YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

16
MARY E. WOLINSKI
different. The lordly speaker actually is musing on the sound of church bells. He is
reminded of the bells (sainz) of St-Pere de Sanz and he recalls Savinien beating Paul
and Baldwin with great mallets. When the speaker hears them, he rejoices and is
transported by the lively and joyous beauty of the sound. Paul and Baldwin are, I
believe, the names of the bells. Certainly it was a medieval tradition to give bells
names. 20 Savinien was the local bellringer, who regularly would mount the tower to
sound the bells, not by pulling on a rope, but by striking them with large mallos,
which I take to be the plural of maillot, meaning ‘mallet’. 21 The word mallos can also
mean buzzing insects, such as bees and wasps, which is why Stimming hypothesized
that mallos stood for bagpipes with their buzzing drone bass. 22 However, musette and
cornemuse commonly designate the bagpipe in Old French. 23 Stimming’s misinterpretation
of mallos appears to have caused him to misread this music-making scene
entirely. The mallos are not being played by Paul and Baldwin, but are wielded by
Savinien, who uses them to beat (baste) Paul and Baldwin to create a joyful sound.
Medieval bellringers were known to have had more than one bell to strike and to
have even played tunes, both sacred and secular. They were the human predecessors
of the mechanical jacquemarts that are visible, even if only as ornaments, in many
belltowers today. 24
There are still two mysteries in this text. First, in the verse … et Pous et Baudouins
there are three single notes over the first word, et. Thus, it is possible that there was
another name before that of Paul, and that there were three bells rather than two.
Second, it is difficult to know which church is meant by Saint Pere de Sanz. The
largest city by this name is Sens, which had three churches dedicated to St Peter: the
large abbey of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif in the countryside beyond the city walls, and two
smaller churches inside the town, Saint-Pierre-le-Rond and Saint-Pierre-le-Donjon. 25
There are also several villages and estates called Sains, but none of the parish churches
that I know of in these locations were dedicated to St Peter. 26 However, there is a
church of Saint-Pierre in the town of Santes, just outside of Lille. The medieval church
20 For many examples of bells’ names see J.-D. BLAVIGNAC, La Cloche: Etudes sur son histoire et sur
ses rapports avec la société aux différents âges, Geneva, 1877.
21 See A. TOBLER, E. LOMMATZSCH and H.H. CHRISTMANN, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, Berlin,
Wiesbaden, 1925-, 5, cols. 794–804.
22 STIMMING, Die altfranzösischen Motette, pp. 183–184.
23 F. GODEFROY, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle,
Paris, 1885, repr. New York – Vaduz 1961, vol. 5, col. 457; vol. 2, col. 305.
24 On the ringing of bells to tell time see P. PRICE, Bells and man, Oxford – New York, 1983, p. 173.
25 See R. MOUILLA, Sens: un siècle d’images, Sens, 1994, pp. 144–145; Gallia Christiana in provincias
ecclesiasticas distributa, 12, Paris, 1715–1874, p. 2 and col. 58; R.-H. BAUTIER, M. GILLES
and A.-M. BAUTIER, Clarius: Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens, Paris, 1979, pp. 50, 74.
26 E. NÈGRE, Toponymie générale de la France, Geneva, 1990–1991, vol. 1, nos. 3554 and 11527; vol.
3, no. 28812. Some parish churches are identified in A.C.H. MENCHE DE LOISNE, Dictionnaire
topographique du Département du Pas-de-Calais, Paris, 1907, pp. 337–338.