Amphisbaena

The Amphisbaena appears among the multitude of monstrous and hybrid creatures carved into the portal of the abbey church, a bestiary of the damned that forms the vestibule to the vision of the Seated One in the tympanum. As Adso of Melk describes the terrifying sculptures, he lists the Amphisbaena alongside other mythical beasts such as the basilisk, the manticore, and the griffin, all assembled as a "dark forest" and "desperate wasteland of exclusion" that confronts the visitor before the promise of salvation. The creature is named in the catalogue of Satan's animals that serve as "guard and crown of the throne" of Christ, their defeat singing his glory. In this context, the Amphisbaena is not merely a decorative monster but a symbol of the topsy-turvy, false world that the marginalia of Adelmo of Otranto also celebrate—a world where the natural order is inverted and where the monstrous becomes a sign of the chaos that the Antichrist will bring. The presence of the Amphisbaena and its kin on the church door underscores the novel's central tension between the rigid, fearful orthodoxy represented by Jorge of Burgos and the liberating, questioning spirit of laughter and the grotesque that William of Baskerville defends. The creature is a concrete example of the "dissimilar similitude" that William invokes, arguing that God can be named through the most distorted things, a theological position that Jorge vehemently rejects. The Amphisbaena, therefore, is not just a monster but a node in the novel's debate about the nature of truth, the role of laughter, and the limits of knowledge.