Church Bells in Medieval Catalunya

Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 197214
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Journal of Medieval History

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jmedhist
I call the people. Church bells in fourteenth-century

Catalunya
Michelle E. Garceau*
History Department, College of Charleston, 165 Calhoun Street, Charleston, SC 29401, USA
a b s t r a c t
Keywords:
Bells Bells were an inescapable part of fourteenth-century urban life.
Miracles
They signalled the hours of the day and times for prayers; they
Christianity
Community
warned of tempests and enemy armies; they heralded masses,
Religion funerals, and deaths. The pealing of bells brought men, women,
Catalunya and children together, choreographing communal behaviour in
Islam time and space. Bells echoed the vox Domini, calling out the deaths
of holy men and women, celebrating the working of miracles. The
ubiquitous presence of bells reected the omnipresence of God in
the medieval world. Their echoes transformed private moments
into collective experiences, elevating the mundane into the
miraculous. Scholars have rarely examined the religious aspects of
bells, looking instead at their more practical side, especially their
utilisation as markers of time and the allegedly concurrent rise of
mercantile culture. This article approaches bells from the view-
points of those men and women who heard them and wanted
them rung. Focusing on sources from Christian clerics, we see that
medieval men rang the bells with clear, but many possible,
purposes in mind. By marking time and prayers, Christian church
bells helped to create and facilitate communities within dioceses,
spurring and choreographing their actions. During funerals, bells
broadcast private moments, giving them communal signicance.
The transformative, creative function of bells is clearest in their
role in miracles. In Manresa, the vision experienced by a few
became a community affair when the church bells gathered the
people; the bells transformed an ordinary day into one where
the people, as a community, received divine favour. Finally, with
the deaths of holy persons, the tolling of bells transformed private,
* Tel.: 1 843 953 1915; fax: 1 843 953 6349.

E-mail address: garceaum@cofc.edu
0304-4181/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2011.02.002
198 M.E. Garceau / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 197214
even anonymous deaths, into moments of wonder as Gods hand

