Second Day

The Second Day of the abbey's ordeal begins not with the quiet of prayer but with a shriek of horror. The discovery of Venantius of Salvemec's body, thrust head-down into a jar of pigs' blood, transforms the previous day's unease into a palpable terror. The corpse, its face a mask of congealed gore, is a deliberate, grotesque tableau that shatters any lingering hope that Adelmo of Otranto's death was a solitary act of despair. William of Baskerville, who had been leaning toward a theory of suicide, is forced to confront the reality of a murderer at work within the abbey's walls. The morning light reveals a trail of footprints in the snow, leading from the jar back to the Aedificium, confirming that the library, the heart of the abbey's intellectual life, is also the heart of its darkness.

Interrogations and Revelations

The day becomes a relentless sequence of interrogations, each peeling back a layer of the abbey's carefully maintained facade. William first questions Benno of Uppsala, a young scholar of rhetoric, who nervously recounts a debate in the scriptorium about the legitimacy of laughter and the use of monstrous images in sacred texts. Benno reveals that the dead Venantius had been pressing Jorge of Burgos on the subject of Aristotle's lost book on comedy, a line of inquiry that had clearly angered the blind old librarian. More damningly, Benno describes how both Adelmo and Venantius had separately approached Berengar of Arundel, the assistant librarian, after the debate, seeking some secret. This trail of curiosity leads directly to Berengar himself, whom William corners and, through a calculated display of inquisitorial menace, reduces to a trembling confession. Berengar, his face glistening with sweat, describes a ghostly encounter with Adelmo in the cemetery on the night of his death, a tale of a damned soul speaking of burning cloaks and infernal punishment. William, however, sees through the supernatural veneer, recognizing the story as a page from a preacher's manual, a projection of Berengar's own guilt and remorse over his illicit relationship with the dead illuminator.

The Herbalist and the Poison

Seeking a different kind of knowledge, William and Adso visit Severinus of Sankt Wendel, the abbey's herbalist. In his laboratory, a world of alembics, dried herbs, and mysterious ampoules, Severinus demonstrates his vast knowledge of simples and their properties. The conversation turns to poisons, and Severinus admits that the line between a healing medicine and a lethal toxin is perilously thin. He reveals that a rare and powerful poison, given to him years ago by a traveling brother, was stolen from his laboratory during a storm, a theft he had long attributed to an accident. This revelation plants a new, sinister possibility in William's mind: the murders may not be acts of brute force but of calculated, chemical precision. The visit also yields a crucial clue when William identifies a lodestone in Severinus's collection, a stone that attracts iron, sparking an idea for navigating the library's labyrinthine corridors.

The Scriptorium and the Blind Prophet

A visit to the scriptorium, the abbey's great workshop of learning, reveals the intellectual and spiritual fault lines of the community. The room is a hive of activity, with monks copying, illuminating, and translating, but the atmosphere is charged with tension. The central figure of this tension is Jorge of Burgos, the blind, ancient monk who serves as the library's living memory and moral arbiter. Jorge launches into a fierce denunciation of the marginal illustrations that adorn the manuscripts, the "babewyns" and grotesques that invert the natural order. He sees in these playful, monstrous figures a dangerous frivolity, a turning away from the solemn truth of God's word toward the seductive pleasures of the imagination. His argument with William over the nature of laughter—whether it is a divine gift proper to man or a diabolical corruption—becomes a philosophical duel that encapsulates the central conflict of the abbey: the struggle between the rigid, fearful orthodoxy of the past and the questioning, curious spirit of the new learning.

The Abbot's Fear and the Heretic's Shadow

The day concludes with a tense meeting between William and Abbot Abo. The abbot, a man of immense pride in his abbey's wealth and power, is now consumed by fear. The arrival of the papal legation, led by the formidable inquisitor Bernard Gui, is imminent, and the abbot knows that the unsolved murders will provide a weapon for the Pope's party against the Emperor's Franciscan allies. He pressures William to solve the crimes quickly, revealing his own suspicions that the key may lie in the heretical past of the cellarer, Remigio of Varagine, and his strange assistant, Salvatore. The abbot's hints about the Dolcinians, a violent heretical sect, cast a long shadow over the investigation, suggesting that the murders may be rooted not in the library's secrets but in the bloody history of the men who now serve the abbey. As the Second Day ends, William is left with a dizzying array of suspects and motives, the scent of poison in the air, and the growing certainty that the truth, whatever it is, will be far more terrible than he had imagined.