Part 36 (2/2)

(240) See Monta.n.u.s, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor Luthero, p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried to the Jordan by pilgrims for this purpose.

The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine. The ritual of Paris embraces the pet.i.tion that, ”whensoever this bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of the a.s.sailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest.” Another prayer begs that ”the sound of this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men”; and others vary the form but not the substance of this pet.i.tion. The great Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the warfare against heretics.(241)

(241) For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris, 1854, vol. iv, p. 322.

Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was everywhere taken for granted.(242) The development of this idea in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;(243) but, as a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions, opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils, regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. The great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon bells to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing that tempests are direct instruments of G.o.d's wrath, is very severe against using ”unlawful means,” and among these he names ”the hallowed bell”; and these opinions were very generally shared by the leading English clergy.(244)

(242) As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its details--even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast--precisely the same as when a child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own name--William. (See his De Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)

(243) And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, expressly p.r.o.nounced church bells, ”provided they have been duly consecrated and baptised,” the foremost means of ”frustrating the atmospheric mischiefs of the devil,” and likened steeples in which bells are ringing to a hen brooding her chickens, ”for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning”; when pre-Reformation preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt declared, ”Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they are secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the powers”; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell-ringing as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a canonist like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be, that ”the demons hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to wit, the bells, may flee in terror, and may cease from the stirring up of tempests.” See Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, vol. xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol.

ii, p. 12. I owe the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others to Monta.n.u.s. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280, 281.

(244) The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express complaints of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation. See their Gravam.

Cent. German. Grav., p. 51. For Hooper, see his Early Writings, p. 197 (in Parker Society Publications). For Pilkington, see his Works, p.

177 (in same). Among others sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop Ridley, Archbishop Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers. It is to be noted that all of these speak of the rite as ”baptism.”

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters was developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of prayers during storms at night. As late as the end of the seventeenth century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern Germany rung for the dispelling of tempests. In Catholic Austria this bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last century, for the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an edict against it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway to be arrested by argument or edict, and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to this day in various remote districts in Europe.(245) For this was no mere superficial view. It was really part of a deep theological current steadily developed through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the whole being the direct influence of the bells upon the ”Power of the Air”; and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance over the coming of this current into the modern world. Having grown steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full strength at the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his great work on the northern nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and the burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be marvelled at than inquired into. Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received with great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the agency of demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as well as the portentousness of comets and the movement of the heavens by angels.

He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect protection afforded by the waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.(246)

(245) For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates, Jena, 1697. For the Protestant theory of bells, see, e. g., the Ciciones Selectae of Superintendent Conrad Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp.

circa tempestates). For Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests, see Schwimmer, Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as above). He pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district flocking to the churches on the approach of a storm.

(246) For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus (Rome, 1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13. For Descartes, see his De meteor., cent.

2, 127. In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes to the belief, and without comment.

But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general doctrine upon the first chapter of Job and the second chapter of Ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the efficacy of bells in putting the h.e.l.lish legions to flight.(247) This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth century. At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome, published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had been developed under the influence of theology during nearly seventeen hundred years.

This learned head of a great college at the heart of Christendom taught that ”the surest remedy against thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises, namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical, because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder; but the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which they win from G.o.d the turning away of the thunderbolt.” Here we see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism. Father De Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the background. Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in putting to flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is evidently preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the history of every science when it is clear that it can no longer be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.(248)

(247) See Binsfeld, De Confess...o...b..s Malef., pp. 308-314, edition of 1623.

(248) For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.

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