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11

The Bells

If you had lived in the Middle ages, one of the loudest noises you would have heard – apart perhaps from thun-der and earthquakes, or the awful din of battle – would

probably have been the sound sent flying out every day from churches, temples and monasteries. even if you only heard it in the distance, it would have been an ever-present part of your soundscape. For priests and monks – whether Taoists or Buddhists in China, or Christians in europe – the best way of communicating with each other and to the people who lived nearby was the bell. each time one rang from the top of a tower and its sound floated out across a village or town, reli-gion’s extraordinary hold over the secular world was signalled loud and clear.

yet the Middle ages can’t be reduced to a single soundscape,

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religious or otherwise. Churches always had to rub along with local customs and ancient traditions, and each town and vil-lage rang out differently. in parts of the netherlands, throngs of pitched bells were popular, giving towns a musical qual-ity. elsewhere, according to various travellers, bells gave their towns a ‘threatening’ or ‘plaintive’ tone, or conjured up a distinctive air of urgency or calm.1

nor was it always the clear, resonant chimes of cast-iron or copper that filled the air. in much of eastern europe and the near east, for instance, the sound of Orthodox Christianity was not the pealing bell but the pounding beats of a hammer striking wood: the semantron. This is a wooden board a metre or two long, usually suspended horizontally from chains or ropes. When struck in different places, the semantron pro-duces different tones, and with a skilled operator complex messages can be beaten out. it’s now a much-loved part of the heritage of the eastern Orthodox religion, especially in Romania and parts of Greece; however, in the Middle ages the semantron became popular almost by accident. This plain wooden object was a pragmatic response to metal bells being outlawed. nowadays, the idea of banning something as harm-less as a bell strikes us as bizarre. Back then, however, their banning can be seen as a measure of their power. They were loved, venerated and feared. They helped organise daily life, they were right at the heart of the struggle between good and evil, and they always had to be in the right hands.

This struggle for control over bells can be seen particularly clearly in istanbul’s fascinating history. One of the reasons this city is so richly layered with sounds today is that it’s long been the meeting place of two continents – asia and europe – and the meeting place of two great religions – islam and Christian-ity. in the Middle ages, when it was still called Constantino-ple, the city was the centre of Orthodox Christianity – a place where some of the more ancient rituals since abandoned by

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the Roman church of Western europe were proudly main-tained – yet in the fifteenth century it came under the control of the Ottoman Turks. The great cathedral, the Hagia Sophia itself, was converted into a place of islamic prayer, and across the city, mosques soon outnumbered churches.

There was an immediate impact on the soundscape of the city. Bells had been rung in most Christian churches here since they had first formed under the Roman empire. But an islamic council had already decreed in aD 630 that calling the faithful to prayer should be done only by means of the human voice.2 This ruling had allowed a rich array of vocal tones and styles to flourish across the Muslim world, but it clearly had implications for Christians. it was all very well for them to ring bells quietly inside their own buildings, but outdoors the noise was anath-ema. So the biggest copper bells of the churches were silenced, and the wooden semantron – which had been around for centu-ries and was cheap to make – now came into its own, summon-ing followers without the piercing effect of a bell. Wherever the Orthodox Christian Church took root, so did the semantron, and as it spread, it adapted to local conditions. in ethiopia, Christians would strike not wood but a special stone called the dewall. in Syria, Greece and Russia, they would sound bars, plates and rings of metal. When several were struck at once, complex melodies could be created. in Russia, where the mon-asteries were fiercely independent, a stunning variety of differ-ent rhythms, tone colours and pitches developed over time.3

The semantron, then, took the place of the bell in an impor-tant part of the medieval world. But to the east and the west of the Ottoman empire, where copper or cast-iron bells were never silenced, we find a similar story: people putting their ringing to a rich variety of uses – and hearing in their sounds a whole range of subtle meanings that have now been lost.

For those who served God directly in the Middle ages – the monks and nuns and priests themselves – bells were a vital

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tool of the trade. Monasteries projected an image of quiet seclusion, but for those who lived inside, often forbidden to speak, the routines of eating, sleeping and praying would have been regulated day in, day out, by the ringing of bells.4 in Western europe, Benedictine houses, for example, were amazingly precise in their practices. Guidelines, formulated originally by Christ Church in Canterbury in the late eleventh century, called for Benedictine monks to be stirred from their slumbers to sing prime, their first devotion of the day, by a small bell called the parvulum signum, rung quietly by the warden. Other small bells, the skilla or the signum minimum or the minus signum, and so on, would then ring out through corridors and around the cloisters, each one slightly different in tone and each one summoning the monks to one devotion or another at three-hour intervals. The end of daylight would be marked with vespers. Stretching into the darkness there would be compline at nine, nocturns at midnight, then, finally, matins at dawn – before the parvulum signum was heard once more and the whole cycle repeated.

