retained, the Calvinistic churches rejected it, especially in Switzerland and Scotland; but in recent
times the opposition has largely ceased.^512
The Bell is said to have been invented by Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) in Campania;^513 but he
never mentions it in his description of churches. Various sonorous instruments were used since the
time of Constantine the Great for announcing the commencement of public worship. Gregory of
Tours mentions a "signum" for calling monks to prayer. The Irish used chiefly hand-bells from the
time of St. Patrick, who himself distributed them freely. St. Columba is reported to have gone to
church when the bell rang (pulsante campana) at midnight. Bede mentions the bell for prayer at
funerals. St. Sturm of Fulda ordered in his dying hours all the bells of the convent to be rung (779).
In the reign of Charlemagne the use of bells was common in the empire. He encouraged the art of
bel-founding, and entertained bell-founders at his court. Tancho, a monk of St. Gall, cast a fine
bell, weighing from four hundred to five hundred pounds, for the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle. In
the East, church bells are not mentioned before the end of the ninth century.
Bells, like other church-furniture, were consecrated for sacred use by liturgical forms of
benediction. They were sometimes even baptized; but Charlemagne, in a capitulary of 789, forbids
this abuse.^514 The office of bell-ringers^515 was so highly esteemed in that age that even abbots and
bishops coveted it. Popular superstition ascribed to bells a magical effect in quieting storms and
expelling pestilence. Special towers were built for them.^516 The use of church bells is expressed in
the old lines which are inscribed in many of them:
"Lauda Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum,
Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festaque honoro."^517(^512) See Hopkins and Rimbault: The Organ, its History and Construction, 1855; E. de Coussemakee:Histoire, des
instruments de musique au moyen-age, Paris 1859; Heinrich Otte:Handbuch der Kirchl. Kunstarchäologie, Leipz. 4th ed. 1866,
p. 225 sqq. O. Wangermann:Gesch. der Orgel und der Orgelbaukunst, second ed. 1881. Comp. also Bingham, Augusti, Binterim,
Siegel, Alt, and the art. Organ in Smith and Cheetham, Wetzer and Welte, and in Herzog.
(^513) Hence the namescampanum, orcampana,nola(continued in the Italian language), but it is more probable that the
name is derived from Campanian brass (aes campanum), which in early times furnished the material for bells. In later Latin it
is called cloqua, cloccum, clocca, cloca, also tintinnabulum, English: clock; German:Glocke; French:cloche; Irish: clog (comp.
the Latin clangere and the Germanklopfen).
(^514) "Ut cloccae non baptizentur." According to Baronius, Annal. ad a. 968, Pope John XIII. baptized the great bell of the
Lateran church, and called it John. The reformers of the. sixteenth century renewed the protest of Charlemagne, and abolished
the baptism of bells as a profanation of the sacrament, See Siegel,Handbuch der christl. kirchlichen Alterthümer, II. 243.
(^515) Campanarii, campanatores.
(^516) Called Campanile. The one on place of San Marco at Venice is especially celebrated.
(^517) The literature on bells is given by Siegel, II. 239, and Otte, p.2 and 102. We mention Nic. Eggers: de Origine et
Nomine Campanarum, Jen., 1684; by the same: De Campanarum Materia et Forma 1685; Waller: De Campanis et praecipuis
earum Usibus, Holm., 1694; Eschenwecker: Circa Campanas, Hal. ) 1708; J. B. Thiers.Traité des Cloches, Par., 1719; Montanus:
Hist. Nachricht von den Glocken, etc., Chemnitz, 1726; Chrysander:Hist. Nachricht von Kirchen-Glocken, Rinteln, 1755;
Heinrich Otte:Glockenkunde, Leipz., 1858; Comp. also hisHandbuch der kirchlichen Kunst-Archäologiedes deutschen
Mittelalters, Leipz., 1868, 4th ed., p. 245-248 (with illustrations); and the articles Bells, Glocken, in the archaeological works
of Smith and Cheetham, Wetzer and Welte, and Herzog. Schiller has made the bell the subject of his greatest lyric poem, which
ends with this beautiful description of its symbolic meaning:
"Und diess sei fortan ihr Beruf,
Wozu der Meister sie erschuf:
Hoch über’m niedern Erdenleben
Soll sie im blauen Himmelszelt,
Die Nachbarin des Donners, schweben
Und gränzen an die Sternenwelt;
Soll eine Stimme sein von oben,