ROME – In Umberto Eco’s immortal novel The Name of the Rose, the stern Benedictine abbot Jorge de Burgo insists that laughter is evil: “Laughter kills fear,” he declares, “and without fear there can be no faith, because without fear of the Devil there is no more need of God.”
In response, the novel’s hero, the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, argues that even the saints used comedy, pointing to St Maurice, who, while being boiled to death by a Muslim sultan, complained that his bath was too cold, whereupon the sultan dipped his hand into the water and was scalded.
