The Church Bells of Cholula

For over 500 years, the city skyline of the city of Cholula (pronounced "chilula") in Mexico's state of Puebla, has been silhouetted by a series of tall church steeples.  From the top of the ancient pyramids at the center of town, the spires look like spindled Christmas trees that rise up, from the base of an ominously perched volcano.  Many of these steeples were built around the time of the Spanish conquistador, Cortez, who, as legend has it, ordered that 365 churches be built, one for each day of the year.  The truth is there are probably only around 150 churches in this historically rural peasant city.  However, it isn't the steeples that will be missed after last week's 7.1 ricter scale earthquake hit that country.  It is the church bells.  What will be missed will be;

The Church Bells of Cholula

One resident, while reflecting on the loss of the bells themselves this past week said, "Without church bells, Cholula just isn't the same."  Because of the earthquake, all but ten of Cholula's churches have been closed.  Parishioners have been forced to meet outside in city squares or in public parks until the churches can be safely inspected.  Hand held harmoniums have taken the place of pipe organs, card tables have replaced church altars.

In ancient times church bells served more of a function than simply offering music to residents of the city.  The church bells would ring during times of natural disaster, to warn residents to find shelter.  Church bells would be "peeled", as the English would say, to announce the wedding of a local couple, or "tolled" when a member of the church had died (Hemingway most likely got the idea of the title of his famous novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from the church bells that he heard in Spain, during the Spanish Revolutionary War).  Church bells would offer joyful "bings" and "bangs" and "bongs" on Christmas day, to announce the birth of the newborn Savior to the world.  I will never forget hearing the tolling of the church bells of Notre Dame in Paris, ring for the death of Pope John Paul II.  Not anymore.

The Church Bells of Cholula...

...do not ring.

In her book, "The Nine Tailors", novelist Dorothy Sayers (a friend of C.S. Lewis) used the bells of a local British congregation to determine the perpetrator of a murder, discovered by the Lord Peter Whimsey.  The bells, in this case, were rung in an English fashion by a talented handful of local residents who saw their duty to ring the bells as important a job as bringing in the wheat sheaves during the harvest.  The same ardent attention to the ringing of bells in Cholula must have been carried out by generations of local farmers.

It is difficult to say when the church bells of Cholula might eventually be refurbished and deemed safe once again to ring out in that city center.  There are, surely more important tasks at hand in the rebuilding of all of Mexico's infrastructure once again.  Schools have to be rebuilt, workplaces have to be renovated, and most sadly of all, the 300 people who died in that earthquake have to be laid to rest.  For those who have died in this tragedy, however, no church bells will mark the toll of their death.  Because,

The Church Bells of Cholula

have, for the moment, gone silent...

All For Now,

GB

(background research for this blog has been provided by Carrie Kahn of NPR news)