Bell tower

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Bell tower (disambiguation).
"Campanile" redirects here. For other uses, see Campanile (disambiguation).
Bell tower of the former monastery in Dürnstein, Lower Austria

A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell towers, often part of a municipal building, an educational establishment, or a tower built specifically to house a carillon. Church bell towers often incorporate clocks, and secular towers usually do, as a public service.

The term campanile (/ˌkæmpəˈniːli, -leɪ/, also US: /ˌkɑːm-/, Italian: [kampaˈniːle]), from the Italian campanile, which in turn derives from campana, meaning "bell", is synonymous with bell tower; though in English usage campanile tends to be used to refer to a free standing bell tower. A bell tower may also in some traditions be called a belfry, though this term may also refer specifically to the substructure that houses the bells and the ringers rather than the complete tower.

The tallest free-standing bell tower in the world, 113.2 metres (371 ft) high, is the Mortegliano Bell Tower, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, Italy.[1][2]

Purpose

Bells are rung from a tower to enable them to be heard at a distance. Church bells can signify the time for worshippers to go to church for a communal

service, and can be an indication of the fixed times of daily Christian prayer, called the canonical hours, which number seven and are contained in breviaries. They are also rung on special occasions such as a wedding, or a funeral service. In some religious traditions they are used within the liturgy of the church service to signify to people that a particular part of the service has been reached.[3]

Shafer Tower at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana

A bell tower may have a single bell, or a collection of bells which are tuned to a common scale. They may be stationary and chimed, rung randomly by swinging through a small arc, or swung through a full circle to enable the high degree of control of English change ringing. They may house a carillon or chimes, in which the bells are sounded by hammers connected via cables to a keyboard. These can be found in many churches and secular buildings in Europe and America including college and university campuses.[4]

A variety of electronic devices exist to simulate the sound of bells, but any substantial tower in which a considerable sum of money has been invested will generally have a real set of bells.

Ivan The Great Bell Tower in the Kremlin in Moscow
, built in 1508
The Santo Tomás parish church in Haro, La Rioja has an exconjuratory for weather prayers in its bell tower.

Some churches have an

Cathedral of Murcia
has four.

In

Indians, use a breviary such as the Agpeya and Shehimo to pray the canonical hours seven times a day while facing in the eastward direction; church bells are tolled, especially in monasteries, to mark these seven fixed prayer times (cf. Psalm 119:164).[17][18]

The Christian tradition of the ringing of church bells from a belltower is analogous to

Islamic tradition of the adhan (call to prayer) from a minaret.[19][20]

Old bell towers which are no longer used for their original purpose may be kept for their

historic or architectural value, though in countries with a strong campanological
tradition they often continue to have the bells rung.

History

Europe

In 400 AD, Paulinus of Nola introduced church bells into the Christian Church.[21][22] By the 11th century, bells housed in belltowers became commonplace.[22]

Historic bell towers exist throughout Europe. The

list of World Heritage Sites. In 2005 this list was extended with one Belgian and twenty-three Northern French belfries and is since known as Belfries of Belgium and France. Most of these were attached to civil buildings, mainly city halls, as symbols of the greater power the cities in the region got in the Middle Ages; a small number of buildings not connected with a belfry, such as bell towers of—or with their—churches, also occur on this same list (details). In the Middle Ages, cities sometimes kept their important documents in belfries. Not all are on a large scale; the "bell" tower of Katúň, in Slovakia, is typical of the many more modest structures that were once common in country areas. Archaic wooden bell towers survive adjoining churches in Lithuania and as well as in some parts of Poland
.

In Orthodox Eastern Europe bell ringing also have a strong cultural significance (

List of tall Orthodox Bell towers
).

China

Bell towers (Chinese:

Bell Tower (Zhonglou) of Beijing and the Bell Tower of Xi'an
.

