The Reformation of the Soundscape: Bell-ringing in Early Modern Lutheran Germany

Abstract

Before the invention of megaphones, bells were the loudest and most far-reaching means of communication. Over the centuries, a cluster of practices had evolved around bell-ringing, which were called into question during the Reformation. In Germany, religious reformers attacked traditional beliefs in the special power of the bell sound and strove to reduce its meaning to a simple sign. But in the process of the formation of the Lutheran church on a territorial basis in the subsequent decades, a great variety of approaches towards the use of bells in a sacred context were developed that integrated some of the controversial traditions into Lutheran pious practice. This article traces these developments in the Holy Roman Empire from the 1520s until the end of the seventeenth century on the basis of church ordinances and sermons delivered at the inauguration of new bells. It reconstructs the transformation of the religious soundscape and its perception by contemporaries, thus contributing to the understanding of early modern confessional culture as well as to sensory history.