Adoremus Bulletin: Society for the Renewal of Sacred Liturgy Online Edition - Vol. VII, No. 7: October 2001
Bring Back the Bells—
and the Bell Tower, too.
by Michael S. Rose
A church should not only be seen, but heard. Designers of our late twentieth
century churches have all but forgotten such simple wisdom. While they
have often tried in many ways to conceal the church building visually
(e.g., by making the church look like a library or giving it proportions
dominated by the horizontal rather than the vertical), they have had an
easier time silencing it. That is, designers and liturgists have effectively
eliminated the use of bells both inside and outside the church. This is
a fact that is not only lamentable, it is one that needs to be rectified
in the churches of the twenty-first century. Bells are an important, if
almost forgotten, aspect of both the church building and the liturgy.
A summons to prayer
Through the use of bells the faithful are reminded of Christ's presence,
His importance in our lives, and our need to honor Him in adoration and
prayer. Walking through the streets of Rome, Barcelona, or Paris, it is
difficulteven todaynot to hear the beautiful pealing of church bellsreal
bells swinging in a bell towerthroughout the day. The first use of church
bells, as early as the eighth century, was to announce the time of church
services, most notably the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. Later they were
used also during Mass, being rung at the elevation of the Host during
Consecration so that those not in the church at the time could stop their
work or play and briefly turn toward the church in adoration. (This custom
was later replaced in most places by the use of hand bells in the liturgy.)
Beginning in the Middle Ages differences in the manner of ringing the
bells or in how many bells were used indicated the type of liturgical
service (Sunday Mass, Benediction, funeral, wedding, and so forth). The
faithful could also tell if the service would be a sung High Mass with
a sermon preached or a recited Low Mass. Even today the bells of our churches
let out a recognizable peal for the Angelus (usually at 6:00 a.m., Noon,
and 6:00 p.m.) that is distinct from wedding bells or the funeral knell
before a Mass of Christian Burial. In fact, in many communities, especially
in some European villages, a "passing bell" will be rung to signal the
death of a parishioner, or in a monastery, the death of a brother monk.
All tolls and peals of the church bells, no matter what the occasion or
time of day, are a summons to prayerwhether for the souls of the faithful
departed, the pious recitation of the Angelus, or a call to worship through
participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The importance of bells
François Rabelais's Gargantua (1534), a satirical and sometimes
potty-mouthed look at Renaissance Paris, gives an indication of the importance
placed on church bells by the dawn of that age. The story's title character,
an amiable if irreverent giant, removes the huge church bells from Notre
Dame, thinking they might "sound very sweet tinkling on his mare's neck".
When the whole of Paris gets into a violent uproar, Janotus, Doctor of
Theology and eldest member of the University faculty, is empowered to
"apprise Gargantua of the dreadful damage they have suffered through the
loss of these bells". Armed with holy water, Janotus reluctantly pays
a visit to the giant's home. "It were but right that you should return
our bells, for we are in sore need of them!" he begins. "Many a time we
have heretofore refused good money for them from the citizens of London
(near Cahors) and of Bordeaux (in the land of Brie) If you restore them
to us at my request, I shall gain one and one-quarter yards of sausage
by it. O Sir, Domine, restor bellsimus nobis, give us back our
bells! Truly, est bonum urbis, it is for the good of the city".
The plight of Garguanta's satirized Parisians reminds us that these
church bells require a proper home. Their use at the church and their
increasing importance to the neighborhood obviously necessitated a place
to keep them for ringing. In order for these bells to resound through
the city streets, town markets, and distant fields, the bells (ranging
from those of modest size at public oratories to multiple-ton bells such
as one finds at the great cathedrals of Christendom, such as Notre Dame)
had to be situated as high up in the church as was reasonably possible.
A bell tower was the obvious solution. According to the eighth century
Liber Pontificalis, Pope Stephen II (752-757) erected a belfry
with three bells at Old St. Peter's Basilica in the heart of Rome. A belfry
is the upper part of a steeple or tower that supports the bells with its
accompanying ropes and mechanisms. By the end of that century bells, and
therefore belfries, were regarded as an essential part of every church.
