In addition to their material value as tangible cultural assets, bells also hold many of the secrets of intangible heritage, reminding us, with their different tolls, of the daily life of our ancestors, who lived attentive to their sounds, marking and organising their daily lives.

In the West they were adopted by the Church in the 5th century, although they had been known for centuries. The Romans called them tintinabula and the Christians called them signum because they were used to announce their services. At least, from the 7th century onwards, we find the name of bells. According to documentary references and testimonies that have come down to the present, the early medieval models were of small dimensions, although over time they successively increased in size until, in the 13th century, they became large, in a process that continued to grow later. The most common shape of the bells is an inverted cup, rung by means of a rope attached to the clapper.

They have traditionally been cast in bronze, although different alloys are admitted according to the times and nations, using iron, gold and silver. Many of them bear inscriptions from psalms and liturgical hymns and, of course, have their name engraved on many occasions. The ritual for their blessing, in addition to being recorded in liturgical books, can be recreated visually in an engraving by B. Picart that illustrates the edition of the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde ( 1723).

Bells are always housed in towers and belfries. The towers that also housed the conjuratories acquired a great development as the uses of the bells multiplied, not only to call the faithful and signal religious festivals, but also to govern the life of the city with the advertisement of the hours, the warnings of fires, wars and other events of a civil nature.

Their sounds on all subject of parties and celebrations.

The functions of the bells have traditionally been liturgical and horary, there being some for liturgical use as well as for a tower clock. The ceremonial for the divine worship of cathedrals and temples had codified the different tolls as an external expression of festivities of different character. Their sounds were linked to the festive, but also to the funeral and even to the conjuration of clouds and plagues. Its use is defined by these Latin phrases: Laudo Deum verum (I praise the true God), plebem voco (I call the people), congrego clerum (I congregate the clergy), defunctos ploro (I mourn the dead), pestem fugo (I drive away the plague), daemonia ejicio (I expel the demons) et festa decoro (I rejoice the feast). In addition to these canonical uses, we know that they were also used for other more heterodox uses, such as the summoning of councils, auctions and even to call for a rebellion to deal with serious contingencies. In some cases the visitor could not but raise his voice, as in 1625 in Lezáun, when he saw that not even the abbot of the place could stop the custom of call, to the ringing of the bell, the bringing of the oxen so that the oxen could be grazed by a farmer or boyarico.

The chronicles of great events always narrate the accompaniment of bells. Thus, reference letter is made to them in the vow of Pamplona to San Saturnino in 1611, the immaculist vows of the Kingdom in 1621, the celebrations for the beatification and canonization of San Francisco Javier, co-patronage (1657), the inaugurations of the chapels of San Fermín (1717) and the Virgen del Camino (1776), or that of Santa Ana in Tudela (1724), the new conventual foundations, Holy Week, Christmas in the cathedral, the ceremonies related to the monarchy, the cathedral of Tudela or the arrival of relics and outstanding personalities, especially kings, viceroys and bishops. All those celebrations were special moments, celebrated with all kinds of festivities, popular, massive and urban, in a context in which the monarchy and the Church were careful to maintain the principles that supported them through images sublimated for rhetorical and propagandistic purposes.

On some occasions, such as in 1735 when the city of Tudela received the good news that the decanal jurisdiction would not be annihilated for the benefit of the bishopric of Tarazona, the chronicler dedicated verses to the bells of the city that rang non-stop in a general ringing:

Although so many bells
speak loudly,
more than four in Tudela
must remain deaf

To ward off bad storms accompanied by hail, which were lethal for the products of the land, the presence of relics in the bell towers between May 3 and September 14 was generalized in past centuries, at the same time as the tentenublo ringing, which can still be heard in Los Arcos and Alsasua.

As it could not be otherwise, also the clash between jurisdictions, so abundant in the past centuries, sometimes had as an excuse the ringing of bells. An example is transcript in 1784 of the administrative office de Cámara of the recently created bishopric of Tudela for having rung the bells on the occasion of the arrival of the viceroy Don Manuel Azlor without the permission of the ordinary. Several processes conserved in the Diocesan file of Pamplona, studied by Isidoro Ursúa, give account of lawsuits originated by the use and way of ringing the bells. Also the abuses on the part of the young people at the time of prolonging the bandeos and peals gave rise to severe reprimands.

The different touches

The tolls are organized around the swinging (oscillating movement of the bell that makes the clapper move at the same rhythm hitting the instrument and producing a binary sound), the turning (which is the complete rotation of the bell, with a yoke that has counterweights of lead or other material to facilitate the movement and that produces a tertiary sound) and the peal guide (in which the bell is fixed and is rung manually through the movement of the clapper with a rope).

The second chapter of the third degree scroll of the General regional law deals with the three tolls that should precede the celebration of the mass in the royal villas. The Synodal Constitutions of the bishopric of Pamplona (1591) deal extensively with the schedules of the ringing of bells at mass and vespers, trying to put order in the confusion and noise that they generated in the festivities, both in the capital and in the towns. Moderation was requested in the peals so that they would not be broken. The rules and regulations was extended with regard to the ringing of the deceased because of observed disorder and excess and because of the desire to avoid disturbance and unrest. The rules and regulations demanded that for the deceased man "three clamors with two big bells, and no more, and other three when they take him to bury: and other three at the time of giving him earth, when the response is said". For women the same but in issue of two and for those under sixteen years of age "the clamors are rung for men and for women, (as mentioned above) with small bells, and not with the big bells, which should only be rung for older bodies".    