touched the world.
The pealing of bells dened Christian communities in the Medi-
terranean and, at the same time as rulers and elites throughout the
region were seeking to control minority groups, those same groups
were seeking to exercise control over the sounds within their own
communities. Through the pealing of bells, churchmen across
Catalunya sought to direct the thoughts and prayers of their
listeners. When the Christian clerics of Catalunya rang their
churches bells, they had specic aims in mind, yet, as the evidence
demonstrates, the pealing of the bells never meant just one thing.
This article demonstrates that there is much more to understanding
medieval bells than knowing for whom the bell tolls; we have to
look at the listeners as much as the ringers in order to understand
their cultural signicance in medieval Europe. This article is a rst
step in how such a study could be begun.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
I praise the true God. I call the people. I gather the clergy.
I cry for the dead. I drive away plagues. I honour feasts.
My voice is the terror of all demons.1
This statement of a bells responsibilities describes their inescapable part in fourteenth-century urban
life. They called out the tempo and the rhythm of the city.2 They signalled the hours of the day and
times for prayers; they warned of tempests and enemy armies; they heralded masses, funerals, and
deaths. The pealing of bells brought men, women, and children together, choreographing communal
behaviour in time and space. Bells echoed the vox Domini, calling out the deaths of holy men and
women, celebrating the working of miracles.3 As tienne Delaruelle pointed out, bells were signa, both
markers and agents of change in the middle ages.4 The ubiquitous presence of bells reected the
omnipresence of God in the medieval world. Where there is a bell, God and man are together, to
paraphrase Monferrer i Monfort.5 Their echoes transformed private moments into collective experi-
ences, elevating the mundane into the miraculous. Focusing on the Catalan cities of Vic and Barcelona
during the rst half of the fourteenth century, I explore the multiple uses and meanings of Christian
church bells.6
Bells were ubiquitous and important throughout medieval Europe, but few studies have explored
their obvious cultural uses. The rich archives of Catalunya point to the multiple registers in which bells
1
Propietates campanae / Laudo Deum verum. Plebem voco. Congrego clericos. / Defunctos ploro. Pestes fugo. Festa decoro. /
Vox mea cun[c]torum t terror demoniorum. Barcelona, Arxiu de la Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona [hereafter BUB],
MS 587, fol. 125r, marginalia. My correction. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. A similar text is inscribed on
a bell from medieval Valencia. See Jos Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia: gua histrica y artstica (Valencia, 1909), 121.
2
Judit Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la Catedral de Vic: concepci i mesura del temps als segles XIVXV, Ausa
16, no. 134 (1995), 195222 (198).
3
At least two bells from eleventh- and twelfth-century France bore the inscription vox Domini. Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, Vox
Dei clamat in tempestate: propos de liconographie des vents et dun groupe dinscriptions campanaires (IXeXIIIe sicles),
Cahiers de Civilisation Mdivale, 42 (1999), 17987 (185).
4
tienne Delaruelle, Le Problme du clocher au haut moyen ge et la religion populaire, in: tudes ligriennes dhistoire et
darchologie mdivales, ed. Ren Louis (Auxerre, 1975), 12531 (126).
5
Alvar Monferrer i Monfort, Los viajes rituales en Valencia y Catalua: rogativas y peregrinaciones, in: Maravillas, pere-
grinaciones y utopias: literature de viajes en el mundo romnico, ed. Rafael Beltrn (Valencia, 2002), 21136 (221).
6
The thirteenth-century cleric and author William Durand (d. 1296) lists six types of bells found in churches: namely, the
squilla, the cymbalum, the nola, the nolula (or double campana), the signum [and the campana]: Guillaume Durand, The
symbolism of churches and church ornaments: a translation of the rst book of the Rationale divinorum ofciorum, ed. John Mason
Neale and Benjamin Webb (London, 1906), 72 (Neales emphasis and insert).
M.E. Garceau / Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 197214 199
functioned, and perhaps future research will extend the conclusions offered here. Scholars have rarely
examined the religious aspects of bells, looking instead at their more practical side, especially their
utilisation as markers of time and the allegedly concurrent rise of mercantile culture.7 An important
exception is Delaruelle who, in a brief article of 1975, spoke of the role of bells in Christian commu-
nities. He believed that the ceremonial baptism of bells (a ritual closely resembling Christian baptism),
created a veritable devotion to bells, living and baptized persons who were a part of the parish
community and who were associated with the angels who invisibly served the Lord in his temple.8
Delaruelle argued that, to the deles (the laity), the bell became one of them, an active member of
the community.
While Delaruelles anthropomorphic understanding of bells is too far-reaching for medieval Cata-
lunya d evidence does not support his argument that bells were seen to act independently d his
assertion that bells were intimately tied with the religious lives of medieval Christians holds true.9 As I
explore in this article, the different uses of medieval bells cannot be separated into secular or sacred,
as historians have traditionally done. This essay places the use of bells by Christian clerics in the wider
context of medieval life. The bells examined here are all church bells rung by male clerics; however, by
analysing how bells functioned it is possible to evoke the aural (material) and discursive (metaphoric)
relationship between the clerics and their audiences.10 Moreover, to paraphrase Olivia Remie
Constable, bells ringing and interpretations offer us a glimpse into the shared, contentious acoustic
environment of religion in the Mediterranean, revealing not only discourse between the faiths, but also
within the Christian community.11
Daily peals
Throughout their day, the people of Catalunya heard bells. The churches sought to use bells to mark
the hours of the day and the divine ofce, and to remind their listeners both of the ever-presence
of God and of the important role of the clergy in living in Gods time and offering prayers for His
people. At the same time, the hearers of bells used the sound to frame their days. For example,
notaries in Vic used the pealing of bells as a reference point in the early fteenth century, while in
7
Recently the history of sound has attracted the attention of early modern and modern historians who often look at the
sounds (of bells, music, etc.) as means of exploring contestations of power or authority and community negotiation. See, for
example, Alain Corbin, Village bells: sound and meaning in the 19th-century French countryside, trans. Martin Thom (New York,
1994); and David Suisman, Selling sounds: the commercial revolution in American music (Cambridge, 2009). For an excellent
study of the Christian view of the Muslim call to prayer in the late-medieval Mediterranean, see Olivia Remie Constable,
Regulating religious noise: the Council of Vienne, the mosque call and Muslim pilgrimage in the late medieval Mediterranean
world, Medieval Encounters 16 (2010), 6495.
8
Delaruelle, Le Problme du clocher, 130. Delaruelle argued that a church bell was a signal that gathered people and that
played a role in how the local church created a people. When bell towers became more common in the central middle ages, the
bells they contained were means by which the clergy gathered the people for prayer. For the laity the bells meant something
more. Delaruelle believed that the people saw the bells as semi-human, as companions to man, truly angelic creatures who
associated with the faithful, carrying their prayers and providing them with a perfect model for living: Le Problme du clocher,
1268. Durand gives several reasons in the ofce for the blessing of bells. Durand, Symbolism of churches, 67.
9
In 1997 a congress in Spain explored the bells of several areas of the peninsula. Though most of the published papers deal
with early modern or modern bells and bell towers, two provide information on the religious ringing of bells in the middle ages.
Pedro Rubio Merino, Vida social y religiosa en Sevilla a travs del taido de las campanas de la giralda, in: Las campanas:
cultura de un sonido milenario (Actas del 1 Congreso Nacional sobre Campanas), ed. Eloy Gmez Pellon and Jos Guerrero Carot
(Santander, 1997), 21126; and Hctor-Luis Surez Prez, Las campanas en las comarcas leonesas, in Las campanas, 36995.
Surez Prez physically divides the uses of bell into religious and profane (383, table). More recently, John Arnold and Caroline
Goodson addressed the importance of bells in the early medieval world in a talk at Londons Institute for Historical Research.
John Arnold and Caroline Goodson, Resounding community: the history and meaning of medieval bells (unpublished paper
presented at the Institute for Historical Research, London, 2 December 2009). I would like to thank John Arnold for sharing his
unpublished work with me and for offering comments on this article.
10
Arnold and Goodson point in a similar direction: . . . even when signalling is the primary function of bells, they are not
merely marking the existence of a community, but rather, one might say, appealing to their audience to respond to the
communal call d summoning and hailing them in a discursive as well as a practical fashion, whether that summoning is to
collective acts of worship or violence. Arnold and Goodson, Resounding community.
11
Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 6495.
early fourteenth-century Barcelona a woman testied about another woman leaving the house of
a cleric in the middle of the night, at the hour of the ringing of the bells.12 Several instances taken
from miracle stories reveal a similar utilisation of bells. In the late thirteenth century a group of
women went to the Dominican convent of Barcelona to pray to Ramon de Penyafort on behalf of
a dying girl; a witness to the subsequent miracle said that she knew they went in the middle of the
night because the bell [in the campanile] which usually rings in the rst part of the night in
Barcelona had already rung.13 In his 1318 testimony about a miracle Ramon had worked, Bernat
Vineolis swore that he knew the time of his friends death because it was after the bell of the
cathedral of the church of Barcelona rang for Matins, well before sunrise.14 By 1339 the Barcelona
cathedral bell known as Vedada regularly signalled the hours of the day, including those of divine
ofce.15 By the end of the fourteenth century, and possibly much earlier as suggested by Bernat
Vineolis 1318 testimony, other bells at the Barcelona cathedral sounded at Prime, Nones and
Terce.16
The churches of Vic and Barcelona certainly had bell towers, though we know little about them.17
There is information from other, nearby cities within the kingdom of Aragon. Though evidence is
patchy, cathedrals seemingly had around two to ve bells that, among other functions, marked the
hours. For example, at least three major and two minor bells (the two types having differing sounds)
hung in the cathedral bell tower by the end of the fourteenth century in Lleida (Lrida), west of Bar-
celona.18 In fourteenth-century Valencia the main campanile that marked the hours contained two
bells d a large one that rang on the hour and another, smaller one that chimed on the quarter-hour.19 In
the early fteenth century, the city decided to build a new tower (complete with new bells) so that the
sound of the bells could be heard not only within the city, but also in the surrounding areas. The new
bell, the San Miguel, was hung in the tower of Micalet (Miguelet) and weighed 16,082 kilograms
12
Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 197, n. 3. Spain, Barcelona, Arxiu Dioces de Barcelona
[hereafter ADB], Notular Communium 1, HMML microlm 32010, fol. 22r.
13
. . . iam erat symbolum quod Barchinonae in prima parte noctis pulsari consuevit . . .: San Raimundo de Penyafort, Dip-
lomatario (Documentos, vida antigua, crnicas, procesos antiguos), ed. Jos Rius Serra (Barcelona, 1954), 2367.
14
. . . postquam campana cathedralis ecclesiae Barchinonae pulsatur ad matutinum multo ante aurorarum . . ., Penyafort,
Diplomatario, ed. Rius Serra, 210. Bernats testimony exemplies a claim made by Le Goff, namely that the various types of time
d natural, professional, and supernatural d were tied together in the minds of medieval men and women. Jacques Le Goff,
Merchants time and churchs time in the middle ages, in: Jacques Le Goff, Time, work, and culture in the middle ages, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980), 2942 (especially 38).
15
In light of the bells name, it would be interesting to know what other uses this bell had. Vedada is the participle form of
the Catalan verb vedar, to prohibit or prevent. Josep Baucells i Reig, Documentacin Franciscana en el Archivo Capitular de
Barcelona: I. Los Franciscanos de la dicesis de Barcelona en los siglos XIII y XIV, Archivo Ibero-Americano 40, no. 160 (1980),
33981 (351). Barcelona, Arxiu de la Catedral de Barcelona [hereafter ACB], Reloj I, Fitxes del Canonge Bonaventura Ribas, N. 11:
Campanas y Campanarios, Reloj. The Lleida cathedral had a bell with a similar title (the esquetlla vedada) until 1390 when it
was replaced by one called the Seny de trcia, perhaps suggesting that the Vedada signalled the hours (terce) and also,
perhaps, a curfew. Caterina Argils i Aluja, El rellotge medieval de la Seu Vella de Lleida, Acta Historica et Archaeologica
Mediaevalia, 1415 (199394), 25973 (262).
16
ACB De tocar les tenebres, Fitxes del Canonge Bonaventura Ribas, N. 11: Campanas y Campanarios, Reloj.
17
One of the Barcelona cathedral bells d from 1321 d survives, though it is no longer rung. The cloister bell tower (on the
south side) of the Barcelona cathedral was begun in 1386, shortly before the completion of the north tower (c. 1390). Amity
Nichols Law, Generating identity through plan and architecture: Barcelona cathedral, gothic drawing, and the Crown of Aragon
(unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2007), 33. In 1389 the cathedral of Barcelona nished the tower over the cloister
door dedicated to Sant Yvo in which the bell used to mark the hours of day and night hung from that year on; it rst rang on 28
November 1393. ACB Torres, Fitxes del Canonge Bonaventura Ribas, N. 11: Campanas y Campanarios, Reloj. Also, El gran rellotge
de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1986). Much of the information on pre-fteenth century bells comes from records created when the
cities or churches changed to mechanical clocks in the fourteenth century. The records do not always distinguish between
towers without bells and those with them: Delaruelle, Le Problme du clocher, 125.
18
The major bells were the Seny maior (1333), the Seny de la claustra (recast 1387), and the Seny nou (1387). The minor
bells were the Seny de tercia and the Esquella vedada. Jos I. Padilla Lapuente, Las campanas horarias de la Catedral de Lleida:
hacia una nueva cesura del tiempo urbano (s. XV), in: Congrs de la Seu de Lleida, ed. Frederic Vil i Imma Lors (Lleida, 1991),
15966 (160, n. 7).
19
Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 111.
(300 quintales).20 Though it is unknown how many bells the tower had in the fourteenth century, by
the end of the fteenth there were, in addition to the San Miguel, eight weighing between 307 and
3,590 kilograms.21
Besides signalling the hours of the day and the times of divine ofce, bells tolled the news, marking
episodic moments and events, a communal, secular use.22 In Girona, certain bells of the cathedral
warned people of danger, in particular alerting the townspeople of an approaching army.23 The
cathedral bells of Barcelona also pealed to warn of mal temps, that is, attacks, storms, and other
