“passing bell” and the “death knell”; and their primitive efficacy against evil spirits was
called upon as they were rung to ward off storms and plague.
In the later Middle Ages, many of their functions came to be shared by the bells of
civic bell towers, and great mechanical clocks became a feature of cathedral and town
hall alike. The ritual use of bells at Mass is itself a late development, with the most
prominent instance of this, that at the elevation of the host, originating in 13th-century
Paris; this could be done from a special bell in a tower surmounting the crossing of the
church or by a small bell (tintinnabulum) held by the acolyte. As a sign of mourning, all
church bells were silent from the end of the Gloria in excelsis on Holy Thursday to its
beginning on Holy Saturday; in their place, some sort of wooden rattle or clapper was
used.
James McKinnon
[See also: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS]
Price, Percival. Bells and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Smits van Waesberghe, Joseph. Cymbala: Bells in the Middle Ages. Rome: American Institute of
Musicology, 1951.
BENEDEIT
(early 12th c.). An Anglo-Norman poet. Benedeit’s Voyage de saint Brendan is a 1,834-
line retelling in Anglo-Norman verse of the 9th- or 10th-century Navigatio sancti
Brendani. The author is intriguingly referred to as “Li apostoiles danz Benedeiz.” The
poem (first quarter of the 12th c.), preserved in four complete manuscripts, is one of the
first to use the octosyllabic rhyming couplet. The text relates a legendary voyage by
Brendan and his monks from Ireland to Paradise. Paradise is represented as an idyllic
garden reached after a seven-year period of wandering that includes a meeting with
Judas, who recounts his sufferings vividly. The poem reflects genuine voyages of
discovery by early Irish monks but can also be read symbolically as the quest for
happiness and eternal life in a world beset with dangers and difficulties. Those with true
faith achieve their ends.
Glyn S.Burgess
[See also: ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE]
Benedeit. The Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan, ed. Ian Short and Brian Merrilees.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979.
BENEDICT, RULE OF ST
. The monastic rule that was most frequently followed by French abbeys during the
Middle Ages was written in Italy in the early 6th century by Benedict of Nursia, the abbot
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 204