Tintinnabulum (ancient Rome)

For other uses, see Tintinnabulum (disambiguation).

A bronze polyphallic tintinnabulum of Mercury from Pompeii: the missing bells were attached to each tip (Naples Museum).
Tintinnabulum depicting a man struggling with his phallus as a raging beast (1st century BC, Naples Museum)

In ancient Rome, a tintinnabulum (less often tintinnum)[1] was a wind chime or assemblage of bells. A tintinnabulum often took the form of a bronze ithyphallic figure or of a fascinum, a magico-religious phallus thought to ward off the evil eye and bring good fortune and prosperity.

A tintinnabulum acted as a door amulet.[2][3] These were hung near thresholds[4] at a shop or house, under the peristyles (around the inner courtyard or garden) by the bedroom, or the venereum, where the wind would cause them to tinkle.[5][2] They were also made to ring like doorbells, a series of them being tied to cord attached to a bell pull.[6]

The sounds of bells were believed to keep away evil spirits; compare the apotropaic role of the bell in the "bell, book, and candle" ritual of the earlier Catholic Church.[2][7] It has also been surmised that oscilla hung on hooks along colonnaded porticoes may have comparable evil-warding intents.[8]

Hand-bells have been found in sanctuaries and other settings that indicate their religious usage, and were used at the Temple of Iuppiter Tonans, "Jupiter the Thunderer."[9] Elaborately decorated pendants for tintinnabula occur in Etruscan settings, depicting for example women carding wool, spinning, and weaving.[10] Bells were hung on the necks of domestic animals such as horses and sheep to keep track of the animals, but perhaps also for apotropaic purposes.[11]

A number of examples are part of the Secret Museum collection at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.[12]

  1. ^ In the Latin of 6th-century Roman Gaul; J.N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin, 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 321.
  2. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference johns was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference montserrat was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference taylor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Fanin (1871), p. 58.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference deiss was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ "Bronze phallic wind chime (tintinabulum)". Highlights from the British Museum. Archived from the original on 2015-10-18. Retrieved 2017-06-15.
  8. ^ Taylor (2005), pp. 83, 95
  9. ^ Duncan Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Brill, 1990), vol. II.1, pp. 504-5.
  10. ^ Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 252.
  11. ^ Adams, Regional Diversification, p. 321.
  12. ^ Fanin (1871), pp. 58ff