dangers.24 In the rst half of the fourteenth century, the authorities in the two parts of the city of Vic d
the bishop and the local noble family of Montcada d began employing the cathedrals bells to notify
the people of news, gather citizens, warn of danger, or assemble an army.25 By 1334 the chapter and
city had agreed to ring the signal used to alert the community against thieves (seny del lladre) to ask the
people for help or to gather them in the face of approaching danger.26 In these cases people used bells
to create communities for action, transforming an ordinary day into one where people worked together
to defend themselves.27 All of these sounds performed what could be termed secular functions d
announcing time or warning of danger d but the ringing of medieval bells held further meanings for
their listeners.
In the act of summoning the people, bells also called out prayers to God from the people. In 1307 the
bishop of Barcelona, Pon de Gualba, commissioned a bell to adorn the new cathedral. He dedicated the
20
Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 11213.
21
Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 11721. At least two of these d the Maria and the Catalina d date from the
fourteenth century.
22
This use of bells was noted by Chiara Frugoni in her work on a typical day in a medieval Italian city. Chiara Frugoni, A day in
a medieval city, trans. William McCuaig (Chicago, 2005), 5863. Arnold and Goodson also noted this use of bells. For example, in
Cremona the consuls ordered a bell for the militia to be made in 1190 and by 1250 there was a bell del popolo in Florence:
Arnold and Goodson, Resounding community.
23
Carles Viv i Siqus, ngels i campanes, in: Llegendes i misteris de Girona (Girona, 1989), 345 (35). The Miracles de saint
Benot provide evidence that bells were similarly used at that time to signal the approach of enemies, including pillagers:
Delaruelle, Le Problme du clocher, 130.
24
Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 200, n. 16. Using an Iberian pontical known as the Liber
ordinum, Arnold and Goodson link this use of bells to their connection with the trumpets of Moses, made by order of God
(Numbers 10). According to Arnold and Goodson, The biblical trumpets produce a sound in the imagination, overlaying what is
heard in this world; a spiritually resonant sound, echoing across all sacred history, from the Old Testament account of the
Israelites to the eschatological opening of the seals in the apocalypse. Arnold and Goodson, Resounding community.
25
For example, in 1321 the canons rang the bells to help summon the army called up by the Infans Alfons: Casals i Parlad,
Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 206. In another example, a parish church, within the diocese of Barcelona,
agreed to ring its bells to warn of a battle: ADB, Notular Communium 20, HMML microlm 32020, fol. 66v. The Montcadas, lords
of Montcada and Vic (among other titles), were powerful nobles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, often acting as advisers
to the count-kings of the Crown of Aragon. John C. Shideler, A medieval Catalan noble family: the Montcadas 10001230 (Ber-
keley, 1983).
26
Quod gayta esset in cloquerio ecclesie Vicensis qui cornaret et tangeret cimbalum latronnis et miteret sonum de viafos pro
actu sive facto necessario tam ecclesie Vicensis quod civibus et hominibus parrochie Vicensis: Vic, Arxiu Capitular de Vic
[hereafter ACV], Privilegis, Llibre 1, nm. 1; cited in Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 208, n. 32.
27
The ringing of bells for these purposes could lead to social conict as seen in Florence in 1307 and again in 1377. In 1307,
the commune threatened the monks of Badia with destruction of their bell tower right down to its foundations . . . because
they had sounded it and made the underclass . . . and the rufans run to their aid, provoking a furious skirmish: Frugoni,
A day in a medieval city, 5962. Arnold and Goodson, Resounding community, note several similar occurrences in France and
Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even the construction of a bell tower could be a source of (and the result
of) tensions within a community. For example, as part of an on-going conict with the local religious community (and perhaps
the larger conict between John of England and Innocent III), a town in Gascony constructed their own bell tower in 1208, and
rang the hours of the day, including perhaps the religious hours. According to the surviving (ecclesiastical) records, in
presuming to erect the tower in a public place and to hang the bells, the community was acting in contempt of the church:
Postea, in contemptum universalis ecclesiae, horribilius erigentes calcaneum, in loco publico pinnaculum construxerunt;
ibidem campanas et cimbalas suspendentes, quas ad matutinas et singulas horas diei pulsare, contemnentes matrem ecclesiam,
praesumpserunt. Quoted in Benot Cursente, Une affaire de non-hrsie en Gasconge, en lanne 1208, in: Inventer lHrsie?
Discours polmiques et pouvoirs avant linquisition, ed. Monique Zerner (Paris, 1998), 25762 (259, n. 11).
bell, known as Nostra Dona, to Our Lady of Mercy, the patroness of the Mercedarian Order.28 Two of its
inscriptions are revealing.
Christ conquers, Christ rules imperially, Christ reigns. May Christ defend us from all evil. Amen.29
From this [bell], the sound goes to all the land [and] is to the ends of the earth. [Thus] charity
resounds and is that which descends from the heavens upon Barcelona.30
When the cathedral rang Nostra Dona, the clerics declared the victory of Christ over evil. With each ring,
Nostra Donas voice sounded through the land, carrying a prayer to Jesus, asking Him to protect His people
from evil. Moreover, the rst inscription d Christ conquers . . . d is a formula frequently included in
medieval healing charms; the prayer was believed to be particularly efcacious by multiple levels of
society.31 Each peal served as a means by which the community, or at least the clerics of the cathedral,
offered a prayer of praise and a plea for the protection and health of the community.32 The voices of the
bells not only communicated admonitions to the people so that they might physically defend themselves,
but also prayers to God. Moreover, as the bells rang, the community d who together participated in the
creation of the bells d knew of the inscriptions and would have been reminded of the prayers (Plate 1).33
While bells helped protect medieval Christians from evil, the Barcelona inscriptions also reveal that
bells could ward off the bad weather that evil could inevitably bring.34 A manuscript produced in
Barcelona and given to the cathedrals archive further illustrates this important function of bells. In the
description of the feast of Letania major (25 April), the text instructs that the bells of churches be rung
during a procession that also included a dragon (dracho), crosses, and banners so that the frightened
28
Pere Nolasc founded the Mercedarian Order in Barcelona early in the thirteenth century. By 1755 Nostra Dona was also asso-
ciated with Santa Eullia, Saint Joseph, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Michael. BUB MS 96: Nota de la campana . . . , f. 370rv.
29
This is a version of the Laudes regiae. The same inscription is found on one of the two surviving medieval bells in the
Barcelona cathedral, and there are similar inscriptions on several Italian bells, one from 1239 and another from 1438: Frugoni, A
day in a medieval city, 185, n. 46. This formula was seen as particularly powerful: William Chester Jordan, Crusader prologues:
preparing for war in the gothic age. A lecture at the Moreau Center for the Arts, Saint Marys College, Notre Dame, IN, November 3,
2009 (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), 1617, notes that this liturgical formula was used not only at French royal coronations and other
high feast days whenever the king was present at Mass, but also when the French kings cured scrofula and on French royal
coinage, including coins minted in the Crusader States.
30
Christus [v]incit, Christus imperat, Christus regnat, Christus ab omni malo nos defendant. Amen. Hinc in omnem terram
exivit sonus e[ius] in nes orbis terrae resonat charitas est quae de caelo Barchinonam descendit. BUB MS 96, f. 370rv. My
emendations. The latter inscription is a reference to Romans 10:18, . . . et quidem in omnem terram exiit sonus eorum et in
nes orbis terrae verba eorum. This, in turn, is a reference to Psalm 18:5 (Vulgate), in universam terram exivit sonus eorum et
in nibus orbis verba eorum.
31
Marianne Elsakkers, In pain you shall bear children (Gen 3:16): medieval prayers for a safe delivery, in: Women and miracle
stories: a multidisciplinary exploration, ed. Anne-Marie Korte (Leiden, 2001), 179210 (1912). Frugoni, A day in a medieval city,
42, describing the inscriptions of prayers on Italian bells, argues that their talismanic power was irresistible and, thus, could put
threatening demons to ight.
32
In the mid-tenth century Pontical romano-germanique, the ceremony for baptising bells includes a prayer in which the
clergy ask Christ to protect them from the sea and storms, to provide for the people, and to save them from their enemies:
33
Unfortunately little is known about the details of medieval bell construction though evidence suggests that travelling
craftsmen were responsible for creating the bells through a lost-wax method. For more details, based on late-eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century evidence, see Corbin, Village bells. On Wednesday, 4 kal. June 1308, Bertrand Signari, magister of the
bells (magister campanarum) received 100 sous for work on the Barcelona cathedral bells: ADB, Notular Communium 1, HMML
microlm 32010, f. 87v. In August 1342 another magister cibalorum was given 306 pounds of copper for making a bell (cimbalo)
for the church of Terraola, in the diocese of Barcelona: ADB, Notular Communium 10, HMML microlm 32019, f. 127v.
34
Durand describes this function of bells. Also bells be rung at processions, that the evil spirits may hear them and ee . . .
And this is the reason also why the church, when she seeth a tempest to arise, doth ring the bells; namely, that the devils
hearing the trumpets of the eternal King, which be the bells, may ee away through fear and cease from raising the storm; and
that the faithful also may be admonished at the ringing of the bells and be provoked to be urgent in prayer for the instant
danger: Durand, Symbolism of churches, 756.
Plate 1. A detail from one of two surviving medieval bells in the cathedral of Barcelona: this 1542 bell has inscriptions demon-
strating that the people of sixteenth-century Barcelona continued to conceptualise bells as important means of communication,
protection, and community formation. Around the top is Dominus IHS XPS vincit (The Lord Jesus conquers), and there are images of
St George and St Agatha on the sides. The bells are no longer used, although it is possible to ring them; they hang in an otherwise
empty tower at the cathedral. Photo: M. Garceau.
demons will ee.35 The same text directs people to use the cathedrals bells to calm storms. With the
pealing of the bells the people drove away the demons that had created the tempests.36
Evidence from Vic even more explicitly links the sounds of the bells with prayers. In 1322 the chapter of
Vic issued instructions for the use of the cathedrals great bell.37 When the bells rang at twilight, every man
and woman (secular or clerical) in the diocese of Vic was to drop to his or her knees and recite the Ave
Maria. They offered this prayer for the health and peace of their bodies and souls and for the fertility and
preservation of the fruits of the land. The canons used the bell to signal when, as a community, those
within the diocese were to pray.38 The canons issued this regulation only once and it is difcult to
determine why they wanted everyone to participate in the plea.39 Perhaps, as they were seeking
protection and assistance for the entire community, everyones involvement was necessary. Another,
related, explanation is that the canons believed that the greater the participation in the appeal, the greater
its efcacy. In Barcelona, the cathedral bell known as Vientes rang out whenever the chapter displayed
35
. . . ut deinceps demones territi fugiant . . .: Jacobus de Voragine, ACB Codex 105: Flos Sanctorum, f. 135r. Vauchez describes
this as part of the group of ceremonies celebrated each year at the beginning of springtime with the principal aim of ensuring
the protection of the crops: Andr Vauchez, The laity in the middle ages: religious beliefs and devotional practices, ed. Daniel E.
Bornstein, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame, 1993), 12939.
36
Voragine, ACB Codex 105: Flos Sanctorum, f. 135rv.
37
Item statuimus ut qualibet die in crepusculo pulsetur cimbalum in ecclesia sedis nostre et quolibet loco insigni Vicensis
diocesis, et tunc quilibet de clero et populo ob reverenciam Virginis gloriose ectens jenua dicat devote semel orationem
angelicam [the Ave Maria] pro salute ac pace animarum et corporem ac fertilitate et conservatione fructuum terre: ACV Liber
Primus Vitae (ACV 31/28), f. 46v. Also ACV 31/27, num. 135.
38
A similar decree is found in the 1229 statutes for the diocese of Worcester: When the bell is rung for the Holy Land during
the celebration of Mass, everyone hearing this outside the church and understanding it should bend their knees and say the
Lords Prayer, namely Pater Noster, for the succour of the Holy Land (Ut quando pulsatur campana pro Terra Sancta in cele-
bratione misse, quilibet hoc audiens extra ecclesiam et intelligens genibus exis dicat orationem dominicam, scilicet Pater
noster, pro succursu Terre Sancte): Councils and synods with other documents relating to the English church. II. AD 12051313, ed.
F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), vol. 1, 175.
39
The decree was issued at the end of the Great Famine, that lasted from 1315 to 1322 in northern Europe. In Catalunya,
however, the situation was better. During the northern Great Famine, Catalans suffered one bad year d 1317 d but by 1322
seem to have recovered.
the True Cross during mal temps, times when the city sought Gods assistance.40 As markers of
different types of time and pleas for protection from God and prayers from the people, bells did more
than sound the hours of the day or approaching danger; they introduced the miraculous into
quotidian life.
Though the clerics might not have been able to control the listeners interpretation of bell rings,
by using bells at specic, liturgically important moments the clerics could tell them what to think
about; this is particularly seen in the use of bells during Mass. Little bells rang at the transub-
stantiation of the bread and wine, as a 1344 decree from Vic indicates:
It was decreed that the chapter bell be rung repeatedly for Mass d eight, ten, or more times d in
order to gather the faithful so that they might see the body of Christ. [Moreover] the little bell is
to be rung, or rung repeatedly, during the elevation of the body of Christ. [This is to be repeated]
during the elevation of the blessed blood.41
The repeated ringing announced that the Mass was about to be sung and the chapter rang the bells
with a purpose. At the elevation of the host and of the chalice, the bells tolled,42 marking the two most
important moments of the rite and gathering the people to participate in them. Between 1329 and
1331, a council at Tarragona granted a 40-day indulgence to penitents who fell to their knees to adore
God when the stilla in the churches rang at the elevation of the host, while by 13745 in Vila-Real
a specic bell rang at the elevation.43 A synodal constitution from Barcelona ordered that the Eucharist
be given with great reverence and accompanied by the chiming of a bell, and, whenever the people
heard the campanillas, or little bells, they were to bow (ectent) out of reverence for Jesus Christ.44 The
ringing of the bells in this way signalled to the people that the ultimate miracle (at least in the eyes of
the clergy) was occurring and, as the Tarragona decree indicates, the laitys participation in the miracle