Gallery

See also

References and notes

  1. ^ "25 tallest clock towers/government structures/palaces" (PDF). Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. January 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-10-30. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  2. ^ "Campus tour booklet" (PDF). University of Birmingham. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  3. ISBN 978-0880281720
    . Retrieved 16 August 2012. There are two sorts of liturgical bells in the history of the Christian Church-church bells in spires or towers used to call the faithful to worship, and sanctuary bells used to call attention to the coming of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
  4. ^ "The World Carillon Federation (WCF)". Carillon.org. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  5. ^ a b George Herbert Dryer (1897). History of the Christian Church. Curts & Jennings. …every church-bell in Christendom to be tolled three times a day, and all Christians to repeat Pater Nosters (The Lord's Prayer)
  6. ^ a b Joan Huyser-Honig (2006), Uncovering the Blessing of Fixed-Hour Prayer, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Early Christians prayed the Lord's Prayer three times a day. Medieval church bells called people to common prayer.
  7. ^ "Church bells". Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. 25 July 2017. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0802822505
    . Retrieved 26 October 2012. The praying of the Lord's Prayer three times a day in Did., 8, 2 f. is connected with the Jewish practice --> 218, 3 ff.; II, 801, 16 ff.; the altering of other Jewish customs is demanded in the context.
  9. ^
    ISBN 9004146032
    . Retrieved 26 October 2012. The Church had now two hours of prayer, observed individually on weekdays and corporately on Sundays – yet the Old Testament spoke of three daily hours of prayer, and the Church itself had been saying the Lord's Prayer three times a day.
  10. ISBN 978-0567082497
    . Retrieved 16 August 2012. Moreover, the central portion of the Eighteen Benedictions, just like the Lord's Prayer, falls into two distinct parts (in the first half the petitions are for the individuals, in the second half for the nation); and early Christian tradition instructs believers to say the Lord's Prayer three times a day (Did. 8.3) while standing (Apost. const. 7.24), which precisely parallels what the rabbis demanded for the Eighteen Benedictions.
  11. ISBN 978-1426722851
    . Retrieved 12 October 2012. Late in the first century or early in the second, the Didache advised Christians to pray the Lord's prayer three times a day. Others sought disciplines in the Bible itself as ways to make the scriptural injunction to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17) practical. Psalm 55:17 suggested "evening and morning and at noon," and Daniel prayed three times a day (Dan. 6:10).
  12. ISBN 0-860-12324-3
    . Retrieved 2 September 2014. Late in the first century or early in the second, the Didache advised Christians to pray the Lord's prayer three times a day. Others sought disciplines in the Bible itself as ways to make the scriptural injunction to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17) practical. Psalm 55:17 suggested "evening and morning and at noon," and Daniel prayed three times a day (Dan. 6:10).
  13. ISBN 978-90-04-14603-7
    . So three minor hours of prayer were developed, at the third, sixth and ninth hours, which, as Dugmore points out, were ordinary divisions of the day for worldly affairs, and the Lord's Prayer was transferred to those hours.
  14. ^ "Church bells". Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. 25 July 2017. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  15. ISBN 978-1599429014
    . Retrieved 16 August 2012. The Angelus is a Christian devotion in memory of the Incarnation. Its name is derived from the opening words, Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ. It consists of three Biblical verses describing the mystery, recited as versicle and response, alternating with the salutation "Hail Mary!" and traditionally is recited in Catholic churches, convents and monasteries three times daily, 6:00 am, 12:00 noon and 6:00 pm, accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell. Some High Church Anglican and Lutheran churches also use the devotion.
  16. ISBN 978-0962995507
    . Retrieved 16 August 2012. The Angelus: In many churches the bell is run morning, noon, and evening in memory of the Incarnation of God, and the faithful say the following prayers, except during Eastertide, when the Regina coeli is said.
  17. ^ "What is the relationship between bells and the church? When and where did the tradition begin? Should bells ring in every church?". Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States. 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  18. ^ Mary Cecil, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney (1906). A Sketch of Egyptian History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Methuen. p. 399. Prayers 7 times a day are enjoined, and the most strict among the Copts recite one of more of the Psalms of David each time they pray. They always wash their hands and faces before devotions, and turn to the East.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  19. ISBN 978-0880281720
    . Retrieved 2012-08-16. But even for Muslims who pray infrequently, the adhan marks the passage of time through the day (in much the same way as church bells do in many Christian communities) and serves as a constant reminder that they are living in a Muslim community.
  20. ISBN 978-0761479260
    . Retrieved 16 August 2012. Muslims living in predominantly Islamic lands, however, have the benefit of the call to prayer (adhan). In the same way that much of the Christian world traditionally used bells to summon the faithful to church services, so the early Muslim community developed its own method of informing the entire community that the time for prayer had arrived.
  21. ISBN 978-1568541693
    . The first known use of bells in churches was by a bishop named Paulinus in the year 400.
  22. ^ a b Roger J. Smith (1997). "Church Bells". Sacred Heart Catholic Church and St. Yves Mission. Archived from the original on 2021-12-07. Retrieved 2012-10-26. Bells came into use in our churches as early as the year 400, and their introduction is ascribed to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, a town of Campania, in Italy. Their use spread rapidly, as in those unsettled times the church-bell was useful not only for summoning the faithful to religious services, but also for giving an alarm when danger threatened. Their use was sanctioned in 604 by Pope Sabinian, and a ceremony for blessing them was established a little later. Very large bells, for church towers, were probably not in common use until the eleventh century.

External links

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