The Kitchen

The Kitchen is the bustling, smoke-filled heart of the abbey's daily life, a space of raw physicality and earthy appetites that stands in stark contrast to the intellectual and spiritual pursuits of the scriptorium and church. It is the site of the first murder discovery, the setting for Adso's carnal fall, and the nocturnal gateway through which the abbey's hidden, illicit life flows, making it a crucial locus of both sustenance and sin.

Layout and Daily Life

The Kitchen occupies the western half of the Aedificium's ground floor, with the refectory in the other half. It is a vast, smoke-filled entrance hall where servants are constantly busy preparing food. A great table is used for making pies of greens, barley, oats, and rye, while cooks poach fish in a mixture of wine and water, covering them with sauces of sage, parsley, thyme, garlic, pepper, and salt. Beneath the west tower an enormous oven bakes bread, its reddish flames already flashing. In the south tower, an immense fireplace holds great boiling pots and turning spits. The Kitchen is directly connected to the refectory, and a circular staircase in the east tower leads up to the scriptorium, making it a vital artery for the movement of monks and servants. The swineherds enter through a door opening onto the barnyard, carrying the meat of freshly slaughtered pigs.

A Scene of Crime and Discovery

The Kitchen is the first place where the abbey's hidden violence is made manifest. On the second day, the body of Venantius of Salvemec is discovered thrust head down into a great jar of pigs' blood, which had been left out in the cold to prevent coagulation. The corpse, soaked in the now-solidifying blood, is extracted by hesitant swineherds, staining themselves in the process. This macabre discovery interrupts the holy office of lauds and throws the entire community into chaos. Later, the cellarer Remigio of Varagine confesses that he had actually found Venantius's body in the Kitchen the night before, near the sink, with a broken cup and traces of water on the ground. Terrified, he had left the body there, only to find it had been moved to the jar by the time it was discovered, implicating someone else who could move freely about the Aedificium.

The Site of Adso's Temptation and Fall

On the third night, the Kitchen becomes the stage for Adso's profound and sinful encounter. After a disturbing visit to the library, he descends into the Kitchen and finds a young peasant girl, trembling and weeping, clutching a package. The air is thick with the pungent smell of traganth, alum, and tartar used to make wine aromatic, and the intoxicating scent of brewing beer. In this charged atmosphere, Adso is overcome by desire. The girl, who had come to barter her body for food, finds him young and handsome and gives herself to him freely. They fall together onto the bare floor of the Kitchen, and Adso experiences a rapture he later describes in the ecstatic language of the Song of Songs. Afterward, he discovers the package she abandoned contains a large ox heart, a grim reminder of the transaction she had intended to make with another, older man. This event leaves Adso in a state of profound guilt and spiritual turmoil, forever linking the Kitchen with his loss of innocence.

A Nocturnal Gateway for Illicit Activity

The Kitchen serves as a primary point of entry for the abbey's secret nocturnal life. The cellarer, Remigio, has a key to the Kitchen door, which is the only one not barred from the inside, allowing him to come and go at night. He uses this access to meet with Salvatore, who procures village girls for him, bringing them into the abbey through secret paths in the outer walls. It is in the Kitchen that Salvatore is caught by Bernard Gui's archers, along with a girl, a black cat, and two eggs, leading to their arrest on charges of witchcraft and heresy. The Kitchen, therefore, is not merely a place of food preparation but a liminal space where the abbey's strict rules are nightly transgressed, connecting the cloistered world of the monks to the desperate, hungry world of the village below.