was encouraged.
Clerics used bells to teach the laity how and when to worship. Delaruelle, following the Excerpta
Egberti and the writings of men such as Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, and Bede, concluded that as
early as the sixth century priests sounded the bells of their churches and then celebrated the divine
ofces.45 Through the ringing of the bells the people were to learn the fashion and times in which God
should be adored.46 Though the Excerpta Egberti were written in the early middle ages, the role of the
bells described in the text held true in fourteenth-century Catalunya. Bells called the people to
participate in certain activities and church leaders used such participation to educate the laity, as we
saw in the 1344 decree from Vic.47 Clerics and other religious used the bells of Catalunya to mark
moments of religious signicance. By ringing specic bells at points in the liturgy, clerics informed the
audience of the various points of the service; more specically, the bells signalled what the clergy
40
ACB, De tocar les tenebres.
41
Item fuit ordinatum quod qualibet die ad missam majorem pulsetur repicando cimbalum capituli octo vel decem vicibus, vel
plus, diem incessa fuerit prefatio, ad convocandum deles ad videndum corpus Christi et squilla interdicti pulsetur, seu repi-
cetur, dumtaxat in elevatione ipsius corporis Christi. Et postmodum in elevatione calicis sanguinis benedicti. ACV 31/27, f. 59rv.
42
The elevation was introduced to the Mass in the last quarter of the twelfth century. Herbert Thurston argues that, at least
initially, the bell marking the elevation was a hand bell, though Cistercian monasteries in particular quickly came to use a larger
bell. In England there was a great deal of pressure from the bishops for parishes to use a large bell to alert the greater
community to the elevation. Herbert Thurston, The bells of the Mass, The Month, 123 (1914), 389401 (3902, 3956).
According to Surez Prez, the oldest known regulation concerning the ringing of a bell at the elevation, at least in Spain, dates
to 1216 and is from Segovia. Surez Prez, Las campanas, 386.
43
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional [hereafter BNM], MS 737: Constitutiones de Tarragona (132931), f. 29v30r. Jos Maria Doate
Sebasti, Vila-Real: campanas, campanarios y campaneros, Estudis Castellonencs, 5 (1992), 395419 (405, Document IV).
44
San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Biblioteca del Monasterio del Escorial [hereafter BME], MS .II.7, f. 3v. For a discussion of
a similar use of bells elsewhere in Europe, see Thurston, Bells of the Mass, 3934.
45
As Arnold and Goodson, Resounding community, point out, dating the Excerpta is problematic.
46
47
It has been asserted that medieval church leaders argued for the importance of practice in the spiritual lives of their ock:
In fact, practice itself was a form of learning and it was in this sense that Bonaventure could speak of the faithful learning
through the usage and custom of the church . . . and by means of its solemnities and priestly activities. Norman Tanner and
Sethina Watson, Least of the laity: the minimum requirements for a medieval Christian, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006),
395423 (403).
considered to be the most important moments. The peals were not merely informative, however; they
were also a means of involving the community in the ritual, making the service of the clergy
a communal affair. The clergy were not the only ones who sought to use the bells to transform a private
moment into a one with communal signicance. The use of bells in funerals reveals how the bells
transformed communities, creating new ones and moving those groups to prayer and remembrance.
Bells, funerals, and death
In the Catalan cities of Vic and Barcelona, an individuals social position determined the choice and
pattern of bells rung at funerals and other commemorations of the dead. In 1322 the chapter of Vic
issued regulations concerning the funerals of its canons and beneciaries.
Mindful of the constant devotion that those having beneces in the church of Vic have had and
continue to have for the same church, let it be known to them and to their successors that we grant
that when one of them passes away, all of the bells are to ring twice during their funerals, in
addition to the other three peals already granted to them. [These two ringings] are to take place
when the body of the deceased goes to the funeral and when it is buried. Thus, the said peals
should be performed such that the ringings which took place during the funerals of the canons and
those which will occur during the funerals for beneciaries be distinct and different.48
The regulation called for the bells to ring repeatedly at two points during beneciaries funerals in Vic:
the rst ringing announced the bodys entry into the church for Mass, the second, its departure to the
cemetery for burial. The two moments indicated the beginning of the two parts of the service. The bells
also signalled to the people the points when they could join the ritual, thereby making a private funeral
an experience for the community.49 With the 1322 decree, the chapter granted that those holding
beneces be distinguished from other clerics by the ringing of bells. The additional ringings bestowed
on these Vic clerics performed the dual function of alerting the larger community to the status of the
deceased and of inviting the communitys participation in the ceremony.
The symbolic function of bells within funerary contexts thus communicated, educated, and reinforced
relative social status with the larger community.50 For the burial of a layman, the bells of the Barcelona
cathedral sounded three times, and for a laywoman, twice. If the departed was a member of the
Confraternity of Santa Eullia (established in the early fourteenth century), the bell for Prime rang for half
an hour after it rang for the Ave Maria. The bells chimed nine times when a beneciary of the see died.
Twelve peals of bells accompanied the burial of a canon. At the death of a king, queen, or prince, the bells
tolled in a complicated pattern for nine continuous days.51 At the Barcelona cathedral, the more important
the deceased, the larger the number of bells rung and the more complicated their sound.
A miracle story from Montserrat reveals multiple roles for bells in funerals. After a long illness,
Saurina, the wife of Bartomeu de Morella, died. With the bells already ringing for her burial, her parents
and others who had stayed with her body tearfully prayed on her behalf, commending her to the Virgin
of Montserrat. In the middle of the prayer, Saurinas soul returned to her body and she awoke.52 Bells
served three functions in the account. They announced Saurinas death and burial at the time of the
events. Second, the sounding of the bells, according to later witnesses, was a means of demonstrating
48
Attendentes devotionis constanciam quam benefciati Vicensis ecclesie erga ipsam ecclesiam habuisse et habere
noscuntur eisdem et eorum successoribus gratiose concedimus ut cum eorum aliquem migrare contigerit ab hac luce in
exequiis ipsius funeris ant duo classica omnium cimbalorum ultra alia tria jam eis concessa unum vidilicet quando itur ad
funus et alterum cum corpus sepelitur defuncti. Ita tunc quod [inter] omnia predictam classica taliter temperentur quod inter
classica que unt in exequiis canonicorum et illa que ent pro benefciatis predictis distinctio et differencia habeatur. ACV
Liber 2, Vitae (ACV 31/29), f. 46v.
49
Moreover, the bells ought to be rung when anyone is dying, that the people hearing this may pray for him. Durand,
Symbolism of churches, 74.
50
Corbin, Village bells, 156, among others, has noted that bells served not only to announce social hierarchies, but also to
reinforce them.
51
ACB De tocar les tenebres.
52
Montserrat, Arxiu de lAbadia de Montserrat [hereafter AAM] Llibre Vermell (MS 1), f. 2v.
when the miraculous resurrection occurred and, third, the bells conrmed that Saurina had died. The
clerics of the church knew she was dead; if they had not been certain, they would not have rung the
bells announcing her funeral. That the clerics sounded the bells for her funeral provided additional
proof of the miraculous nature of her recovery.
The association between death and bells extended beyond marking funerary phases or announcing
social status. The communities of Barcelona and Vic used the bells of their churches to commemorate
the dead and to create and maintain the community of the faithful, both living and dead. A 1339 decree
from Vic shows that the establishment of perpetual anniversaries involved the cathedrals bells. The
minor monk rang the churchs bells three times on the morning of the burial for anyone who founded
a perpetual anniversary in the cathedral.53 The distinctive time and manner of ringing signalled to the
community that someone important, or at least wealthy, had died and would be buried later in the day.
As it was not uncommon in Barcelona or Vic for such people also to donate money for those attending
their funerals, the pealing would have summoned people seeking alms.54
Religious communities used bells to convey news, particularly of their members deaths and that
news brought outsiders into the community. In 1318 Bernat de Monte Melone described how one of his
friends learned of Ramon de Penyaforts death some 40 years earlier.
. . . Bernat de Molendinis, who always spoke with praise about the greatness of the holiness,
honesty [virtue], and nobility of brother Ramons life, one night heard the sound, or the voice, of
the bell of the Dominicans of Barcelona. [Because of this] he assumed that in that same night
brother Ramon either died or was dying. [Bernat] said to Guillelm de Villario Acuto, as this
witness heard, that [Guillelm] should have constant devotion to brother Ramon because he was
a man of great sanctity, humility, knowledge, faith, and charity. [Brother Ramon] was near to God
and because brother Ramon was a virtuous man . . . 55
Understanding by the sound of the bell that the holy man Ramon de Penyafort had died and believing in
the power of the Dominicans life, Bernat urged his friend Guillelm to commend himself to Ramon.
Guillelm prayed to Ramon and was healed of the leprosy and wounds or sores (busanae) that had been
aficting him. The miracle account reveals that the Dominicans used their convents bell to announce
that the communitys most famous, and holy, member had died.56 The Barcelona community, or at least
one miles, recognised the sound of the bell, understood its message, and acted accordingly.57
The miraculous and bells
As means of praising God, seeking protection, and communicating with the people bells held numerous
functions and meanings in medieval life; bells role in miracle stories further illustrates this multi-
53
ACV 31/27: Llibre de Constitucions y Ordinacions de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Vic (s. XIXIX), f. 53r. The minor monk was
a specic position within the community. For a discussion of his responsibilities, see Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge
de la catedral de Vic, 1978. This labour was worth eight to ten denarii, a relatively small d though not insignicant d amount
at the time (between a third and a half of the daily wages for a day labourer and would have bought about a pound of pork: I
would like to thank Adam Franklin-Lyons for this information).
54
In Barcelona men and women donated a certain amount of money to those who came to attend their funerals. Testators
requested priests or clerics from the chapels and parishes of the city as well as laity from the persons parish or from the city at
large attend their funeral processions. There is evidence that a similar practice was followed in Vic.
55
. . . Bernardus de Molendinis, qui saepe multas dignas laudes referebat de sanctitate, honestate et altitudine vitae dicti fr.
Raymundi, quadam nocte audiens sonum seu vocem companae fratrum Praedicatorum Barchinonae, et praesumitur quod ea
nocte dictus fr. Raymundus obierat, seu erat in obitu, dixit dicto Guillelmo de Villarioacuto, hoc teste audiente, quod haberet
constantem devotionem in dicto fratre Raymundo, quia erat homo magnae sanctitatis, humilitatis, scientiae et dei et charitatis
erga Deum et proximum, et quod erat virtuosus homo . . . : Penyafort, Diplomatario, 2312.
56
For a brief description of the bells and the responsibilities of the bell-ringer (campanar) of Santa Caterina, see BUB, Francesc
Camprub, Lumen domus Annals del convent de Santa Caterina de Barcelona, Vol. I (12191634), f. 25v26v.
57
Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 199, afrmed this knowledge of the language of bells: En
resum, es pot armar que el so de les campanes traspassa lmbit eclesistic de la catedral, i implica a tots els habitants de la
ciutat, perqu el seu so arriba a tota la comunitat, que ha aprs a entendre el seu llenguatge. Also, Pedro Rubio Merino, Vida
social y religiosa en Sevilla a travs del taido de las campanas de la Giralda, in: Las campanas: cultura de un sonido milenario,
ed. Gmez Pellon and Guerrero Caro, 21126.
directionality. The canons of Vic used the cathedrals bells to stimulate and spread devotion to their
holy man, Bernat Calb. Similar to the friars at the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina, the Vic canons
used bells to create and then activate a community based on devotion.58 In 1312 the chapter of Vic
detailed how they were going to respond whenever a pilgrim reported a new miracle by Bernat Calb,
the Cistercian bishop of Vic (d.1243).
The rst thing to be done when it happens that the blessed Bernat, formerly bishop of Vic, works
a miracle is that the great bells be rung with one great pull thereby making the [news of the]
miracles public. Then the cellarer of Vic, or his substitute, will write the miracles and the names
of those who know about the miracles in a certain book.59 [Finally] in the rst sermon in the see
following [the reporting of the miracle, the preacher] is to publicly announce the miracles.60
The 1337 testimony of the Vic cleric and ofcialis Berenguer de Columbario reveals that those who
heard the pealing bells of Vic knew when the sound signalled new miracles.61
The venerable and wise Berenguer de Columbario heard the ringing of the bells in Vic, as is
customarily done when the blessed Bernat, formerly bishop of Vic, worked a miracle, God
assisting. Wanting to know the full truth [of the miracle], [and] so that the faithful might value [the
miracle] more fully, he received the sworn statements of the married couple that follow . . . 62
The ofcialis heard the ringing of the cathedrals bells as is customary whenever Bernat worked
a miracle. Recognising the meaning of the sound, and wanting to hear the witnesses testimony, he
rushed to the church. This desire to publicise miracles was not limited to Vic or to the clergy.63 Pilgrims
at the miracle-working shrine of Montserrat came wanting their miracles to be preached, and the
Benedictine community designated a specic preacher for the job.64
In Manresa, a town near Montserrat and within the diocese of Vic, the bells of the Carmelite church
both announced a miracle and participated in it.65 In 1336 the city and lands surrounding Manresa
began to suffer from a drought that was to continue well into the 1340s. Throughout 1337 the churches
and citizens of Manresa offered prayers and pilgrimages for an end to their suffering. Driven to
58
Oleguers miracles, from the middle of the twelfth century, reveal that the bells of the Barcelona cathedral rang in a rec-
ognised manner when a pilgrim reported a new miracle worked by the dead bishop: Martin Aurell, Prdication, croisade et
religion civique: Vie et miracles dOleguer (d. 1137), vque de Barcelone, Revue Mabillion, 10, no. 71 (1999), 11368 (1534).
59
Presumably this was an earlier version of the miracle lists that have survived in the ACV: ACV 36/1, Hic incipiunt miracula
beati Bernardi . . . ; ACV 36/2: Miracles de Sant Bernat Calbo. The former is a formal text with coloured rubrics and, therefore,
most probably a copy of an earlier list; ACV 36/2 may be an original list of miracles, though not the rst copy of the thirteenth-
