Timekeeper
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven— Ecclesiastes 3:1 NASB
Time – Recognize this?
This is the bell tower of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, perhaps better known as “The Duomo” in Florence, Italy. As you travel all over Europe, you will find many such bell towers. In fact, even to this day you’ll hear the bells tolling at various times during the day (but not at night. Have you ever wondered why?). So, here’s the question. Why did the Church build towers for bells, because that’s where they are—next to churches or in churches? Why?
The answer comes from understanding the authority of the Church. But it’s not the kind of authority you might imagine. It’s not about holding poor souls over the flames of Hell in order to scare people into Heaven. It’s not about binding and loosing (as the text is usually misunderstood). It’s not about “upon this rock.” In order to understand why bell towers were crucial, you need to watch a clip from the off-beat sci-fi movie Lucy.
Time is the real fabric of our existence. If you control time, you control humanity. That’s precisely what the Church did. The bells were signals of the authority of the Church before mechanical clocks. They told the people what time it was according to liturgical law. Of course, no one actually “controls” time, but controlling the perception of time is a close substitute. Today we do this with punch-clocks, train schedules and the invention of the 24-hour day.
“The conception of time was changing in the fifteenth century. Throughout the Middle Ages it has been associated with the liturgical hours. The Latin word hora ‘hour,’ was in fact synonymous with prayer. Each of these hours had been divided into four parts of ten minutes’ duration, while each minute was divided into forty ‘moments.’ By 1400, however, it had become the custom to divide the hour into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds. The pace of life was increasing.”[1]
The mechanical clock didn’t just change the way we count time. It began the shift to move power out of the hands of the Church (oh, and by the way, why do you suppose the minaret is still crucial to the practice of Islam?). At first the Church simply put clocks on the towers, but soon clocks showed up on other, non-religious buildings and town squares and the Church lost its grip on determining time. It lost its grip on the daily process of life. Eternity became its last carrot and stick. And you thought that thing you wear on your wrist was only a way to keep track of your day. No, sir. Not by a long shot. It is the work of the devil, removing power from God’s Church (I’m kidding, of course, but you get the idea I’m sure). Rolex is another version of 666.
Topical Index: time, bells, power, Ecclesiastes 3:1
[1] Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2000), p. 51.