A curious manuscript from the parish of San Saturnino, file , from the end of the 18th century, gives an account of how the bells were rung at that time during vespers, festivities, novenas and special functions. Depending on the category of the festivity, there were two types of tolls: first class, with three bells, and second, with two. The morning ringing was at 7 o'clock, except on the days of Corpus Christi, San Antonio and San Fermín, which was done average hour earlier. There was another ringing at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, corresponding to vespers, which also took place on the day of the festivity. Before dark, the so-called "toque de oraciones" was rung.

In different ceremonials of religious orders the way of ringing the bells is recorded with all precision. In that of the Capuchins of the province of Cantabria (1770) four modes are distinguished: to the flight, half flight, to peak and to peal, in this last case: "without movement of the bells, only with the hands, and the language of the bell, in sign of rejoicing".

Bells and bell ringers in Navarra

His study in Navarra has its own name in the person of the priest and researcher Isidoro Ursúa Irigoyen who with patience and dedication wrote the monograph Bells and bell ringers in our churches (1987), as well as other works on the topic. His contributions have been fundamental for the knowledge of everything that bells have meant in the Comunidad Foral. Currently, different associations and individuals are carrying out inventory and cataloguing work, as well as recovering and recording traditional ringing.

Among the oldest are those of the cathedral of Tudela (1347), which would be the oldest of those preserved, that of Zabaldica (1377) and that of Esnoz from the same period, as well as several from the 15th century, some with inscriptions, such as those of Magdalena de Tudela (1414), Lizaso (1481), Echarri-Larráun (1498) and others without date in Agorreta, Ansoain, Aoiz, Erdozain, Erro. Aoiz, Erdozain, Erro. Navascués, Olite and Ilúrdoz.

The process of realization was very complex, from the licenses for its execution, the contracts, the foundry, the weighing and the ascent to the tower. Among the famous bell ringers who worked in these lands, it should be noted that most of them were masters of Trasmiera. The Carredano and Quintana families constituted authentic clans that, from generation to generation, passed on the secrets of the official document. Among the masters of the land we will mention Juan de Alli, Juan de Lecumberri and Juan de Aguinaga.

In the cathedral of Pamplona, the bell María

About the bells of the Pamplona cathedral, we have news from the Age average and we also know that they gained special significance from the year 1092, when King Sancho Ramírez determined that the populations that saw the mother church and heard its bells should go to celebrate certain special festivities of rogation. The cathedral chroniclers and, especially in the Age of Enlightenment, Don Fermín de Lubián, prior, a diligent, highly educated man and a great connoisseur of diocesan and cathedral history, echoed that custom. The aforementioned canon noted in the middle of the 18th century that that privilege was kept unalterably throughout time, until in the middle of the 17th century, due to the distance, up to fifty localities were freed from that obligation and, later, at the end of the same century, the rest, leaving only around 1750 the churches of Burlada and Ansoain, which used to be dispensed by the cathedral chapter "so that in attention to the bad work of their parishioners, they could return before the cathedral's rogation".

The cathedral of Pamplona preserves inside one of its two towers a bell called the Maria, made in 1584 by the master Villanueva, which is the largest in use in Spain. Its clapper weighs 300 kilos and the bell 13,000 kilos. This verse has been passed down from generation to generation:

Maria called me
one hundred quintals weight
and whoever doesn't believe it
take me to the weight

It was built at a time when divine worship was the object of magnificence on the part of dignitaries, canons and bishops. Late chronicles that copied old documentation show that, after being cast on 15th September 1584, the old tower was climbed on 27th October of the same year, in less than three hours, without any misfortune whatsoever.

The author of the bell, Pedro de Villanueva, was originally from the town of Güemes, in the region of Trasmiera, and arrived in Navarre in search of commissions around 1576. He died in 1591, after having worked on "very good and chosen" bells. Since the end of the 16th century, the sounds of the great bell María have accompanied the cathedral ceremonial in the days of great liturgical feasts, processions, deaths of bishops and members of the chapter, as well as in other historical events of all subject.

Miracles, fires and Góngora's visit in 1609

In some localities of the geography of the region we find miraculous ringing of the bells. Thus, we know that on March 16, 23 and 27, 1684, the only bell of the sanctuary of the sanctuary of the Puy of Estella rang three times four times "without touching it any rational living person, neither sensitive, nor wind", according to the book Becerro. The fact was interpreted as a notice of the Virgin to warn against the arrival of some French parties with numerous infantry and cavalry, who entered by Roncesvalles on the 20th of the mentioned month, fact that Javier de Ibarra collects in his study. Years before, in 1564, the bell of Fontellas also rang miraculously for twelve hours on November 17 of that year, which motivated an information by the ecclesiastical authority, in which several witnesses testified.

Among the fires, the most dreadful was that of the collegiate church of Tudela in 1747, when the wooden spire was covered with lead to protect it from the waters. When the work was about to be completed and as a result of a great wind, a cauldron of fire fell on the lead and burned the spire, the scaffolding collapsed and the bells fell, some of them even melting, with a dreadful fire that turned the tower into a real "tree of fire".

In the early seventeenth century, when the Corpus Christi festivities were going to develop as never seen before in Pamplona, when unique works were coming to the city, Góngora visited the Navarrese capital in 1609 and the bells of its temples did not let him sleep, something he took very badly. In response to the Cordovan writer, a local poet dedicated a sharp sonnet to him, in which he treats him as an Andalusian parrot, a Cordovan clapper, a man of little faith, deranged in his judgment and gray-haired.