century miracles. It contains most of the miracles found in ACV 36/1, eight additional ones from the fourteenth century, and
a list of questions that the clerics taking down the testimonies used when questioning the later witnesses.
60
Primo quod cum contigerit beatum Bernardum quondam Vicensis episcopum facere miracula ipsis miraculis publicatis
pulsentur cimbala mayora unum magnum tractum et quod dicta miracula per Vicensem claviger[i]um seu eius locum tenentem
scribantur in quodam libro et nomina etiam illorum qui sciverint dicta miracula facta fuisse et quod primo sequenti sermone
qui et in dicta sede publice denuncientur dicta miracula: ACV Liber 2, Vitae (ACV 31/29), f. 26v; also, ACV Liber Primus Vitae
(ACV 31/28), f. 38r; ACV 31/27, f. 14v15r.
61
The ofcialis of the bishop was the latters delegate, exercising, in particular, the bishops judicial authority.
62
Cum pervenisset ad aures venerabilis et discreti Berengari de Columbario . . . ad pulsacionem cimbalorum factam in sede
Vicensis ut est moris quod beatus Bernardus olim Vicensis episcopus miraculum cum Dei adiutoriorio operatus fuerat volens
super hoc scire plenariam veritatem ut hiis plenior des valeat ad[h]iberi recepit iuramenta a duobus coniugibus prout
sequita . . .: ACV 36/1, f. 23v24r.
63
The use of bells to announce miracles is found as early as the sixth-century writings of Gregory of Tours (538594): Arnold
and Goodson, Resounding communities.
64
AAM Libre Vermell (MS 1), f. 6r.
65
The following is a summary of the events as related in several histories and chronicles from the Manresa city archive. Mag
Canyelles, Cequia de Manresa, in: Mag Canyelles, Descripci de la grandesa y antiquitats de la ciutat de Manresa (Manresa,
[1896]); Joaquim Sarret i Arbs, Histria de Manresa, Monumenta Historica, 5 vols (Manresa, 19215) vols 1, 4; Joaquin Cornet i
Puig, Historia (en sntesis) de la misteriosa luz de Manresa (Manresa, 1950); Josep M. Gasol, La llum i els historiadors (Manresa,
1976); Joaquim Sarret i Arbs, Llum! . . . A la llum de Manresa (Manresa, 1931); Cronologia de lentredit, (Manresa, 1919); Mag
Canyelles, Relaci del miratgle de la llum que vingu al monestir del Carme de la present ciutat de Manresa, in: Arxiu de la
ciutat de Manresa (Manresa, 1678); Lluis Soldevila, Relaci historica de la vinguda de la llum, aparicio del misteri de la Sma.
Trinitat en la iglesia de N. Sra. del Carme de la ciutat de Manresa als 21 de Febrer del any 1345 (Manresa, 1812).
desperation in 1339, the city council decided to construct an aqueduct to bring water from the
Llobregat River. After royal approval had been granted, the bishop and chapter of Vic (through whose
lands the aqueduct would pass) tried to annul it, possibly because of the larger, ongoing conict
between Galcern Sacosta, bishop of Vic, and Pere III of Aragon. In 1342, after building work started on
the bishops land, his delegate placed the entire city and its lands under interdict. Although an
anonymous, early twentieth-century, Manresa historian claimed that Pope Clement VI issued a deci-
sion that was not in the bishops favour, no such record survives.66 Still under interdict in 1344, the
city abandoned itself to divine providence.
In February of 1345 the peoples prayers were answered.67 On the vigil of the feast of St Peters chair
(21 February), just after sunrise, people gathered in the Carmelite church to hear morning Mass.
Brother Bernat Carnicerii, the Carmelite prior, had just nished his sermon when a miraculous light
entered the church from the nearby mountain of Montserrat. The light hovered over the main altar
before rising to the vault of the chapel where it disappeared. The great bells of the church rang out
announcing the miracle. Though chroniclers and historians from the sixteenth century onwards claim
that the bells sounded of their own accord, the fourteenth-century manuscript merely states that the
bells were rung as the Carmelite friars sang the Salve regina.68 The sounds drew a crowd d more than
300 people according to the subsequent account. With the brothers in the lead and the bells ringing,
the people processed through the church, carrying candles and singing psalms. The light reappeared in
the church and lingered above the altar of the Trinity, passing to the altars of Santes Creus (Holy
Crosses) and the Saviour before it ascended to the ceiling and left the church. The bells, having gathered
the people to praise God and the Virgin, played a role in the continuation of the miracle. The wondrous
light returned.
The miracle of Manresa was the appearance of the light. In medieval Catalunya d and other parts of
Europe d mysterious light signalled holiness and divine favour. The bodies or tombs of the holy dead
were often surrounded by light. The tomb of Miquel de Fabra in Mallorca was illuminated by divine
light as was that of Ies de Peralda in Barcelona.69 The bodies of the Dominicans Domingo and Gregorio
were surrounded by wonderful light and smell.70 In the 1345 miracle of Manresa, the bells of the
Carmelite church revealed to the community that they had received divine grace. They were saved. The
light told the people of Gods grace and the bells called them to witness the miraculous Llum de
Manresa, to participate in its return, and to thank God for their deliverance.
The bishop soon died, not yet having absolved the city of the interdict.71 The new bishop, Miquel
Ricoma, permitted the completion of the aqueduct. In November of 1345 Ricoma and the city signed
a concord of peace and the bishop lifted the interdict. The king approved the concordia in December.
Finally, the suffering of the city ended.
Besides signalling a miracle, the ringing of bells could also be a miracle.72 In the preceding examples
the bells proclaimed miracles worked by a saint after death or, in the case of Manresa, by God or the
66
No s sentencia a favor del Obispo de Vic: Cronologia de lentredit, 18.
67
The following is a summary of the events as found in the mid-fourteenth-century account. Manresa, Arxiu Capitular de
Manresa [hereafter ACM], La Llum de Manresa: Collecin de documentos, Pere de Bellsol.
68
Cronologia de lentredit, 201. The 1345 manuscript reads . . . et fuit occasione praedicta pulserata cimbalo seu squella maior
ecclesiae supradictae . . .: ACM La Llum de Manresa: Collecin de documentos, Pere de Bellsol.
69
Rome, Archivum General Ordinis Praedicatorum, ad S. Sabinae [hereafter AGOP (SS)], MS XIV.108c, Antonin Danzar, p. 464;
Joseph Batlle, Chronica seraphica de la provincia de Catalua de la regular observancia, Barcelona, 1710: BUB, MSS 9934, vol. 2,
part 3, book 1, chap. 1, f. 3v.
70
AGOP (SS) MS XIV.108c, Antonin Danzar, pp. 46970.
71
The subsequent events are outlined in numerous histories and chronicles found in the Manresa archives: see note 65. For
a brief summary see, Cronologia de lentredit. Current commemorations of these events attribute the bishops death to God and
the Virgins wrath.
72
In the vision sermons of Mother Juana de la Cruz (14811534) bells were often said to speak. See, for example, her vision
on the feast of St Peter in chains as quoted in Ronald Surtz, Tecla (forthcoming), c. 6, n. 38. I would like to thank Professor Surtz
for allowing me access to this work prior to publication.
Virgin.73 By looking at miracle stories, we are able to see the multi-directionality of medieval bells. Bells
could act not only as the voice of the people, but also as the voice of God. When bells seemed to ring of
their own accord, they were seen as echoing the voice of God, calling out the death of a particularly holy
individual.74 They were the vox Domini, as inscribed on several French bells.75 Shortly after 1335 Don
Juan Manuel, grandson of Jaume I, the Conqueror, described the death of his aunt, the Infanta Sana
(daughter of Jaume I), some sixty years earlier.76
You should know that the king, Don Jaume de Aragon, was married to Doa Violante, daughter of
the king of Hungary. By her he had . . . 77 and the Infanta Constana, who married the prince Don
Manuel, my father; and the Infanta Doa Sana, who never married. I heard said that [Sana]
died in the hospital of Acre where she was unrecognised and serving the pilgrims; and it seems
to me that I heard said by the Infanta Doa Ysabel, daughter of the king of Mallorca, who was my
rst wife, or by women of her house, that when the said Infanta [Sana] died in Acre, in the
hospital, that all the bells of the city rang themselves, pealing of their own accord as they were
[normally] rung whenever someone died. The people, seeing that the bells rang of their own accord,
wondered who had just died. [They learned that] no one, except a woman, had died in the whole
city, but rather a female pilgrim had died in the hospital, and they learned that she was holding
a letter in her hand . . . 78 The letter said that she was the Infanta Doa Sana, daughter of the
king, Don Jaume de Aragon, and of the queen, Doa Violante, his wife. The people then gave
thanks to God for knowing this and they greatly honored the holy body, which is no wonder [as it
was so amazing] . . . 79
According to her nephew, at the moment of Sanas death around 1272, bells began to toll throughout
the city. The people of Acre knew that it was a holy person who had died because the bells rang without
human assistance. With the bells sounding as surrogates for the vox Domini, God announced to the
community that a saint had died. The miraculous occurrence of bells pealing on their own divulged the
will and knowledge of God. News of this miraculous event spread to the Catalan and Castilian courts
where Sanas nephew Don Juan Manuel recorded it.
God also used bells to signal the deaths of the Dominicans Gregorio and Domingo in the early
thirteenth century.80 The brothers came from Zaragoza to preach around the city of Besians, on the
border of Catalunya. Near the edge of the village of Perarua (present-day Perarra) the men found
themselves in the midst of a storm. They took shelter under a large rock, which, in the middle of the
storm, fell, crushing them. At the moment of their deaths the bells of the three neighbouring villages d
Besians, Perarua, and Puebla de Pantoba (present-day Puebla de Fantova) d began tolling of their own
73
In the miracle from Manresa discussed here, the contemporary account is unclear about who worked the miracle. The light
was clearly of divine origin. As it came from the mountain of Montserrat (the site of the miracle-working statue of the Black
Virgin) and as the psalms sung included the Salve regina, the text implies that the Virgin sent it.
74
Even today, Russian Orthodox Christians consider bells to be aural icons, specically each bell is an icon of the voice of
God to quote Father Roman, the head ringer at the Danilov Monastery, the working residence of the Moscow Patriarch. Elif
Batuman, The bells (the Danilov Monastery bells), New Yorker, 85, no. 11 (2009), 22.
75
Leclercq-Marx, Vox Dei clamat in tempestate, 185.
76
Riquer believes that Gulobovichs date of 1272 for Sanas death is correct, or at least nearly so: La mort de la Infanta Sana,
in: Mart de Riquer, Llegendes histriques catalanes (Barcelona, 2000), 10514 (107).
77
The text lists the children of Jaume I, including the husbands of his daughters.
78
In this section Don Juan Manuel describes how no one could take the letter out of the hand of the dead pilgrim until,
commanded under holy obedience, she released it.
79
Juan Manuel, Libro de armas, in: Obras completas, ed. Jos Manuel Blecua (Madrid, 1981), 12140 (1278). Blecuas
corrections, my emphasis.
80
The following account is based on seventeenth-century chronicles and a nineteenth-century investigation of the men and
their cult. An unpublished work by the Dominican Antonin Danzar also refers to the events. AGOP (SS) MS XIV.108c, Antonin
Danzar, pp. 46970. Though the seventeenth-century chroniclers speak of earlier manuscripts and sources for the accounts of
their deaths and miracles, I have not been able to nd any contemporary documents. AGOP (SS) MS X.1012: Causa beatorum
Dominici et Gregorii processus auctoritate ordinaria Barbastrensis, a. 1835, Confectus MS, f. 8rv, 15rv. For a brief biography of
the men, see Lloren Galms, Catlogo hagiograco de la provincia de Aragon de la Orden de Predicadores, Escritos del Vedat, 10
(1980), 183214.
accord. As the bells continued to ring, villagers from the three towns followed a wondrous fragrance to
the bodies.81 The ringing stopped when the bodies were found.
The bells in the deaths of Sana, Gregorio, and Domingo did not ring at mans instigation. Instead, the
bells related events from the perspective of God. Bells that sounded across the cities and countryside at
the death of a saint marked a moment in Gods time, a moment in which He called to his people. The bells
transformed the daily experience of time by men, women and children. In the other examples discussed
in this article bells were rung as part of men (and women) calling out to God and to one another. In the
deaths of Sana, Domingo, and Gregorio, however, God used miraculous bells to transform the nite,
earthly time of humanity into His innite, celestial time. Miracle stories in particular reveal the medieval
connection between the secular and the holy. When the church bells of Catalunya rang, people meant,
and understood, multiple levels of meaning. The bells of Manresa, for example, offered their hearers at
least three messages on that day in 1345. First, their sounds gathered the people, creating a community.
Then, as the people gathered and the ringing continued, the people began offering prayers and thanks to
God; the pealing was a part of those actions. Finally, the bells continued to toll as the miraculous light
returned demonstrating the peoples deliverance from suffering.
Bells and non-Christians
The limited extant evidence for the utilisation of bells by socially marginalised groups, namely female
religious, Jews, or Muslims, has necessarily limited the preceding analysis to Christian male clerics of
the fourteenth century. Nonetheless, based on male clerical use of bells, it would not be surprising if
female religious communities in Catalunya also employed bells in their daily lives, although evidence is
only suppositional. Evidence does exist, however, demonstrating widespread awareness of bells by the
laity, Jews, and Muslims of medieval Iberia. We have already seen how the laity utilised bells to make
announcements and to pray. The government of the lay-controlled half of Vic sought to use the bells to
spread news to the city such as, in 1321, the summoning of an army.82 Moreover, the decrees from Vic in
the 1330s reveal that those persons (lay and religious) establishing perpetual anniversaries in the
church were granted the privilege of having the bells peal in their memory.83 Whether the laity sought
the privilege, they would have been aware that the establishment of an anniversary would result in the
ringing of the bells.
Non-Christians understood at least some of the signicance of the Christians bells.84 Todros
Abulaa (1247 after 1300), a Jew from Toledo, recognised the meaning of Christian bells. In his On
hearing church bells Abulaa wrote,
Could young men sing to pagan demons,
and I not praise the Lord in heaven?
Could they rise to pray in the dark of night
or at dawn for other Gods, for nothing,
and I not wake for the Living God,
the source and secret of all things?
Rise, heart, and praise the Lord,
God of worlds on high and below,
and come to the land of songs nectar d
crossing the honeyed sea of poems.
Send up psalms by night and day,
with great delight, thank him with hymns;
81
Danzar added that a miraculous light surrounded the bodies. AGOP (SS) MS XIV.108c, Antonin Danzar, pp. 46970.
82
Casals i Parlad, Les campanes i el rellotge de la catedral de Vic, 200, n. 16.
83
ACV 31/27, f. 53r.
84
Arnold and Goodson, Resounding communities, provide evidence of this understanding of Christian bells by Muslims in
ninth-century Cordoba. For example, Eulogius, a Christian, described Muslim reactions to the peal of bells . . . As soon as they
hear the sound of clanging metal in their ears, as if beguiled by a false superstition, they begin to exercise their tongues in all
kinds of swearing and foulness.
for all who hear them bear clear witness

