Join us on Wednesday, January 20 from 12-1PM over zoom for the third talk in our Religion for Lunch Series.
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The traditional power attributed to bell sounds of driving away storms, the devilish forces that caused them, and evil more generally was a phenomenon that helps us to understand different notions of sacred space in post-Reformation Germany. Traditionally understood to have “apotropaic” power rooted in their priestly consecration, bells in Protestant areas were to be desacralized, their sounds now understood as calls to prayer and penitence rather than as exerting magical power. Defenders of the Catholic church, however, reemphasized medieval arguments for the sacral power of consecrated bells and continued to insist on their efficacy against storms. Despite Protestant efforts to the contrary, local populations persisted in traditional beliefs about weather ringing well into the modern era. Throughout the period, bells were deeply involved not only in mutual definitions of sacral space and time, but also in the enchantment, and gradual disenchantment, of the European soundscape.
