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William of Baskerville (Italian: Guglielmo da Baskerville) is a fictional Franciscan friar from the...

William of Baskerville (Italian: Guglielmo da Baskerville) is a fictional Franciscan friar from the novel Il Nome Della Rosa (The Name of the Rose) by Umberto Eco. Brother William was an inquisitor, who presided at some trials in England and Italy, where he distinguished himself by his perspicacity along with great humility. In numerous cases he decided the accused was innocent. Later he left the job as an inquisitor. In the 1986 movie The Name of the Rose, Sean Connery played the role of Brother William of Baskerville. The fictional friar, William of Baskerville, alludes both to the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes and to William of Ockham. The name itself is derived from William of Ockham and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Hound of the Baskervilles. Another view is that Eco has created Brother William as a combination of Roger Bacon, William of Occam and Sherlock Holmes. William of Ockham, who lived during the time of the novel, first put forward the principle known as "Ockham's Razor": often summarised as the dictum that one should always accept as most likely the simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts (a method used by William of Baskerville in the novel),