In fact, it was felt that no religious service could properly take place
without the ringing of a bell. Medieval canon law, therefore, required
that cathedrals have at least five bells, a parish church two or three,
and chapels of the mendicant orders and public oratories were required
to maintain one. Although church towers (used as watchtowers by sentinels
or as spiraling stairwells) preceded the use of bells, it is obvious that
church towers built from the eighth century onward were for the express
purpose of hanging bells. One reason for this was because of the increased
size and number used. It has been recorded that Canterbury Cathedral in
England, for instance, required twenty-four men to ring its largest bell,
and all of sixty-three men for the full peal of its five bells. Its bell
tower is correspondingly "gargantuan". Most churches, although not using
bells the size of Canterbury's, require a strong and massive tower to
accommodate the swinging peals. For acoustics and other practical reasons,
the belfry openings (where the bells are actually hung) are placed well
above the ridge of the church. Louvers, sometimes used in the uppermost
part of the tower, are so constructed pointing upward so that they carry
the sound of the bells as far as possible, while at the same time lessening
the impact of the ringing in the immediate vicinity of the church. The
bellchambers of the tower were also once built to facilitate the hanging
bell-ropes that were pulled manually from below. Although in most churches
the bells are now controlled by an automatic mechanism and operated with
just the flip of a switch, in previous centuries monks or laymen could
make a vocation of ringing the bells at a cathedral, pilgrimage church,
or basilica.
The delight of bells
Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame captures vividly the intense
emotion and bravura in which Quasimodo, Paris's most renowned bell-ringer
carries out his task. "Sometimes an enormous head and a bundle of ill-adjusted
limbs might be swaying frantically to and fro from a rope's end under
the belfry", wrote Hugo; "it was Quasimodo ringing the Vespers or the
Angelus". The hunchback's fondness for each of the cathedral's bells,
from the chime in the steeple over the transept to the big bell above
the door, is worth noting. So too is the joy he took in putting them to
use:
It is impossible to give any idea of his joy on those days when full
peals were rung. he called to his assistants, stationed on a lower story
of the tower, to begin. They then hung upon the ropes, the windlass
creaked, and the enormous mass of metal moved slowly. Quasimodo, panting
with excitement, followed it with his eye. The first stroke of the clapper
upon its brazen wall made the beam on which he stood quiver. Quasimodo
vibrated with the bell. "Here we go! There we go!" he shouted in a mad
burst of laughter. But the motion of the great bell grew faster and
faster, and as it traversed an ever-increasing space, his eye grew bigger
and bigger, more and more glittering and phosphorescent. At last the
full peal began; the whole tower shook: beams, leads, broad stones,
all rumbled together, from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils
at the top. Then Quasimodo's rapture knew no bounds: he came and he
went; he trembled and shook from head to foot with the tower.
Perhaps not as ecstatic as the hunchback, many people cannot help but
be profoundly moved by the peal of cathedral bells, the ebullient ringing
of wedding bells, or the mournful toll of a funeral bell. For the pilgrim
in city or country that distant sound of ringing may well be the first
indication that his destination is not far off. He then looks forward
to catching his first glimpse of the church tower or spire rising above
the urban fabric or seeing the silhouette of the church building atop
a distant hill.
The home to bells
In fact, the bell tower is one of the primary vertical elements that
draws the pilgrim to the church, not only by the sound of its bells but
by its visual profile. Pointing upward to the heavens, it is a welcoming
sign to pilgrims and tourists, parishioners and merchants alike. The earliest
towers, called campaniles, originated in Italy during the late sixth century.
Typically built as detached towers, they were first plain and circular
in shape, with a few round-arched openings at the top. But by the tenth
century, a decorated square tower was more commonly used throughout Italy,
and it is this form that has been handed down by church architects through
the succeeding centuries. Yet during the latter half of the twentieth
century bell towers and then the bells themselves disappeared. Some argued
that real bells were not affordable; others that they were inappropriatemerely
a sign of prideful triumphalism. With hindsight, however, most Catholics
can recognize instinctively that the peal of bells and the visual profile
of a bell tower add to the unique appeal that Catholic churches have to
announce the presence of Christ and His Church in this world. Let us bring
back the bells and their towers.
------------------------------------------------------------ Michael S. Rose is author of Ugly As Sin: Why They Changed our
Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces and How We Can Change Them
Back Again, published by Sophia Institute Press.