Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1984. 59-60.
“What does it matter? The Devil is stubborn, he follows a pattern in his snares and his seductions, he repeats his rituals at a distance of millennia, he is always the same, this is precisely why he is recognized as the enemy! I swear to you: They lighted candles on Easter night and took maidens into the cellar. Then they extinguished the candles and threw themselves on the maidens, even if they were bound to them by ties of blood. . . . And if from this conjunction a baby was born, the infernal rite was resumed, all around a little jar of wine, which they called the keg, and they became drunk and would cut the baby to pieces, and pour its blood into the goblet, and they threw babies on the fire, still alive, and they mixed the baby’s ashes and his blood, and drank!
“But Michael Psellus wrote this in his book on the workings of devils three hundred years ago! Who told you these things?”
“They did. Bentivenga and the others, and under torture!”
“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him. . . . These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. Under torture Bentivenga may have told the most absurd lies, because it was no longer himself speaking, but his lost, the devils of his soul.”
“Lust?”
“Yes, there is lust for pain, as here is lust for adoration, and even a lust for humility. If it took so little to make the rebellious angels direct their ardor away from worship and humility toward pride and revolt, what can we expect of a human being? There, now you know: this was the thought that struck me in the course of my inquisitions. And this is why I gave up that activity. I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.”
* Reproduced for personal use without express permission. Paragraph breaks substituted for indentations.
