The bell-tower

In the Beato de Tábara, completed in the year 970, we can see the scriptorium of the Monastery of Tábara (Zamora) together with a tall bell-tower and ringers, the same elements we see in bell-towers in Europe the last millennium. Bells and bell-towers developed substantially and relatively uniformly during the Middle Ages, as part of churches in stable settlements and emerging urban centres where the bell-tower was both a municipal and an ecclesiastical instrument.

Between the Middle and Modern Ages, municipal corporations along the North European Atlantic coast and linked to the Hanseatic League developed municipal bell-towers, the beffroi, belfries and belfry in France, Belgium and England.

Apparently, during this period and linked to long-distance Hanseatic trade, carillons were developed, a simplified version of Chinese bells which did not catch on in Spain.

Bells and bell-towers in Europe had become a characteristic cultural tradition with a musical language and regional variants which was exported to America, whereas in the Far East a musical tradition had developed.