachi and Berengar.

And now they've even started murdering us

here in this snake pit.

What did he want?

To introduce himself.

[Man] In much speaking you will not escape sin.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

I have placed a restraint in my mouth.

I have made myself mute.

Why did such a famous Franciscan choose you?

Could it be that a fresh young boy

has something to give back in return for his knowledge?

Shame on you for even thinking that!

[Pope John] I've sent too weak a delegation

to face the Franciscans in debate.

I've just learnt that William of Baskerville

has arrived at the abbey even before the Franciscan General.

Is your delegation already there?

Not yet.

Call them back then.

I can't.

I made an agreement with the Emperor.

The debate must take place.

Can we trust the abbot?

I would hope so. They say Baskerville has his charm.

Charm is not a virtue.

And don't forget: like every purebred Franciscan,

he hates you.

The violence of the dispute has endangered

the unity of the Church.

On the one hand there is the Emperor against the Pope,

on the other hand the Pope against the Franciscans

who have espoused the spiritual theories

about the poverty of Christ.

Why does the Pope want to destroy

the Order of Saint Francis?

Because we believe that the Church,

and more importantly the Pope who governs it,

should imitate the life of Christ.

Isn't that what every believer should hope for?

It should be.

And I will do my best to make it be

since I have been entrusted

to present the imperial theologians' point of view.

What will happen if you lose the debate?

I never lose a debate.

[Chuckles]

Never?

[Laughs]

[Squawks]

I cannot even think of losing this debate.

It would mean that I'll be the last Pope in history

worthy of this title.

I may have been naive once in underestimating my enemy.

However, this blunder will be remedied.

You, Bernard, will leave immediately for the abbey

where you'll lead my delegation.

I am honored, Holiness.

I'm giving you an armed escort.

My nephew Cardinal du Pouget will join you there.

He's the man who's wiping the smiles off the faces

of these damned Italians.

Traitors, every one of them.

The purpose of this conference

is to exterminate the Franciscan order

once and for all.

[Footsteps]

Oh, Lord, I beg you with all my heart.

If I don't find joy anymore in your law,

I shall die of sadness.

[Bell chiming]

[Singing]

[Bell ringing urgently]

-[They stop chanting] -[Man] Come quickly! Everyone!

[Man] Hurry!

Pull him out of there! Now! Quickly.

-[Monks gasp] -Oh, my God. It's Venanzio.