Part 36 (1/2)

See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 74.

In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing suns.h.i.+ne, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet and dry weather--as, for example, St. G.o.deberte at Noyon. Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country to his shrine.(234)

(234) As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by ”Paul Parfait,” in his Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging certain tags(235) on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval superst.i.tion. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran, and christening it with his own name.(236)

(235) Perticae. See Monta.n.u.s, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz, 1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.

(236) For statements regarding Pope John and bell superst.i.tions, see Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif., s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968.

The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the Pope's sponsors.h.i.+p.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in mult.i.tudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch of theological literature may still be studied in mult.i.tudes of church towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, ”Ad fugandos demones.” Another, in Lugano, declares ”The sound of this bell vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men.” Another, at the Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can ”ward off lightning and malignant demons.” A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, ”They praise G.o.d, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people.” This is dated 1634.

Another bell in that part of France declares, ”It is I who dissipate the thunders”(Ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua).(237)

(237) For these ill.u.s.trations, with others equally striking, see Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the later examples, see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy, 1885), pp. 23, 27.

Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:

”On the devil my spite I'll vent, And, G.o.d helping, bad weather prevent.”(238)

(238) ”An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen, Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen wetter erbrechen.” (See Meyer, as above.)

Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.

Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells.

Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle of the sixteenth century:

”In lyke sorte (as churches) are the belles used. And first, forsouth, they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about them. Whiche after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth water and salte, and mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both within and without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it the signe of the crosse, and prayeth G.o.d, that whan they shall rynge or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away, hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate weathers may be aswaged. Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the same, and within one only. After saying certen Psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and senseth the bel within, and prayeth G.o.d to sende it good lucke. In many places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne wedding.”(239)

(239) Sleiden's Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol. 334 (lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).

These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes, kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the bells at the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during the French Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of January, 1824, the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious d.u.c.h.ess d'Angouleme standing as sponsors.

In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun knowledge, and one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the older Church, was that certain authorities thus christened a bell ”Hosanna,” supposing that to be the name of a woman.

To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes brought from the river Jordan.(240)