if monks needed to be hurried along at any stage, they would hear the light-toned sound of the tintinnabulum, the direct descendant of the small Roman handbell. at the other end of the scale there was the large ‘signal bell’, which had a much deeper tone. This would have rung out across the whole monastery to summon everybody to a general assembly. There was also the tabula, a piece of wood struck with a mallet by the prior or abbot to announce the precise moment when monks were allowed to speak to one another in the cloisters. eating together initiated a whole new ritual of bells: a gong to announce the meal, two strikes of the tabula to enter the refectory, a third strike when the meal was over and food needed to be cleared away, and finally a good long shake of the skilla to get everyone to say a last prayer before leaving. in other words, monks were told by bells when to wake, wash,

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say their prayers, come to meals, rise from the table, work and talk; they were moved around and kept in time by sound.5

Ordinary lay people would have got a small taste of this extraordinary life of bells whenever they went to their local parish church. They would be guided through the intricacies of each service, not only by the priest, but also with a series of auditory cues. a bell would sound to alert churchgoers to a particularly sacred moment, and they would know exactly when to bow or look up. The priest would also have tiny bells attached to his robes, tinkling as he moved about near the altar and pulpit. The richest array of sounds, however, would have been heard at the services held in Coptic and Orthodox churches in places such as Syria, armenia and Georgia, where, together with cymbals, singing and intoning, bells created one of the world’s richest soundscapes of devotion.

if the parish churches of the West couldn’t quite compete with such a sensory feast for those gathered inside, they did at least have at their disposal the most powerful use of all for the very biggest bells in their possession: the summons to worship. One of the oldest parish bells in england can be found inside the church of St Lawrence in Caversfield, near Oxford. Cast in the early years of the thirteenth century, it’s now standing at rest in a corner of the ground floor, but nearly 800 years ago it would have been positioned more strategically, near the top of St Lawrence’s square Saxon tower. When St Lawrence’s bell was in place and being rung, its rich treble tones would have been heard not just by those inside the church below, but by anyone outside for miles around: by those resting inside their homes, by those passing through the village on foot or horseback, by those toiling away in the fields nearby. everyone would have heard it, ringing at noon or in the afternoon on workdays, in the morning on Sundays and holy days – and they would have known immediately to stop everything and celebrate Mass.

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Bells had been used like this for thousands of years. it was common in ancient China to announce periods of worship through striking a bell. Christians seem to have adopted the practice first in north africa during the sixth century: it’s then that we have a priest in Carthage describing the ‘holy custom’ of local monks ringing a ‘sonorous bell’.6 it was indeed in the monasteries, rather than the parish churches, that bell tow-ers were first built so that the sound of bells could travel as far and wide as possible. By the time village churches like the one at Caversfield, along with the abbeys and cathedrals, were all ringing from their towers – each competing for attention and prestige by increasing the volume and complexity of their peals, each offering more and more religious services to their parishioners – the air over the house tops in some medieval european towns and villages must have felt close to saturation.

Whether this symphony of sound irritated or pleased, it certainly served its purpose. The bell was a potent means by which a parish church, temple or monastery could project its power, define its territory and regulate behaviour across a whole neighbourhood. it served, for instance, as an official timekeeper to the community at large. in each monastery a monk would be charged with keeping vigil over a sundial or hourglass or candle and observing the position of the sun or the night sky, ready to reach for a bell rope to sound the hours at the right moment.7 This lonely figure, marooned for much of the day and night high in a tower, was the heroic human predecessor of the mechanical clock.

Civil authorities also made use of the church’s bells to mark time. in London, under William the Conqueror, the nightly cur-few was rung out from St Martin’s-le-Grand at 8 p.m., and then taken up by other churches nearby as a signal for all city gates to be closed. The pattern was repeated elsewhere, with minor variations. The curfew that fell across old Beijing in the days of the Mongol dynasty, for instance, was described by Marco Polo:

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There is a great bell suspended in a lofty building which is sounded every night, and after the third stroke no person dares to be found in the streets, unless upon some urgent occasion … Guards, in parties of thirty or forty, continually patrol the streets during the night, and make diligent search for persons who may be from their homes at an unseasonable hour, that is, after the third stroke of the great bell.8

in the West, too, being outside after the curfew sounded wasn’t just dangerous, it was deeply suspicious. By now, the bell was saying, all decent people are indoors. and when a bell was rung unexpectedly, this really caught everyone’s atten-tion: it signalled danger, or a death or perhaps a miracle hav-ing taken place.9 Different messages often involved different bells or different rhythms. People usually knew whether it was time to get down on their knees and pray, to mourn, to panic or simply to return home. They also knew the geographical boundaries of their community. To be a parishioner was, in effect, to be within earshot of the local church bell.10

