La fonction identitaire des cloches.

In the life of a community--and especially of a rural community--bells have always played a significant number of religious, social, symbolic, and identity-shaping functions. The present paper deals mainly with the manner in which Romanian communities in Transylvania experienced the loss of their church bells during the political and military conflicts that ravaged the province during the 19th and the 20th centuries (the Revolution of 1848-1849, the two world wars). The church bells of the Romanian rural communities suffered most during World War I. Both Communities and individuals felt the loss of the bells requisitioned for the war effort, as it was their sound that defined their identity, marked every stage in their lives, and announced their moments of joy, sadness, and danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]