Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Photo: Murali Kumar K.

LOST IN TIME Church bells were often an invitation to prayer, though now, most churches have stopped using them

As you plod up the stairs of the belfry or bell tower of the 1882-erected St. Mary’s Basilica in Shivajinagar, round winding stairs and a half-broken ladder that close on you and defy gravity, historical chimes are unfurled in the most gothic of settings with a magnificent view of the city. Balancing your way round two large slightly chipped bells to peer at the inscriptions that have been covered with dust, grime, bird droppings, drops of rain reveal: “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” – “Glory to God in the Highest” in Latin, donated by “R.R. Arokeasawmy” and probably made by Eugene Baudouin Flondeur in Marseille in 1881. “French missionaries built this church. The bells are in perfect condition and there is one man employed to ring them. The ringing of bells is God’s invitation to worship, forget difficulties and create an atmosphere of prayer,” says Parish Priest A.S. Anthony Swamy.

It is said that church bells were started in 400 A.D. in Campania, a town in Italy by Bishop Paulinus of Nola, thus giving two Latin words for bells – “campana” and “nola”. Church bells which were later consecrated by Pope Sabinian in 604 A.D., were subsequently brought to Eastern churches around the 9th century. St. Gregory of Tours is the first person to mention the bells’ use in Christian worship – customary in the Celtic regions from the 6th century. And since then, bells have jingled all the way through history.

Church bells were baptised in a ceremony – washed with holy water and salts by priests reciting exorcism to ward off evils of the atmosphere like storms that “disturb the peace” of worshippers who come to pray.

Remembers Father Saleema of the 1841-erected St. Patrick’s Church on Museum Road: “In my childhood in Goa, you could hear the church bells from a distance of coconut groves. It began as a symbol of time as there were no watches or clocks in those days. As soon as my grandmother heard the church bells ring, she would tell us to stop playing or eating and start prayers.” He says that it would take 15 minutes of pulling the rope for the church bells to start ringing. He states: “Italy and France were great bell-manufactuers – so around the time of 1841 when the church was being built, it would have been shipped and brought here by the Irish.”

“Church bells were the time keepers of the poor and are rung as an invitation to prayer.” He adds: “The Angelus rung at morning was also called the “Peace Bell”, at noon it was meditation on the Passion of Christ and then, the evening-bell was time to leave work and remember God.” The ‘Angelus’ which drew from the Latin “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae” translated to “the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary” was a call for prayer. It could have also originated from the “Curfew” or evening bell when farmers were deemed to finish work and go back home.

But Fr. Saleema feels that nobody now expects bells to be used as electronic bells are commonly used. Three of the four church bells at St. Patrick’s have developed cracks as they have been pulled by the clapper (tongue) and constant hitting on the same spot have damaged the bells and the sound is not the same. “We have not found anyone to repair these bells, though people have come forward to pay crores of rupees and keep them as monuments.”

At the 1852-established, Holy Trinity Church, secretary Francis Gunaseelan leads the way up a broad solid wooden stairway to a landing where the rope can be pulled. Here the bellman keeps watch of events through two small round holes that gives a view of the altar and of the entrance-gate and then rings it accordingly. “When a couple-to-be exchanges vows, he rings it continuously and when a car carrying a dead body enters the compound he pulls it down once (passing bell).” Up a steep wooden stairway, you come to an opening where a lone bell rests on a large rod that is swayed by the rope, is engraved: “C & G Mears Founders, London, 1847.”

The rod is regularly maintained to endure friction by applying grease every six to 12 months.

At the 146-year-old East Parade Tamil Church, a tiny bell at the church altar hangs from the high ceiling. Says Rev. Job Jayaraj: “Since this church is no longer in a residential area, we only ring at the start of each service and at important ceremonies and really not as a prayer-call.” Kneeling down in prayer, head bent in silent contemplation, the sound of the church bells surge in your heart. From the Egyptian holy ritual of blowing a trumpet to the Greek of hitting a metal or wooden sheet with a hammer to the Celtic ringing of grandiose bells, you really believe that “the sound of a bell has the power to charm, to amaze, to warn, to frighten, and to lift the spirit”.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail