ry weather,
and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In
certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet
and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon. Against storms
St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress;
but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a
most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring
parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton
which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially
invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country
to his shrine.(234)

(234) As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du
touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his
Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most
widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a
prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging
certain tags(235) on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms;
but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval
superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the
year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by
himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran,
and christening it with his own name.(236)

(235) Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz,
1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.

(236) For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions, see
Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif.,
s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968.
The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the
Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the
Pope's sponsorship.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in
ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in
multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch
of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church
towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, "Ad
fugandos demones." Another, in Lug