Suspended beneath the lantern that rises in the middle of the chapel is the celebrated miraculous bell, said to be the very one used by St. Amadour to call the neighboring people to prayer. It is undoubtedly of great antiquity. It is of wrought iron, rudely shaped into the form of a dish about three feet deep and a foot in diameter. The Père Odo de Gissey, of the Society of Jesus, in his history of Roc Amadour published in 1631, devotes several chapters to this _merveilleuse cloche_, in which he testifies that “though it has no bell-rope, it sometimes rings without being touched or jarred, as frequently happens when people on the ocean, in danger from a tempest, invoke the assistance of Our Lady of Roc Amadour, the star of the sea. Some persons,” he goes on to say, “may find it difficult to believe this; but if they could see and read what I have the six or seven times my devotion has led me to Roc Amadour, they would change their opinion and admire the power manifested by the Mother of God.” The first miracle he relates is of the fourteenth century, but when he came to Roc Amadour the archives had been destroyed by the Calvinists, and he could only glean a few facts here and there from papers they had overlooked. Most of the cases he relates had been attested before a magistrate with solemn oath. We will briefly relate a few of them. On the 10th of February, 1385, about ten o’clock in the evening, the miraculous bell was heard by a great number of persons, who testified that it rang without the slightest assistance. Three days after it rang again while the chaplain was celebrating Mass at Our Lady’s altar, as was solemnly sworn to by several priests and laymen before an apostolic notary. One instance the père found written on the margin of an old missal, to the effect that March 5, 1454, the bell rang in an astonishing manner to announce the rescue of some one who had invoked Mary on the stormy sea. Not long after those who had been thus saved from imminent danger came here from a Spanish port to attest their miraculous deliverance. In 1551 the bell was heard ringing, but the positive cause long remained uncertain. It was not till a year after a person came from Nantes to fulfil the vow of a friend rescued from danger by Our Lady of Roc Amadour at the very time the bell rang. The sailors of Bayonne and Brittany, especially, had great confidence in the protection of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, and many instances are recorded of their coming with their votive offerings, sometimes of salt fish, after escaping from the perilous waves. The sailors of Brittany erected a chapel on their coast, to which they gave her name. It is of the same style as that of Quercy, and the Madonna an exact copy of St. Mary of Roc Amadour. In those days, when the miraculous bell was heard the inhabitants of the town used to come in procession to the chapel, and a solemn Mass of thanksgiving was sung by the canons amid the joyful ringing of the bells.