A lot of people have stories about horrible jobs. Gross tasks, appalling bosses, crazy co-workers. As ridiculous as some job tasks can be, none of us would have wanted to be a church bell ringer in the Middle Ages. Why? Being a church bell ringer in the Middle Ages could get you killed.
Before the time of the Enlightenment (17th-18th century), people lived in a world that we would consider enchanted. People lived in a world that we modern folks would consider magical and backward thinking. Before the Enlightenment, things that we might give a scientific explanation for were often chalked up to some movement of unseen evil spirits or deities. Before the 17th and 18th centuries witch, demon, gnome, mermaid, and hobgoblin myths were familiar to people of all ages and classes. Widespread were reports that the devil entered into an animal or even a person. People thought devils were everywhere: in houses, in fields, on the streets, in the water, in forests, and in fires. The same was true for the weather.
Stormy weather was believed to be the direct work of God and or the devil himself. The Christian philosopher Saint Augustine (354-430 CE) held this belief to be beyond controversy. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE) stated in his Summa Theologica, “Rain and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons. It is a dogma of faith that the demons can produce winds, storms, and rain of fire from heaven.”1 Martin Luther (1483-1546) asserted, "The winds are nothing but good or bad spirits. Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing.”2
It’s easy to see why religious figures were especially inclined to imbue lightning with divine significance because churches were disproportionately affected by it. In many 17th-18th century cities and towns, the tallest buildings in the area were church buildings. Large houses of worship with steeples and spires were likelier to be struck by lightning than others. The odds of getting “struck by lightning” may be a cliché means of comparison to say that something is unlikely, but for many churches and their bell ringers, these odds weren’t trivial.
Bell ringing became the church's agreed-upon method of valid storm repellent. It was believed that ringing church bells during storms would cause the storm to weaken and ward off lightning strikes. Philip Dray, in his book Stealing God’s Thunder, writes that many bells carried inscriptions bragging about their power to dispel lightning. The engraving on one German bell reads, “Warding off lightning and evil spirits”, while a French bell claims, “It is I who dissipate the thunders.”
In addition to the inscriptions, bells often received special lightning-related blessings. In an 1855 essay, French physicist François Arago quotes a particularly colorful prayer from a bell-blessing ceremony:
“May the sound of this bell put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of man; the ravages of thunder and lightning, the rapid fall of stones, the disasters of tempests …”3
Even supposed men of “reason” like René Descartes and Francis Bacon, who weren’t convinced by the church’s superstitions, agreed with the use of bell-ringing as a valid storm repellant. As Dray explains, they thought the acoustical disturbance of ringing a large bell would create “some concussive energy that deterred lightning bursts.”4
If you were a church bell ringer and a storm was approaching. Your stress level started going up because according to Dray 121 bell-ringers were killed by lightning from 1750–1783. The 340-foot-tall bell tower of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice was struck by lightning in 1388, 1417, 1489, 1548, 1565, 1658, 1745, 1761, and 1762.
One might assume that finding a way to prevent lightning damage was more important to the clergy than perhaps any other group at the time. And it wasn’t just lightning strikes messing up church property that was concerning. It was lives lost. Not just that of bell ringers but others as well. For instance, in 1769, a lightning bolt struck the tower of St Nazaire in Brescia, northern Italy. Near the tower were vaults storing around 100 tons of gunpowder. The lightning strike detonated the gunpowder and created an explosion that destroyed a sixth of the city and killed around 3,000 people.5
Into this moment steps Benjamin Franklin and his kite-lightning experiment. A seemingly rudimentary experiment by our modern standards. Yet Franklin's experiment signaled a shift in thinking about how people viewed the world and God's role in that world. Franklin’s experiment disenchanted our understanding of lightning and created difficulties for many in their view of God. In part two we will look at Franklin’s lightning experiment and the reaction to it. In part three we will explore implications for followers of Jesus and church leaders.
1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1911-1925), Ia, q 80, art. 2.
2 Martin Luther and M Michelet, The Life Of Luther (London: David Bogue, 1846). 321.
3 Arago, François., Humboldt, Alexander von., Sabine, Edward. Meteorological Essays. (United Kingdom: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855). 219.
4 Dray, Philip. Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America. (United States: Random House Publishing Group, 2005). 69.
5 Plester, Jeremy. “Weatherwatch: Lightning Made Castles and Churches Very Dangerous Places.” The Guardian, June 15, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2011/jun/16/weatherwatch-lightning-thunderstorm.
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