Manticore

The Manticore is a legendary beast that appears in the illuminated manuscripts and bestiaries of the abbey's library, serving as a vivid emblem of the monstrous and the false. Its presence in the narrative underscores the tension between the orthodox, fearful view of creation held by figures like Jorge of Burgos and the more playful, intellectually curious approach of the illuminator Adelmo of Otranto and the Franciscan William of Baskerville.

Identity and Description

The Manticore is described as a creature with a man's face, a triple set of teeth, a lion's body, a scorpion's tail, and glaucous eyes the color of blood, with a voice like the hissing of snakes. It is said to be greedy for human flesh. This description, drawn from the bestiaries, emphasizes its hybrid, predatory, and deceptive nature, combining human and animal features in a way that is both terrifying and unnatural.

Place in the Library and the World

The Manticore is cataloged among the monstrous creatures in the library's LEONES section, which houses books considered by the founders to be works of falsehood, including texts by infidel authors and works of natural science. This placement reflects the library's organizing principle, which maps the world's geography and assigns books to regions based on their perceived truth or falsehood. The Manticore, as a creature of fable, is thus located in the "Africa" of the library, a zone of monsters and errors.

Narrative Role and Thematic Significance

The Manticore appears in the context of the debate over the value of laughter and the monstrous in art. Jorge of Burgos, the blind guardian of orthodoxy, condemns the depiction of such creatures in marginalia, arguing that they distract monks from meditation on divine law. He cites the Manticore and other hybrids as examples of the "ridiculous grotesques" that have made it more pleasurable for a monk to read marble than manuscript. In contrast, William of Baskerville defends such images as useful for teaching virtue through exempla, and as a means of revealing truth through dissimilar similitudes. The Manticore thus becomes a symbol of the conflict between a closed, fearful worldview and an open, inquisitive one. It also appears in Adso's dream-vision of the Coena Cypriani, a carnivalesque inversion of sacred history, where the Manticore is part of the "whole population of the nether world" assembled as a vestibule to the throne of the Seated One, further reinforcing its association with the chaotic, the inverted, and the demonic.