Francis Berger
  • Blog
  • My Work

Short Explanations for the Daily Bell Ringing in My Village

6/4/2019

2 Comments

 
The church in my village, named after St. Stephen of Hungary, is a mere three hundred meters from our house, and the steeple is visible above the tree tops in the distance. The belltower is functional and marks the time with five distinct tolls from two different bells. Four higher pitched tolls note the passage of every quarter hour – one toll for quarter after the hour, two tolls for half past the hour, three tolls for quarter to the hour, and four tolls for the full hour. This is immediately followed by a deeper bell that marks the hour. In addition to this, the church bells toll daily for longer periods three times during the day.

Bell One – Get to Work, Peasants!

The morning bells serve as a communal alarm clock and ring at exactly five o’clock in the morning. They signaled it was time to head into the fields to begin the day’s work. Of course, very few of the village’s residents actually work in the fields today, but the morning bell ritual has remained. I personally like the morning bells, but I have read stories about residents in other, less-traditional villages and towns raising successful petitions against the morning bells and getting them stopped altogether. Luckily, the morning bells do not seem to bother anyone in my village, and it is my sincere hope that I will continue to hear them every day at dawn for as long I remain in this world.

Bell Two - Victory at the Siege of Belgrade

The noon bells, which are rung universally in Catholic and some older Protestant churches around the world, commemorates The Siege of Belgrade, an important event in European history that has been all but forgotten everywhere outside of Hungary.

In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and ushered in the end of the Byzantine Empire. After sacking Constantinople, the Turks turned their eyes toward conquering Europe. They initiated a campaign up the Balkans and sought to crush the Kingdom of Hungary before continuing their jihad against the rest of Christian Europe. Luckily for Europe, the Magyars decided to put up a fight and repelled the Ottoman onslaught from July 4–22, 1456. The Hungarian victory essentially ground the Ottoman advance to a halt and spared Europe from the Ottomans for seventy years.

During the battle, Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for Belgrade’s defenders, though the noon bell has since been attributed to the international commemoration of the eventual Hungarian victory at Belgrade. Apparently, news of the victory at Belgrade arrived sooner than the Pope’s order in some countries. As a result the ringing of the church bells at noon was thus transformed into a victory commemoration. The Pope never withdraw the order, and Catholic and the older Protestant churches continue to ring the church bells at noon to this very day.

Bell Three – Evening Mass or Time to Go Home to the Wife and Kids

The evening bell rings at seven in the winter and at eight in the summer and apparently marked the beginning of the daily evening mass a century ago, but daily evening masses have since dwindled to weekly evening masses. Nonetheless, the bells continue to ring every evening. People in my village now refer to it as the “time to stop drinking at the village pub and go home to the wife” bell.
​
For reasons I cannot explain, I always yearned to live in a place where I could hear the ringing of church bells on a daily basis. Now that I live in such a place and hear church bells daily, I have a deeper understanding of why I had yearned for such a thing in the first place. 
2 Comments
Bruce Charlton
6/5/2019 08:20:53

I can identify with what you say - since I began to notice such things, retrospectively I have only been happy living in places where I could hear church bells, especially in the evening.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/05/taking-church-bells-for-granted.html

Reply
Francis Berger
6/5/2019 08:51:55

@ Bruce - You know church bells possess a sublime quality when even atheists like Richard Dawkins think they sound lovely.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Blog and Comments

    Blog posts tend to be spontaneous, unpolished, first draft entries ranging from the insightful and periodically profound to the poorly-argued and occasionally disparaging.
     

    Comments are moderated. Anonymous comments are never published (please use your name or a pseudonym). 

    Emails welcome:

    f er en c ber g er (at) h otm   ail (dot) co m
    Blogs/Sites I Read
    Bruce Charlton's Notions
    Meeting the Masters
    From The Narrow Desert
    Synlogos ✞ Aggregator
    New World Island  
    New World Island YouTube
    ​Steeple Tea
    Berdyaev.com
    Adam Piggott
    Fourth Gospel Blog
    The Orthosphere
    Junior Ganymede

    Archives

    June 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    Picture
    A free PDF is also available in My Work. 
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.