By creating this bond, bells ensured the whole cycle of daily life was framed, time and time again, in religious terms.11 yet people also identified with bells because of something more ancient and pagan in spirit, more deeply embedded in folklore: they were in awe of their sacred power to dispel evil.

if you visit St Lawrence’s church in Caversfield and look closely at the 800-year-old bell there, you will notice a faint inscription. it reads: ‘in honour of God and St Lawrence, Hugh Gargate and Sibilla his wife had these bells erected’. it’s a simple and modest dedication. But bells often had more forbidding messages carved into them:

i disperse the winds

i put the cloud to flight

i break the thunder

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i torment the demons

i put the plague to flight

My voice is the slayer of demons

Through the sign of the Cross let all evil flee.12

if these sound like spells, that is because they are. When a bell rang out, it was commonly believed that any words written on it would also be sent flying through the air to do their work. it’s why in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the city authorities in Peking maintained an enormous bell weighing some fifty tons and covered both inside and out with lengthy quotations from Buddhist scripture.13 it embodied the ancient belief that metal breaks magic and that noise drives away evil. across China, for centuries, other smaller bells were sounded in ceremonies designed to control the weather, encourage good crops and create an aura around homes, sacred relics and temples, while Taoist priests wandered around with handbells. in the West, peasants who might once have referred to pagan ‘spirits’ talked now, under Christian influence, of ‘demons’ or ‘devils’. But it was always bells that were trusted to keep these invisible forces at bay. The old Roman rite of purification of the crops every spring, for example, was simply converted and from the fourth century it became Rogation. in places such as Caversfield, priest and parishioners would have gone out from the church and processed into the fields, ringing their handbells to invoke blessings on the crops.14

Handbells, of course, had one great feature: they made the beneficial effects of a church bell wonderfully transportable, which is why they were among the most important posses-sions of itinerant Christian preachers and missionaries as they walked along country lanes from village to village. One of the most famous, still preserved in the national Museum of ireland, is the Bell of St Patrick’s Will. in Patrick’s own time,

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it was probably just two bent iron plates riveted together, but it was thought capable of keeping away evil spirits, even cur-ing illness. after many years this simple clagan or clocca, as the irish called it, was considered so holy that it needed to be shielded from the gaze of mere mortals. it was subsequently coated in copper, and people were even appointed to be its keeper – a role considered so honourable that it was passed down from generation to generation.15

The sacred powers of even the humblest bells obviously made them objects of great reverence. But for the Church this created as many problems as it solved. For if bell-ringing worked for a priest, why wouldn’t it work in the hands of, say, a simple peasant farmer wanting to protect his herd of pigs? The Church found an answer. it distinguished between bells that were blessed – which lay people could use for ordinary workaday miracles – and those that were baptised – which consequently had much greater powers but would remain firmly in the hands of the priesthood. naturally, the Church ensured blessed bells were available for purchase at all good shrines. after all, there seemed no harm in making a little money from people’s anxieties.

anxiety is a crucial part of this story. The medieval world was steeped in superstition, and violent death always seemed just a hair’s breadth away. in truth, the Church’s social power drew strength from this state of anxiety. every time a bell’s power to dispel evil was proclaimed or performed, it would have rein-forced the idea that demons really were all around, and that only the Church and its bells stood in their way. This was a message that would have brought people ever deeper into the Church’s comforting embrace. it’s one of the reasons why, in towns across europe, houses were built close together around a church: people wanted desperately to be in the protective aura of the sound of its bells. as Thomas aquinas declared, ‘The atmosphere is a battlefield between angels and devils’:

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The aspiring steeples around which cluster the low dwellings of men are to be likened, when the bells in them are ringing, to the hen spreading its protective wings over its chickens: for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the demons and arrest storms and lightning.16

The same raging struggle between good and evil was played out in sound right up to and beyond the grave. When some-one was sick and needed communion, a bell-ringer would walk before the priest as he came to visit. as death arrived, a ‘pass-ing bell’, or ‘death knell’, would be rung to drive away those evil spirits waiting to seize a departing soul; a different rhythm or pitch would tell those nearby whether it was a man, woman or child who had died. Other bells sounded during the funeral procession and burial. Handbells would be rung around the body to sustain the protective aura every time it moved. and if the grieving family was rich enough, they would even pay the church to have bells rung in perpetuity to protect the soul in the afterlife.17 When plague struck a community, the ringing would sometimes continue until the bells cracked.18

in the Middle ages, listening to bells reveals a world dom-inated by established religion, yet also suffused with ancient superstitions. Underlying everything, however, was the feeling that sound, moving invisibly through the air all around us, connected people with each other and with objects. it was a means of ‘touching’ at a distance. Sound enabled not just the passing of information from one person to another, but the passing on of other, less tangible qualities – especially, perhaps, goodness or evil. as we will discover, it was a fundamental belief that would shape many other aspects of medieval life, from healing and entertainment, to architecture, to our rela-tionship with the cosmos.

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