theyre worth more than precious gems.
Serve him with a heart thats pure,
and hell bend kings toward your desire.
Fear him and trust his kindness and grace,
and in distress hell show you favour.
But do not put your faith in time.
Time is only chance d not truth:
for it contains both bitter and sweet,
and in its way, does what bees do.85
Abulaa heard the church bells and knew that their ringing called Christians to prayer. Woken by the
sound and spurred by the knowledge, he prayed to God, the Lord, God of worlds on high and below.
Though it was undoubtedly not their intention, the Christian clerics of Abulaas world spurred the
Jewish man to pray.
Further evidence for Muslim and Jewish understanding of the purposes of ringing bells comes
from other parts of Aragon. In April of 1285 local Christians attacked the Jews of Alfamen (near
Zaragoza). Seeking help, several Jews had the bells rung, expecting the Muslims of Alfamen to come
to their aid. The Muslims did not, but, according to their later claims, it was not because of igno-
rance or misunderstanding. Rather, they would have known the signicance of the sound, but they
claimed to be out of earshot at the time.86 Ordinarily, of course, the ringing of the bells signied
some aspect of Christian triumphalism.87 Potent elements within the medieval discourse on reli-
gious power, bells signalled prayers while at the same time announcing, in areas under Catholic
rulership, Christian dominance.88 This was true long before the thirteenth century. For example,
according to one twelfth-century Andalusi Muslim scholar, Christians under Muslim rule promised
to only ring bells in our churches very gently; the Christians also promised not to use loud voices.89
The pealing of church bells, like the Muslim call to prayer, provided audible conrmation of the
presence of a religious community and what was a melodious afrmation of belief to the ears of
85
The dream of the poem: Hebrew poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 9501492, ed. Peter Cole (Princeton, 2007), 2678. I
would like to thank Professor Ronald Surtz (Princeton) for this reference.
86
Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona de Arag [hereafter ACA], R. 56, f. 62v. The text is very brief and does not give background for
the attack (venerunt ad domum eorum aliqui Christiani ut depredarent eos) or any arrangement concerning the bells or why
the Muslims were expected to defend the Jews, though it is clear that they were. I would like to thank Professor Hussein Fancy
(University of Michigan) for bringing this text to my attention.
87
According to Olivia Remie Constable, Ringing church bells in Hafsid Tunis: religious concessions to Christian fundacos in the
later thirteenth century, (forthcoming): Muslim concerns about the audible aspects of Christian religious practice go back to
the earliest dhimmi regulations, with prohibitions against the use of clappers or bells (nawa qs) and loud chanting. Although
early Islamic regulations related to the wooden clapper (na qu
s) used in eastern Christian church services, later medieval texts
employed the same word for bells. The section from the Pact of Umar, quoted by Abu Bakr al-uru sh [previously noted]
indicates that the issue of bells and Christian noise remained alive in the Muslim west during the central medieval period. I
would like to thank Professor Constable for providing me with this article prior to its publication. For further discussion of this
issue, see Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 904.
88
Remie Constable, Ringing church bells in Hafsid Tunis. Muslims also used bells to demonstrate their dominance, though in
a markedly different manner. For example, after the Umayyad regent sacked Santiago de Compostela in 997, he took the
churchs bells back to Crdoba where he had them turned into lamps for the great mosque. In 1236, after the Christian conquest
of the city, Ferdinand (III) of Castile returned the bells, carried by Muslim slaves. Robert I. Burns, The Crusader kingdom of
Valencia: reconstruction on a thirteenth-century frontier, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1967), vol. 1, 48, 56. See also Remie Constable,
Ringing church bells: The robbing of bell towers was a common action of Muslim conquerors, or else a common topos in
conquest narratives: it is also said of Saladin upon his entry into Jerusalem, 1 October 1188, and Mahomet II, upon taking
Constantinople in 1453; Arnold and Goodson, Resounding communities. In Valencia, early-fourteenth-century regulations
reveal that Muslims, too, used to sound instruments to broadcast their faith. For example, in 1303 the Cortes of Valencia
ordered that the Muslims of Valencia: . . . no sia sonada nall o altre instrument o trompeta . . . per fer la ala o altre acte
publich en torres, mequites o altres lochs segons la damnada secta mahometica, quoted in Francisco A. Roca Traver, Un siglo de
vida mudejar en la Valencia medieval (12381338), Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragon, 5 (1952), 3394 (27, n. 65).
See also the 1311 constitution of Clement V, quoted at 8990 (document 26).
89
Quoted in Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 67.
one community could be an insult to another, to use Constables terminology.90 Understanding

