Purpose
The bell is rung to signify the time, to call people to worship, for special events such as weddings and funerals, or historically to sound a civil defense or fire alarm.
Bell towers may also contain carillons or chimes, musical instruments traditionally composed of large bells which are sounded by cables, chains, or cords connected to a keyboard. These can be found in many churches in Europe and America and at some college and university campuses. In modern constructions that do not qualify as carillons, rather than using heavy bells the sound may be produced by the striking of small metal rods whose vibrations are amplified electronically and sounded through loudspeakers. Simulated carillon systems have also used recordings or samplings of bells onto vinyl record, tape, compact disc, or memory chips.
Some churches have an exconjuratory in the bell tower, a space where ceremonies were conducted to ward off weather related calamities, like storms and excessive rain. The main bell tower of the Cathedral of Murcia has four.
In Christianity, many Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran churches ring their church bells from belltowers three times a day, at 6:00 A.M., 12:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M., summoning the Christian faithful to recite the Lord’s Prayer, or the Angelus, a prayer recited in honour of the Incarnation of God. In addition, most Christian denominations ring church bells to call the faithful to worship, signaling the start of a mass or service of worship. In many historic Christian Churches, church bells are also rung during the processions of Candlemas and Palm Sunday; the only time of the Christian Year when church bells are not rung include Maundy Thursday through the Easter Vigil. The Christian tradition of the ringing of church bells from a belltower is analogous to Islamic tradition of the adhan from a minaret.
Read more about this topic: Bell Tower
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“And the purpose of the many stops and starts will be made clear:
Backing into the old affair of not wanting to grow
Into the night, which becomes a house, a parting of the ways
Taking us far into sleep. A dumb love.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)