The Coena Cypriani

The Coena Cypriani is a medieval parody of the Bible, a comic and often grotesque retelling of sacred history in which biblical figures feast, drink, and behave in a carnivalesque, inverted manner. Within the world of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, this text becomes a crucial clue: it is bound together with the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics, and its presence in the library's forbidden 'finis Africae' section reveals the lengths to which the blind librarian Jorge of Burgos will go to suppress any work that might legitimize laughter as a philosophical and theological tool.

Nature and Content of the Work

The Coena Cypriani is a work of the ioca monachorum tradition, a paschal-season jest that was widely circulated, copied, and revised in monastic communities. It is a parodic narrative in which virtually every figure from the Old and New Testaments is assigned a specific, often absurd, action or food at a great feast. Adam brings lemons, Eve brings figs, Noah brings grapes, and Jesus himself pours vinegar from a sponge. The text delights in the inversion of sacred order, presenting a world where the solemnity of Scripture is replaced by gluttony, drunkenness, and bawdy humor. A verse version was written for Pope John VIII with the inscription "I loved to jest; accept me, dear Pope John, in my jesting. And, if you wish, you can also laugh." It was even said that Charles the Bald staged it as a comic sacred mystery to entertain his dignitaries at supper. Despite its popularity, the work was banned or execrated by more austere novice masters, though it continued to be whispered and copied in convents, some claiming it concealed secret moral lessons beneath its veil of mirth.

Role in the Library and the Plot

In the abbey's library, the Coena Cypriani is not a standalone volume. It is bound together with three other texts: an Arabic manuscript on the sayings of a fool, a Syriac translation of an Egyptian alchemical work, and the Greek text of Aristotle's second book of the Poetics. This composite volume is catalogued under the entry that includes "Expositio Magistri Alcofribae de coena beati Cypriani Cartaginensis Episcopi" and "Liber acephalus de stupris virginum et meretricum amoribus." The book is hidden in the most inaccessible part of the library, the finis Africae, a room that Jorge of Burgos has sealed for decades. The Coena Cypriani is not itself the dangerous text; rather, it is the companion piece that Jorge uses to disguise the true object of his suppression: Aristotle's treatise on comedy. The presence of the Coena in the same volume is a deliberate act of concealment, a way of burying the dangerous Greek philosophy under a layer of vulgar, but ultimately harmless, monastic jesting.

Thematic Significance: Laughter, Parody, and the Inverted World

The Coena Cypriani embodies the very principle that Jorge of Burgos fears most: the carnivalesque inversion of the sacred order. It is a text that, in William of Baskerville's words, describes a world where "everything is on the wrong path." The Coena's method is to take the most solemn figures of Scripture and reduce them to their most base, physical functions—eating, drinking, and fornicating. This is precisely the kind of literature that Jorge believes will, if given philosophical legitimacy by Aristotle, lead to the destruction of all hierarchy and authority. The Coena is a practical example of what Aristotle's theory of comedy might produce: a world where the marginal becomes central, where the fool speaks wisdom, and where the serious is undermined by laughter. Adso of Melk's dream, which he recounts to William, is a vivid re-imagining of the Coena Cypriani, populated by the monks and events of the abbey. William recognizes it immediately, telling Adso, "You have added people and events of these past few days to a picture already familiar to you, because you have read the story of your dream somewhere." The dream reveals that the Coena has seeped into Adso's subconscious, becoming the lens through which he processes the chaos and inversion of the abbey's world. The Coena Cypriani, therefore, is not merely a piece of medieval trivia; it is a key to understanding the novel's central conflict between the rigid, fearful order of Jorge and the liberating, questioning spirit of William, a conflict that ultimately consumes the library itself in fire.