CHAPTER IV
OF BELLS
Bells, what and where first used—Why Blessed—Analogy between Bells and Trumpets—Mystical Signification—Of the Bell-Frame—Of the Bell-Ropes—Use of Bells at the Canonical Hours—Six kinds of Bells—Bells when Silent—Of the Passing Bell—Of the Prayer Bell—Of the Storm Bell.
1. Bells are brazen vessels, and were first invented in Nola, a city of Campania: wherefore the larger bells are called Campanae, from Campania the district, and the smaller Nolae, from Nola the town.
2. The reason for consecrating and ringing bells is this: that by their sound the faithful may be mutually cheered on towards their reward; that the devotion of faith may be increased in them; that their fruits of the field, their minds and their bodies may be defended; that the hostile legions and all the snares of the Enemy may be repulsed; that the rattling hail, the whirlwinds, and the violence of tempests and lightning may be restrained; the deadly thunder and blasts of wind held off; the spirits of the storm and the powers of the air overthrown; and that such as hear them may flee for refuge to the bosom of our holy Mother the Church, bending every knee before the standard of the sacred rood. These several reasons are given in the office for the blessing of bells. [Footnote 346]
[Footnote 346: See the account of the consecration of several churches in the island of Guernsey, taken from the Black Book of the Diocese of Contances, in a paper by the Rev. W. C. Lukis, B.A., Trinity College, published in the First Part of the Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society.]
3. You must know that bells, by the sound of which the people assembleth together to the church to hear, and the clergy to preach, 'in the morning the mercy of God and His power by night, [Footnote 347] do signify the silver trumpets, by which under the Old Law the people were called together unto sacrifice. (Of these trumpets we shall speak in our sixth book.) For just as the watchmen in a camp rouse one another by trumpets, so do the ministers of the Church excite each other by the sound of bells to watch the livelong night against the plots of the devil. Wherefore our brazen bells are more sonorous than the trumpets of the Old Law, because then God was known in Judea only, but now in the whole earth. They be also more durable: for they signify that the preaching of the New Testament will be more lasting than the trumpets and sacrifices of the Old Law, namely, even unto the end of the world.
[Footnote 347: Psalm xcii (Bonum est confiteri), 2]
4. Again bells do signify preachers, who ought after the likeness of a bell to exhort the faithful unto faith: the which was typified in that the Lord commanded Moses to make a vestment for the high priest, having seventy-two bells to sound when the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies. [Footnote 348] Also the cavity of the bell denoteth the mouth of the preacher, according to the saying of the Apostle, 'I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.' [Footnote 349]