Faith and Reason: Conflicts of Authority in History and Fiction.
This paper explores the relationship between faith and reason in the history of the European inquisitions and in the representations of faith and reason in Eco's Name of the Rose. Each perspective offers important understandings of medieval history and Eco's novel exemplifies how singular perspectives are often ineffective in determining what is true, or what is truth. In this paper, the role of "truth" is explored as an important process of the inquisitions, and an important question for the characters in Eco's novel. The novel, as fiction, plus historical understandings from non-fiction sources, help build an understanding of the role of the Inquisition in establishing bureaucratic processes, and legal institutions.
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