the name of the rose william baskerville

“The newly organized Franciscans pose an existential threat to the order of the church,” Emerson says. “He got his worldly wealth by putting her in an insane asylum.” Michael Emerson as Abbot in “The Name of the Rose” Angelo Turetta/SundanceTVīesides the murder investigation, William is a thorn in the side of the Catholic church. “The jewels belonged to his mother,” says Emerson. The “Rose” abbot is played by Michael Emerson (“Lost”), a whack job whose sublimated sexuality takes form in a draping ritual of jewels on a statue of the Blessed Virgin. This monastic Hercule Poirot encounters resistance from the abbey’s monks, who spend their days creating illuminated manuscripts and see William as a threat to their customs, symbolized by a labyrinth under the abbey where cherished books are kept. Even though there were all these wars, they were the ones who saved a lot of literature.” “The novel covers all different cultures. Greek literature translated into Aramaic and Latin,” he says. “All these books were saved by the Arabs. The abbey’s library is a storehouse of human memory rigged with booby traps designed to punish or kill intruders.

“A lot of the killings are tied to a book, on not letting that book be read,” says Turturro, 62.

Turturro plays Franciscan friar William of Baskerville - who is traveling to a papal conference at an Italian abbey when he is unexpectedly asked to solve a series of murders. That may not seem like the obvious choice for summer entertainment, but series star John Turturro thinks the Umberto Eco tale - a bestselling 1980 novel and 1986 movie starring Sean Connery - is more contemporary than you might think. Thursday on Sundance TV, is a murder mystery set in the middle of the 14th century. “The Name of the Rose,” premiering 10 p.m.

The name of the rose william baskerville