Today is Umberto Eco's birthday. As a scholar, he is known for his work on semiotics, and the aesthetics of the middle ages. Of course, he is much more widely known as a novelist and essayist. To celebrate his birthday, here is one nice morsel from his masterpiece, The Name of the Rose.
"For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us."
-- The Name of the Rose, First Day, Sext
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