those implications, the Muslims of Segorbe (near Valencia) rioted when the rst bells were rung
after the area was transferred to Christian control in 1244.91 Similarly, though less violently, the
Muslims of Granada cried in disgrace when Fernando the Catholic had the bells rung upon entering
the Alhambra in 1492.92
Stepping outside the Iberian Peninsula, in Damascus, the Islamic jurist and author Ibn Taymya
(d. 1328) wrote about Christians use of knockers (hand-held bells or clappers).93 He argued for the
suppression of the display of Christian items such as wine, knockers, lights and holiday processions.
Another [restriction] is the suppression of symbols of their faith, such as (loud) liturgical chanting.94
Ibn Taymya described what he saw as the sacrilegious practices of Christians in his Muslim world,
particularly horrendous because they were corrupting the followers of the true faith, Islam.
I have been also told that on the Thursday preceding that Thursday, or on a Saturday or some
other day, the Christians visit tombs and burn incense on them, so also in their homes, not
because of its pleasant odour, but because it carries [a] blessing and wards off evil d so they
claim. They consider incense-burning as sacrice, as animal offering. This is accompanied with
incantations to the beat of a small copper knocker and with repeating of special formulas. They
hang crosses on doors of their houses and do similar other disreputable things. I am not aware of
all their practices and what I have mentioned here is what I have personally seen many Muslims
do and which in its origin derives from these Christians. Throughout this Thursday, the markets
remain lled with the sounds of these tiny knockers and with the most absurd wording of
incantation by astrologers and others, all of which is either unlawful or smacks of unbelief.95
Ibn Taymya understood that the Christians claimed the use of at least one type of bell as part of their
religious practice, reecting their belief in the supernatural power of the sounds.96 In his condem-
nation of this Christian belief and practice, Ibn Taymiya provides evidence not only for his under-
standing of the custom, but also for a similar awareness of the power of bells among the Muslims of his
world. This Muslim rigorist was not alone.97 To cite a single example, the twelfth-century hisba

