At this juncture, it appears the story carries extra resonance, poignance, bittersweetness...well, something along those lines...for me in no small part because Ericka's middle name was Rose. The world has a tint today, though not in the usual sense of rose-colored glasses. More in a sense of seeing through a glass, darkly, I guess.
Which brings us to the scene in which young Adso, having experienced sinful relations with a village woman, confesses to his master, William of Baskerville:
William: Oh, dear!
Adso: Why "oh, dear"?
William: You are in love.
Adso: Is that bad?
William: For a monk it does present certain problems.
Adso: But doesn't St Thomas Aquinas praise love above all other virtues?
William: Yes, the love of God, Adso. The love of God!
Adso: And the love of...woman?
William: Of woman, Thomas Aquinas knew precious little.
William goes on to remind his novice Scripture pretty much says women are foul, yet muses that G-d must have endowed them "with some virtues." In the movie, he concludes with a gentle, emotive contemplation, "How peaceful life would be without love, Adso. How safe... how tranquil...and how dull." Eco, in contrast, has him continue more intellectually:
“...And I cannot help reflecting that He granted her many privileges and motives of prestige, three of them very great indeed. In fact, He created man in this base world, and from mud; woman He created later, in earthly paradise and of noble human matter. And he did not mold her from Adam’s feet or his viscera, but from the rib.
In the second place, the Lord, who is all-powerful, could have transformed himself into a man in some miraculous way, but he chose instead to become flesh in the womb of a woman, a sign that it was not so foul after all. And when he appeared after the Resurrection, he appeared to a woman. And finally, in the celestial glory no man shall be king of that realm, but the queen will be a woman who has never sinned.
If, then, the Lord showed such favor to Eve herself and to her daughters, is it so abnormal that we also should feel drawn by the graces and the nobility of that sex? What I mean to say to you, Adso, is that you must not do it again, of course, but it is not so monstrous that you were tempted to do it.
And as far as that goes, for a monk to have, at least once in his life, experience of carnal passion, so that he can one day be indulgent and understanding with the sinners he will counsel and console . . . well, dear Adso, it is not a thing to be wished before it happens, but it is not something to vituperate too much once it has happened. So go with God and let us speak of it no more.
Indeed, rather than reflect and dwell too much on something best forgotten, if possible”—and it seemed to me at this point that his voice faded as if at some private emotion—“let us ask ourselves the meaning of what happened this night. Who was this girl and whom was she meeting?”
“This I don’t know, and I didn’t see the man who was with her,” I said.
“Very well, but we can deduce who it was from many and certain clues. First of all, the man was old and ugly, one with whom a girl does not go willingly, especially if she is beautiful, as you say, though it seems to me, my dear wolf cub, that you were prepared to find any food delicious.”
“Why old and ugly?”
“Because the girl didn’t go with him for love, but for a pack of scraps. Certainly she is a girl from the village who, perhaps not for the first time, grants her favors to some lustful monk so as to have something for her and her family to eat.”
“A harlot!” I said, horrified.
“A poor peasant girl, Adso. Probably with smaller brothers to feed. Who, if she were able, would give herself for love and not for lucre. As she did last night. In fact, you tell me she found you young and handsome, and gave you gratis and out of love what to others she would have given for an ox heart and some bits of lung. And she felt so virtuous for the free gift she made of herself, and so uplifted, that she ran off without taking anything in exchange. This is why I think the other one, to whom she compared you, was neither young nor handsome.”
I confess that, profound as my repentance was, that explanation filled me with a sweet pride; but I kept silent and allowed my master to continue.
In the book, Aquinas does not appear in this conversation, but rather earlier as part of Adso's reflections on his encounter:
I was doing evil in enjoying something that was good in one situation, bad in another; and my fault lay in trying to reconcile natural appetite and the dictates of the rational soul. Now I know that I was suffering from the conflict between the elicit appetite of the intellect, in which the will’s rule should have been displayed, and the elicit appetite of the senses, subject to human passions.
In fact, as Aquinas says, the acts of the sensitive appetite are called passions precisely because they involve a bodily change. And my appetitive act was, as it happened, accompanied by a trembling of the whole body, by a physical impulse to cry out and to writhe. The angelic doctor says that the passions in themselves are not evil, but they must be governed by the will led by the rational soul.
