This article reviews the history of bells as information sources, with particular emphasis on their use in the premodern West. Until the advent of modern acoustic technology, bells—defined here as open, cup-shaped vessels as opposed to crotals (hollow spheres)—were one of the most widespread and effective means of communication over distance. Usually made of metal, bells are idiophones that vibrate over most of their surface when struck and may be oscillated or remain in a fixed position (as is typical in the Western and Eastern traditions, respectively). Bells are thought to have developed in southeast Asia before 3000 BCE, spreading subsequently to India, China, the Near East, and eventually the Mediterranean basin; ancient examples are also known in Africa and in the pre-Columbian Americas. Bells have been cast in a wide variety of sizes, ranging from under a centimeter to the 6.6 meter diameter of the “Tsar Kolokol III” bell at the Kremlin in Moscow (1735), weighing some two hundred thousand kilograms. The sound of a bell consists of a complex series of sounding partials: the characteristic pitch or “nominal” of the bell is only one of a series of partials (component vibrations) both below and above, which may or may not be in a harmonious relationship. Western bells in particular were tuned from the Middle Ages onward to produce more concordant relationships between these partials, supporting more purely musical traditions such as change ringing in England and carillons in the Low Countries.
From an early stage bells fulfilled both spiritual and practical functions. Smaller bells were commonly attached to animals as a means of locating herds and frightening predators, and they were attached to vestments to signal the approach of important persons or to emphasize bodily movement and gesture. Spread by Celtic missionaries between the fifth and ninth centuries, the earliest known bells in medieval Europe signaled the times of monastic canonical prayer. By the twelfth century church towers, originally built as defense structures, were being equipped with bells, their numbers and size gradually increasing in subsequent centuries. Bells thus became a sonic marker of ecclesiastical authority and complemented the symbolic position of the church tower as the visual center of the community. Bells were traditionally accorded spiritual essences as well: their sound moved both gods and men; they attracted beneficent spirits and drove away evil spirits and influences. Bells were sounded within the church, especially to mark the moment of Eucharistic transubstantiation or the beginning of the sermon.
Bells were typically rung for sacramental rites of passage: baptism (especially for highly placed persons), marriage; and for priests bearing the Eucharist to the sick. Most significant was the ringing of bells to mark death or its approach. Differences in the duration or intensity of ringing conveyed information to a community on the class, gender, or age of the deceased and compelled collective prayers for the sake of the soul. However, this informative function was balanced by an apotropaic function, in that the sounds of consecrated or blessed bells were thought to keep at bay the evil spirits who might disturb the soul’s passage. Thus the “passing bell” commonly was heard at the moment of death, and other bells would accompany the body to the church and to the place of burial. Bells proved to be especially useful as a signal to compel collective prayer, for the living and the departed. The so-called Angelus bell, at whose sound devotees were to pray the “Ave Maria” (Hail Mary), was especially fostered through papal pronouncements and *indulgences. By the fourteenth century more or less distinctive prayer bells were rung at morning and evening, and in 1456 Pope Calixtus III made a midday prayer bell mandatory as well, increasingly associated with prayers against the Turkish military threat (“Turk bell”). By the sixteenth century a threefold cycle of the Angelus at sunrise, noon, and sunset was commonly heard in European towns and was joined by additional signals on Thursdays and Fridays to commemorate Christ’s agony and Passion. By popular demand the ringing of the Angelus was sometimes maintained in the Protestant *Reformation, but its theological significance changed: the midday Angelus, for example, was shorn of its Marian associations and reinterpreted as a call for peace (pro pace).
The cultic importance of bells in the traditional church followed from a ritual of consecration that resembled that of baptism. Known as early as the eighth century and later ratified by the Roman Church, the rite required the priest to wash the bell with salt and oil, chant psalms and prayers of consecration, and anoint the bell with chrism. This ritual, together with the common identification of bells by proper names and the addition of inscriptions in the first person (“I call the living, I lament the dead, I shatter the lightning”) only deepened the sense of the bell as invested with spiritual power, its sound able to disperse threatening storms and the demons and witches that stirred them up. In a broader sense bells were thought to project the voice of the Lord and the mysteries of the Gospel: the consecrated bell became not only a source of apotropaic power, but a vessel of proclamation as well. The arrival of the Protestant Reformation brought significant changes to the traditional uses of church bells, as the former density of liturgical ringing was variously reoriented and theologically reinterpreted. Martin Luther attacked bell consecrations as an idolatrous ritual, and many theologians reinterpreted bell sounds as compelling the prayers that were the only sure way of staying God’s wrath. If Lutheran officials uniformly rejected bell consecrations and apotropaic notions, this did not lead to any widespread silencing of bell sounds, which continued to invite the faithful to services, call for collective prayer in the face of calamities and threats, observe the passing of persons both prominent and ordinary, and serve for timekeeping and for civic safety. Despite the admonitions of the theologians, many Christians on both sides of the confessional divide continued to invest bell sounds with apotropaic power well into the eighteenth century and even beyond.
For many centuries there was not necessarily a clear distinction between cultic, ritual, and “secular” uses of bell signals. Given the political dominance of the medieval church, its bells could readily serve as civic signals and as symbols of communal identity. As communes increasingly asserted themselves against ecclesiastical and territorial lords, complex patterns of ownership emerged in that certain bells in church towers were designated for civic purposes, such as striking the hours or warning in case of fire or other disturbances. A timbral distinction between religious and profane signals could be achieved, for example, by tolling the bell instead of setting it in oscillation; or by striking the bell with a hammer or other device. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries cities began to erect municipal buildings and towers in which bells emerged as a sonic focus of civic authority: fine examples may be found in the grand palazzi of Florence (1322) and Siena (1348). Civic bells were rung to convene popular assemblies, to announce judicial proceedings and the collection of taxes, and to mark the execution of malefactors; town criers, moreover, carried smaller bells to disseminate important and officially sanctioned news. More generally bells emerged in the Middle Ages as instruments for the regulation of trade, commerce, and internal civic order. Bells were rung for the opening and closing of gates at morning and evening, and for marking the period of sanctioned commerce. Countering the potential dangers and disturbances of the premodern night would make bells necessary for the closing of taverns and the imposition of curfew. During the night hours watchmen in towers would periodically strike bells to reassure the populace of their wakefulness, and roving watchmen would also sometimes carry handbells to signal their presence: bell signals, then, were an aural symbol of safety and vigilance.
A range of bells—including tower bells in elevated locations as well as smaller bells hung in towers, gates, and guard houses—warned the populace in case of fire or the approach of enemies. An alarm bell (tocsin) was often distinguished by rapid striking with a hammer or by an inherently discordant sound. Some bells were associated directly with a military function: Florence’s “La Martinella,” for instance, rang to assemble troops and alert the citizenry in the face of external threats and was carried into battle as a physical and aural symbol of the commune. Military victories and other celebratory occasions compelled cities to ring all bells together, creating a stereophonic sound that could be augmented by gunfire or fireworks.
Collective ringing of this nature, though aurally impressive, was rare. The soundscape of premodern towns and cities was characterized by a complex interlocking of liturgical and secular cycles of ringing that structured routine experiences of space and time, augmented by distinctive signals that conveyed information of a more urgent nature. It is likely, moreover, that premodern populations readily distinguished subtleties of rhythm and timbre that have been largely effaced in the modern age. Industrialization and the destructive effects of modern warfare have fundamentally changed the communicative function of bells, whose sound, for many, now incites nostalgia for a lost age.
Alexander J. Fisher
See also governance; sermons