90
91
Remie Constable, Ringing church bells. Dating these events to 1246, Diago noted that when Jaume I entered the city to take
possession, the church bells rang: Y porque con el sonido y estruendo de la campana que se ta, se espantaron y alborotaron
los Moros, se salio de la ciudad, temiendo no le sucediesse algun siniestro: Francisco Diago, Anales del Reyno del Valencia,
(Valencia, 1613), Libro 7, cap. 42, p. 343v. During the crusade of St Louis in 1243, al-Makrisi describes how, when the Franks took
Aksa, among the rst things they did were to convert the mosque into a church and to hang bells from the former minaret.
Essulous li Mariset il Muluk Makrisi, The road to knowledge of the return of kings, in: Chronicles of the Crusades (New York,
1969), 53556.
92
Hieronymus Mnzer (there for the triumphal entry) recorded: Una campana apresuradamente all colocada empez
a sonar. Al orla los sarracenos, unos lloraban sus desgracias, otras quedaban admirandos, por no haber visto nunca una
campana ni escuchado su taido. Hieronymus Mnzer, Viaje por Espaa y Portugal: 14941495 (Madrid, 1991), 119. This was
despite Ferdinand and Isabella initially allowing Muslims to continue their calls to prayer: Constable, Regulating religious
noise, 801.
93
According to Percival Price, Bells and Man (Oxford, 1983), 65, 95: While Muslims tolerated small bells, and with hardheaded
practicality insisted on enough of them on pack animals, they were adamant in forbidding bells permanently afxed in towers
or other elevated positions where they could be heard over a wide area. The airspace, they maintained, should be reserved for
the call to prayers. Wherever they met church bells along the African coast, and later in Spain, they took them down. He adds
that, in the east, the impositions of Islamic conquerors often included restricting the amount of outdoor church bell ringing.
This was not so much to stop the ringing as to prevent it from reaching Muslim ears. The reason d apart from a general
intolerance of this pervasive evidence of other peoples worship which we shall nd caused Christian sects to ban each others
bells later d was the primitive Islamic contention that the sound of Christian bells disturbed the repose of souls which
wandered in the air.
94
Ibn Taymya, Ibn Taymiyas Struggle against popular religion, trans. Muhammad Umar Memon (Paris, 1976), 170. The text from
which this passage is taken is entitled Kitab iqtida as-sirat al-mustaquim mukhalafat ashab al-jahim.
95
Ibn Taymya, Ibn Taymiyas Struggle against popular religion, 210.
96
He also condemns the Jewish use of trumpets, blown by mouth: Ibn Taymya, Ibn Taymiyas Struggle against popular
religion, 165.
97
When the Moroccan pilgrim al-Abdar passed through the small town of Zaw ara, on the Libyan coast west of Tripoli, in
688/1289, he reported hearing the sounds of bells ringing . . . and associated this with other Christian practices: Remie
Constable, Ringing church bells.
text by Ibn Abdun of Seville had ruled that the ringing of bells should be suppressed in all Muslim
territories and the sound should only be heard in the lands of Christians.98
Ibn Taymyas writing also reveals the importance of bells to medieval Christians, particularly in
their religious and liturgical practices. Under Islam, Christians experienced various restrictions,
especially concerning their religious practices including, it was commonly thought, severe restrictions
on their use of bells. Yet recent research by Constable has shown that at least in the late thirteenth
century, Christian Catalan communities in Tunisia under Muslim rule had and were allowed to use
churches and bell towers.99 Ibn Taymyas work shows that bells were still so important to the
communities that, even under the constraints imposed by their Muslim rulers, Christians used bells to
worship.
Abulaas poem and the accounts of Muslim reactions to the pealings of bells reveal that we cannot
fully determine for whom the bell tolls.100 Men and women could, and did, try to use bells for specic
ends, both profane and religious. Yet the interpretation depended on the hearer, and on his or her
religious, cultural, social background, as well as the social capital both of the listener and of the ringer
of the bells. The sounds of bells cut across Catalan communities. Everyone d man or woman, adult or
child, Christian or not d heard the ringing. Perhaps, as in the case of Abulaa, even the unintended
audience knew what the sounds meant to their makers. However, it was up to the individual to
interpret each sound appropriately.
Conclusion
Constable argues that the increased regulations by Christians concerning the Muslim call to prayer
(especially) and local pilgrimage by Muslims at the start of the fourteenth century marked a turning
point in the Christian effort to control the religious acoustic environment of Europe.101 Yet, it was not
merely Christians who were increasingly seeking to control religious acoustic environment; Muslims
also sought to regulate the religious noise and public rituals of the minority communities within their
domains. The two religious communities equated the sound of the church bells and the mosque call;
each saw both as audible markers of each religious communitys presence. As Ibn Shaddad (d. 1243)
commented, We could hear the sound of their bells and they could hear our call to prayers.102
Constable argues that these parallel concerns, by Christians and Muslims, reveal inter-religious
tensions at the turn of the fourteenth century.103 In an effort to take control in a worrying world,
Constable notes, both Christians and Muslims exercised tighter legislation over minority communities
in this period, especially seeking control over those activities d like the mosque call d by which
subject populations made their existence manifest.104
Yet concern about religious noise was not limited to majority groups regulating the sounds made by
minority groups. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed an increasing concern for the
acoustic environment created by Christians within a Christian country. Indeed, the desire to regulate
Christian sound should be seen as part of the larger drive within Christian Europe to regulate d and
98
Quoted in Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 91.
99
Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 91. These Catalan communities may have been exceptional in this regard, but
that requires further research.
100
Arnold and Goodson, Resounding communities, reached a similar conclusion: . . . not everyone necessarily shared in the
invitation to devotion and belief that such a sound [as a bell] invited. Bells are not merely markers of community so much as
auditory performances of community; the nature of the community thus summoned by each stroke of the clapper can be social,
spiritual and political. And the summons can on occasion be refused.
101
102
Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, The rare and excellent history of Saladin, trans. D. S. Richards (Bodmin, 2002), 27.
103
Arnold and Goodson, Resounding communities, also imply an understanding of the ringing (and regulation) of church bells
as evidence for tensions between Muslim and Christian communities, though their focus is centuries prior to Remie Constable.
104
Remie Constable, Regulating religious noise, 91. Constable provides interesting evidence for direct competition between
the sounds of the call to prayer and church bells. For example, in 1347 the bishop of Osca ordered a reduction in the height of all
local mosques and minarets (Regulating religious noise, 78). As noted in the beginning of this essay, it was at the beginning of
the fteenth century that the city of Valencia increased the height of its primary bell tower so that the sound could be heard not
only within the city, but also in the surrounding areas. Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 11213.
standardise d all aspects of life. This is seen not only in the rise of heresy (or its perception), culmi-
nating in Lateran IV and the foundation of the mendicant orders, but also in the standardisation of
governments, bureaucracy, and even coinage. The need to regulate Christian sound may, in fact, have
led to Christian concern about other, competing sounds, such as the Muslim call to prayer.
The sounding of the bells dened Christian communities in the Mediterranean and, at the same
time as rulers and elites throughout the area were seeking to control the minority groups under their
domain, those same groups (or at least the Christian ones) attempted to exercise greater control over
the sounds of their own communities.105 Through the pealing of bells, churchmen throughout Cata-
lunya sought to direct the thoughts and prayers of their listeners. When the Christian clerics of
Catalunya rang their churches bells, they had specic aims in mind, yet, as the evidence demonstrates,
the pealing of the bells never meant just one thing. When the bells rang out the hours of the day, they
did more than tell the time. As the bells sounded for Prime, for example, they told the larger
community not only the time of day, but also the prayers of the clerics of the local religious community.
As a bell pealed to announce a death or funeral, it also carried a prayer to God and Jesus for protection;
it could even announce a miracle. In Vic, as the bells rang to mark twilight, the end of the day, they also
called out for prayers from the people and protection from the Virgin. There is much more to under-
standing medieval bells than knowing for whom the bell tolls; we have to look at the listeners as much
as the ringers in order to understand the cultural signicance of the bells of medieval Europe.
Acknowledgements
The Graduate School of Princeton University and the History Department of Princeton University
funded research for this article. Final research in Minnesota and Barcelona was completed with
a Heckman Stipend from the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (Minnesota) and a grant from the
College of Charleston.
I would especially like to thank Professor William C. Jordan, who offered invaluable help in the
research and writing of this article, as well as in the larger project on miracles from which it emerged.
Professors Hussein Fancy, Mark Gregory Pegg and Ronald Surtz provided valuable information and
comments throughout this project. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Olivia Remie
Constable who shared valuable, and stimulating, unpublished research with me. Finally, I would like to
thank the staffs of the Arxiu de la Corona dArag, the Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa (Madrid), the Arxiu
Capitular de la Catedral de Barcelona, the Arxiu Capitular de la Catedral de Vic, the Biblioteca Uni-
versitaria de Barcelona, the Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, the Archivum
Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Arxiu Dioces de la
Palma de Mallorca for their support and professionalism. I would particularly like to thank Mn.
Francesc Xavier Alts i Aguil, Rafel Ginebra i Molins and Padre Lzaro Sastre Varas for the many hours
they dedicated to helping me in the archives of Montserrat, Vic, and Santa Sabina, respectively.
Michelle Garceau is an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Her current projects include a book on
communities, women and miracles in medieval Barcelona, and a geographical expansion throughout the Mediterranean of her
interest in bells and sounds.
105
It would be interesting to know if Muslim rulers and elites were also seeking to regulate the call to prayer and other
religious sounds within Muslim communities. Remie Constables article provides hints that this may have been the case, at least
among rigorist scholars such as Ibn Taymya.

Church Bells in Medieval Catalunya

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Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 197214

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Medieval History

I call the people. Church bells in fourteenth-century

* Tel.: 1 843 953 1915; fax: 1 843 953 6349.

even anonymous deaths, into moments of wonder as Gods hand

Bells, funerals, and death

The miraculous and bells

Bells and non-Christians

for all who hear them bear clear witness

one community could be an insult to another, to use Constables terminology.90 Understanding

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