But my rational soul that morning was dazed by weariness, which kept in check the irascible appetite, addressed to good and evil as terms of conquest, but not the concupiscent appetite, addressed to good and evil as known entities. To justify my irresponsible recklessness of that time, I will say now that I was unquestionably seized by love, which is passion and is cosmic law, because the weight of bodies is actually natural love.
And by this passion I was naturally seduced, and I understood why the angelic doctor said that amor est magis cognitivus quam cognitio1, that we know things better through love than through knowledge. In fact, I now saw the girl better than I had seen her the previous night, and I understood her intus et in cute2 because in her I understood myself and in myself her. I now wonder whether what I felt was the love of friendship, in which like loves like and wants only the other’s good, or love of concupiscence, in which one wants one’s own good and the lacking wants only what completes it.
And I believe that the nighttime love had been concupiscent, for I wanted from the girl something I had never had; whereas that morning I wanted nothing from the girl, and I wanted only her good, and I wished her to be saved from the cruel necessity that drove her to barter herself for a bit of food, and I wished her to be happy; nor did I want to ask anything further of her, but only to think of her and see her in sheep, oxen, trees, in the serene light that bathed in happiness the grounds of the abbey.
At any rate, the lad can be forgiven for confusing (equivocating?) agápē (the selfless love, charity) with other forms of love. Let us consider what Aquinas actually said:
[I]t is clear that what is loved is naturally inside the lover. Therefore, whoever loves God has him in himself: whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him (1 John 4:16). It is also the nature of love that it transforms the lover into what is loved. Hence, if we love vile and perishable things, we are made vile and perishable, just as the prophet says: they became abhorrent, just like the things they loved (Hos 9:10).
But if we love God, we become divine, because he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit (1 Cor 6:17). But as St. Augustine says: just as the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul; and that is clear, because we say that the body lives through the soul when it performs living functions, such as action and motion. But when the soul leaves, the body neither acts nor moves.
Likewise the soul acts virtuously and perfectly when it acts through charity, through which God dwells in it; but without charity it cannot act: whoever does not love remains in death (1 John 3:14). It should be noted, however, that anyone who has all the gifts of the Holy Spirit apart from love does not have life. Whether it is the gift of tongues or the gift of knowledge, faith, or any other such as that of prophecy, without charity they do not give life. For if a dead body is dressed in gold and precious stones, it nonetheless remains dead.
Here it is in Latin, with 'love' bolded:
Manifestum est enim quod naturaliter amatum est in amante; et ideo qui Deum diligit ipsum in se habet, quia sicut dicit beatus Iohannes Qui manet in caritate etc. Natura etiam amoris est haec quod amantem in amatum transformat; unde si vilia diligimus et caduca, viles et instabiles efficimur quia sicut dicit Propheta Facti sunt abominabiles sicut ea quae dilexerunt;
si autem Deum diligimus divini efficimur quia Qui adhaeret Deo unus spiritus est. Sed sicut dicit beatus Augustinus Sicut anima est vita corporis ita Deus est vita animae; et hoc manifestum est: tunc enim dicimus corpus per animam vivere quando habet operationes proprias vitae, scilicet cum operatur et movetur. Anima vero recedente corpus nec operatur nec movetur;
sic etiam anima tunc operatur virtuose et perfecte quando per caritatem operatur per quam Deus habitat in ea; absque caritate vero non operatur, Io. Qui non diligit manet in morte. Considerandum autem quod si quis habet omnia dona Spiritus Sancti absque caritate non habet vitam. Sive enim sit gratia linguarum sive scientiae sive sit donum fidei sive quidquid aliud ut donum prophetiae, sine caritate vitam non tribuunt. Si enim corpus mortuum induatur auro et lapidibus pretiosis nihilominus mortuum manet.
I am no student of the language, but it appears Aquinas is talking about three different forms of love. We begin with amo (to love, admire), then ditch it for caritas (charity, love between Man and G-d) and diligo (to esteem, set apart). So what are we talking about in 1 Corinthians 13 (not to be confused with Trump's favorite, Two Corinthians)?
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
It's a popular reading at weddings, but if you examine different versions (e.g., KJV, Vulgate), it's really speaking to agape/charity. Whatever the sense, none of that is consistent with my experience. YMMV.
In conclusion: love is big, is bigger than us, but love is not what you're thinking of.
1 - From a handy page with translations of everything in the book: "love is more cognitive than knowledge."
2 - No, not a meet cute (although I guess it was, in sense), but rather, "inside and out [literally 'on the skin']."
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