y containing the books, he is overjoyed and he shouts with great happiness, "We are in one of the greatest libraries in all of Christendom". One of the most important goals of the monastery was to keep the knowledge of the past from being lost.
             However, at the same time, the Church recognizes that such books can be dangerous if the knowledge that they contain is different from the knowledge that the Church has taught is the truth. The old blind monk, the one who is responsible for the deaths in the Abbey to try to keep secret what he calls the "forbidden" knowledge in Aristotle's book on comedy, says that "The purpose of this Abbey is the preservation of knowledge. Preservation, I say, not search for, because there is no progress in the history of knowledge". What he means by this is that the truth in knowledge cannot be changed by the discovery of new knowledge or by the discovery of old knowledge such as Aristotle's books. He believes that the truth is to be found in the Bible and in what the Church says is the truth, and no other knowledge should be allowed to challenge such truth.
             The Name of the Rose demonstrates how important the discovery of Aristotle's books was to the development of Christian Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Before the old Greek philosopher's writings were found, the Bible was recognized Europe as the only important book whose knowledge would be used as the truth for what people should believe and how they should live their lives. With the rediscovery of Aristotle's writing, it was recognized that another important source of truth and knowledge had been found. However, such knowledge was not seen as dangerous by the Church so long as its truths could be shown to be the same truths taught by the Christian Church:
             Aristotle understands of a just ruler or of sexual moderation agreed with Christian notions of goodness and vi...