HISTORIC BELL OF NOTRE DAME.

New Zealand Tablet, 16 October 1919, Page 19

HISTORIC BELL OF NOTRE DAME.

Few persons suspect that in the Cathedral Church. of Notre Dame, Paris", is a bell contemporaneous with Joan of Arc—"the blessed bell" which sounded the tocsin when the maid of Lorraine appeared in August, 1429, and Paris was besieged by the English. This historic bell, referred to by Victor Hugo in his Notre Dame de Paris, was given to the Cathedral in 1400 by Jean de Montaign. It was refonnded in 168 G, and then rebaptised under the name of Emmanuel Louise Theresa of Austria. In view of later events, it seems rather more than a coincidence that when all the other bells of Notre Dame were destroyed by the revolutionists, Joan's bell should have been spared.