The Cemetery

The Cemetery is the burial ground of the abbey, a small plot of consecrated ground located between the north side of the church, the Aedificium, and the vegetable garden. It serves as a liminal space where the living and the dead meet, and it is the site of several key nocturnal encounters and revelations during the investigation of the abbey's murders.

Location and Description

The cemetery is situated in the open space between the north wall of the abbey church, the south tower of the Aedificium, and the vegetable garden. It is a modest patch of ground, as the abbot confirms when he tells William that Adelmo of Otranto, who fell from the cliff, has been buried there. The cemetery is also the location of the ossarium, a subterranean passage filled with the bones of dead monks, which provides a secret route into the Aedificium. The ossarium is accessed through a hidden mechanism in a chapel altar, where pressing the eyes of a carved skull opens a passage. This passage is used by the librarian, Malachi of Hildesheim, to enter and exit the Aedificium at night, and it is the route William and Adso take on their nocturnal explorations of the library.

Key Events and Encounters

The cemetery is the setting for several crucial nocturnal events. On the night of Adelmo's death, Berengar of Arundel encounters what he believes to be Adelmo's ghost moving among the graves. The ghost, which Berengar describes as having a corpse's face and a voice like a grave, speaks of damnation and the pains of hell, and a drop of what Berengar takes to be burning sweat falls on his hand. This encounter, which William later deduces was a real meeting with a distraught and remorseful Adelmo, drives Berengar into a state of terror and guilt. On the same night, Benno of Uppsala witnesses Venantius of Salvemec also moving through the cemetery, following Berengar and Adelmo. The cemetery is thus a stage for the secret movements and guilty consciences of the monks. The ossarium beneath the cemetery is also the site of a dramatic discovery: when William and Adso are trapped in the secret passage leading to the finis Africae, they hear the muffled sounds of the abbot, Abo, who has been lured into the passage by Jorge of Burgos and is dying, trapped and suffocating.

Narrative Significance

The cemetery functions as a physical and symbolic threshold between the world of the living and the dead, and between the known and the forbidden. It is a place where secrets are both buried and unearthed. The ossarium, a literal passage through the bones of the dead, provides the only means of accessing the Aedificium at night, making it a crucial pathway for the investigation. The cemetery is also a place of psychological torment, where the guilt of the living manifests as ghostly apparitions. The final, tragic use of the secret passage beneath the cemetery—to trap and kill the abbot—underscores the cemetery's role as a place of hidden, deadly mechanisms and the culmination of the abbey's long-buried secrets.