I think I used to have
a bell, but a quick search of the premises has
turned up, in the way of useful items, only a small
apothecary's pestle and mortar made of marble. No bell. I
must not be a bell person. It never occurred to me that
there really were such persons until I saw a list of the
associations for people who own many hundreds of bells and
ding-dong away the internet hours discussing such things
as full circle ringing, gamelan divisions of the octave
and general campanology. They are serious folks who do not
like it if you crack wise about their collections and say
things such as "What? No whistles?" My two favorite
expressions with “bell” are “For whom the bell tolls” and
“Hell's bells”. And I do remember a dreadful poem by Poe
called “The Bells” in which they tinkle, toll, throb, sob,
moan and groan. In only 110 agonizing lines, Poe takes us
through the entire range of emotions that we have
typically tolled to, from “What a world of merriment their
melody foretells!” through "What a tale of terror, now,
their turbulency tells!" to “What a world of solemn
thought their monody compels.”
But if you
like that sort of thing, I have found a great museum for
you! It's in the town of Agnone, 80 km (50 miles)
north-east of Naples in the Isernia province of the region
of Molise. It is the John Paul II Historical Museum of
Bells and has been open only since 1999 but is an adjunct
of the Marinelli Pontifical Foundry that describes itself
as the “oldest Italian bell foundry and among the oldest
in the world.”
It is documented that the
foundry has been in existence at least since 1339, when Nicodemus Marinelli,
called “Campanarus", cast a 200 kg bell for a church in
the city of nearby Frosinone. Literature from the museum
says "...it is likely that large
bronze bells were cast in Agnone even before 1200."
Pontifical in the name of the foundry stems from the fact
that Pope Pius XI gave the foundry permission in 1924 to
use the Papal Coat of Arms on their bells. The foundry has
been on good terms ever since with the Papacy and has
turned out many bells and items for ceremonies at the
Vatican. The foundry has had tough moments in its long
history; during the Second World War, for example, German
troops occupied it and used furniture, tools and
important documents to fuel stoves, but also melted bells
for bronze useful in the production of new weapons. The
town was in the center of the formidable German defensive networks strung
across Italy below Monte Cassino to block the Allied
advance toward Rome in late 1943.
When that war had
destroyed the historic Monte Cassino Benedictine Abbey, it
was the Marinelli foundry that cast the bells put in place
during the reconstruction. There are very few foundries
left in Italy; there used to be eight in Agnone, alone, of
which only Marinelli remains. The museum has general
cultural and historical information on bells and their
production, and the tour shows you a large collection of
bells and documents both ancient and modern relating to
them. There is a library, an archive, a projection room,
and you might even get a peek into the foundry, itself,
and see some real action. Bells cast in the Marinelli
Pontifical Foundry have reached some faraway places. I
found out about the foundry and museum in the first place
when I noticed an item about an Italian bell in the town
square of Monongah, W. Virginia in the United States; the
bell was sent recently to help commemorate a mine disaster
from 1907.
(See this link.)