Ironically, Umberto's characterization of Gui is one of the aspects of his novel that's been generally criticized as an inaccurate caricature of the man in question.
"The external use of The Inquisition in fiction has generally ceased, and it is unlikely that it will return, since the late twentieth century now understands both its own and more remote history more clearly and painfully than it did half a century ago. Utopian fiction now draws upon its own imagination, stimulated by events that make even the old Inquisition pale in comparison. Some of the myth survives in historical fiction, but not very successfully, not even in the deft and mercurial games of a novel like The Name of the Rose, whose inquisitor, identified as the historical figure Bernard Gui, is actually a composite of a myth created several centuries after the fourteenth century period in which the action of the novel is set. The character of Bernard Gui is simply Umberto Eco's tour de force at recreating another Torquemada or Pedro Arbues out of nineteenth-century fiction, and he is neither a cautionary figure for the twentieth century nor a historically accurate reconstruction of any fourteenth-century inquisitor." - Edward Peters, Inquisition, p. 307, published 1988 (The Free Press, New York) [Italics in original, underline is emphasis mine.]
....of course, and the whole Inquisition thing was simply a work of fiction as well. Got it!
I appreciate your knowledge of those times. It’s always fascinating learning the history behind the story and understanding just how much the truth of it has been changed or even manufactured.
Those were truly Dark ages.