397 Aｽø Zﾊﾙｮｦçþ ^çﾙþ THE RELIGIOUS SOUNDSCAPE OF THE EARLY PALAEOLOGAN AGE: WHAT WAS IT REALLY LIKE? Abstract: This article discusses a signifcant element of the religious sound- scape of the Orthodox communities in the Balkans, the call to mass. The period between the Byzantine reconquest of Constantinople (1261) and the death of the Serbian King Milutin (1282–1321) witnessed the expansion of bell ringing in churches and monasteries while the semantron, the tradition- al instrument of the Byzantine Church, continued to be employed. Hence, the frst decades of the Palaeologan age were crucial for the formation of a new religious soundscape that included the sounds of both church bells and semantra, that is, it was eclectic. A combination of written sources and instances of material culture attest the development of this heterogeneous soundscape. The former include references from Byzantine and Serbian sources while the latter comprises two bells cast in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century. These artefacts help us to visualise the type of church bells employed in the Balkans during the reign of King Milutin. The aim of the contribution is to provide a picture -as general as possible- of the reli- gious soundscape of the Early Palaeologan age and highlight the signifcant transformation that it underwent in these years. Keywords: Church bells, semantra, religious soundscape, Early Palaeolo- gan age, Late Byzantine period The use of bell ringing to gather the faithful and regulate the everyday life of monastic communities is thought to have been common in the Palaeologan age (1261–1453). 1 While church bells had already been employed before 1204, 2 the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople spread their use. Until then, the usual instrument of the Byzantine Church was the semantron, normally an elongated piece of wood that was struck with a mallet. 3 For instance, the travel 1 Price 1983: 101; Williams 1985: 22–24; Hannick 1998: 6–10; Varsallona 2016; Miljković 2018: 287–296. 2 Rodriguez Suarez 2021a. 3 Price 1983: 80–83; Williams 1985: 10–19; Kazhdan 1991: 1868; Miljković 2018: 271–281. 271.222(497)-526.9 10.46793/6008-065-5.397RS