FANBELLS. – The *flabellum* (or fly-whisk) is today commonly understood to mean two large fans made of ostrich feathers arranged in two rows, mounted on a long staff covered with crimson velvet and adorned with a gold ribbon. These are carried on either side of the pope when he processes in the *sedia gestatoria* and when he carries the Eucharist in procession on the *thalamus*.
However, the *flabellum* or *muscalum* was already known in antiquity, used in both civil and religious life for purposes of social distinction and for a practical aim, namely to keep flies, mosquitoes, and the like at bay. Babylonian, Assyrian, and Greek monuments frequently depict rulers and high officials holding such instruments. Latin literature contains frequent allusions to the practical purpose of the fan (cf. Ovid, *Ars amatoria*, I, 161; Martial, *Epigramm.*, III, 72; II, 72; Plautus, *Trinummus*, II, 1, V. 22; St. Jerome, *Ep.* 44 and *Ep.* 108, 27; *PL* 22, 480, 903). Of more or less ample proportions, the fly-whisk could be made of parchment or leather, like the highly wrought fan of Theodelinda, now preserved in the Museum of Monza.
The first mention of its use in Christian worship occurs in the fourth century in the *Apostolic Constitutions* (VIII, 12, 3: ed. F. X. Funk, *Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum*, I, Paderborn 1905, p. 496), where deacons are instructed to use it between the Offertory and Communion. Its use became common in the East and is found in the liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom, among others. Even today, though with symbolic value, the custom persists in the East of using small fans, generally of metal, which are waved after the consecration of the species.
In antiquity, however, liturgical fans were always made of foldable materials: peacock feathers, parchment, or silk. A symbolic meaning was eventually attached to them, recalling the scriptural passage of Isaiah 6:2, where the seraphim with six wings stand before the throne of God.
According to some, it was Pope Agatho (678–681) who introduced them into Western liturgical use (cf. J. M. Suárez, *Distriba*, cod. Vat. lat. 8.430, f. 281). They certainly appear in the ninth century (see the liturgical fan from Tournus, 12th c., Florence, Museo Nazionale) and become frequent in the eleventh, though their use never became entirely common in the West. In papal processions, they gradually shifted from being liturgical implements—by which time they were disappearing from sacred use—to objects of ornamentation and pomp, carried by the *andearmbulones seu pedissequi famuli* (J. M. Suárez, op. cit., f. 280). Up to the seventeenth century they were called “cherubim” and were made of metal; later they were made of feathers, and such they remain to this day. The task of carrying them is entrusted to two secret chamberlains, dressed in purple or with red caps.