I was thinking about the Inquisition and the Dominicans and how they are portrayed in the movie version of The Name of the Rose, which while rooted in historical circumstances is anti-Catholic and hence not so historically accurate (especially with its depiction of the Dominicans?). I know someone who admires his writing style, if not necessarily his message. (I don't think he has ever blogged about that aspect of Eco's writing.) If only Eco had remained Catholic and written a novel that revealed the historical truth about the medieval Church; I agree with De Mattei that Eco should have put his talents to better use, in service of God and the Church. (Though De Mattei's genealogy in that article of nominalism, "a decadent and deformed interpretation of Thomist doctrine" is suspect.) Eco would probably have access to the scholarship done on the medieval Latin churches; even now we have historians like Fr. Augustine Thompson writing about that period. But if he had an agenda, he would have ignored that scholarship regardless.

How would a historical novel about the medieval Latin churches be different, if written from the perspective of someone like Fr. Louis Bouyer regarding the development of Latin spirituality?