Nones

Nones, the ninth canonical hour of the Divine Office, is observed in the Benedictine Rule around 2:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. In the northern Italian winter of 1327, this hour falls after the midday meal and before the fading light of late afternoon, a period when the monks of the abbey are typically engaged in work or study. Within the novel's seven-day structure, the events that unfold during Nones carry disproportionate weight, serving as the setting for the most intellectually charged confrontations and the most consequential revelations about the abbey's hidden conflicts.

The Hour of Theological Confrontation

It is during Nones on the second day that William of Baskerville and the abbot, Abo, engage in a tense and revealing conversation about the nature of heresy and the political stakes of the abbey. The abbot, deeply concerned about the impending arrival of the papal legation led by the inquisitor Bernard Gui, presses William to solve the murders before the meeting. He warns that the Avignonese will conflate the crimes with the Franciscan positions on poverty, a doctrine the abbot himself views with suspicion. William defends the Franciscans, arguing that the Fraticelli and the followers of Fra Dolcino are not the same as the Spirituals, and that the simple people who join heretical movements are often driven by despair rather than doctrine. The abbot, however, dismisses these distinctions, citing the massacre of Béziers and the principle that heretics must be destroyed. This exchange reveals the abbot's rigid, pragmatic worldview and his willingness to sacrifice nuance for order, while William's defense of the simple and his skepticism toward holy war expose the philosophical chasm between the two men.

The Hour of Political Revelation

On the fifth day, during the Nones hour, the trial of the cellarer Remigio of Varagine reaches its climax. Bernard Gui, having already secured a confession of heresy from Salvatore, confronts Remigio with the letters of Fra Dolcino that the cellarer had entrusted to the librarian Malachi. Remigio, cornered and terrified, confesses his past as a Dolcinian, his participation in the massacres on Monte Rebello, and his betrayal of Dolcino to the bishop's forces. Bernard, with cold precision, manipulates the confession to implicate not only Remigio but also the Franciscan order itself, linking the poverty doctrine of the Perugia chapter to the violent heresy of the Pseudo Apostles. The trial is a masterclass in inquisitorial rhetoric: Bernard uses fear, theological traps, and the threat of torture to extract a confession that serves his political purpose of discrediting the imperial legation. William, powerless to intervene, watches as the meeting he had worked to organize collapses under the weight of Bernard's accusations.

The Hour of the Lost Book

Immediately after the trial, during the same Nones hour on the fifth day, William and Adso discover the body of Severinus, the herbalist, murdered in his laboratory. The room has been ransacked, and a mysterious book that Severinus had found—a volume containing Arabic, Syriac, and Greek texts, including a copy of Aristotle's lost second book of the Poetics—has vanished. William realizes that the book is the key to the murders: Venantius, Berengar, and Malachi all died after touching or ingesting a poison smeared on its pages. The search for the book becomes the central mystery of the remaining days, as William pieces together the clues that lead him to Jorge of Burgos, the blind librarian who has guarded the forbidden text for decades. The Nones hour thus marks the moment when the investigation shifts from the pursuit of a murderer to the pursuit of a dangerous idea—the idea that laughter, as Aristotle argued, could be a tool for truth and a weapon against fear.

The Hour of the Emperor's Cause

On the fifth day, during the Nones hour, the debate on the poverty of Christ reaches its most explosive moment. William, reluctantly, delivers the theses of the imperial theologians, arguing that temporal power derives from the people and that the Pope has no jurisdiction over the Emperor. He speaks with deliberate hesitation, couching his radical ideas in the language of modesty and doubt, but the implications are clear: the church should have no coercive power, and heretics should be judged only when they harm the community. The papal legates are stunned, and Bernard Gui responds with a veiled threat, inviting William to Avignon to repeat his arguments before the Pope. William declines, citing a convenient chest ailment. The debate, which had been intended to forge a compromise between the Franciscans and the papacy, instead exposes the irreconcilable differences between the imperial and papal visions of authority. The Nones hour thus becomes the moment when the political mission of the novel definitively fails, leaving the abbey to its fate.