Fragment of the papal bell ('Pabstglocke') of Basle Munster

Description

On 25 June 1439 the Council of Basle deposed Pope Eugene IV and on 5 November of the same year elected pope Duke Amadeus of Savoy. He called himself Felix V. The new pope arrived at Basle in the summer of 1440 and was crowned on the Münsterplatz on 24 July. No doubt to commemorate the occasion he donated a bell to the Munster; it was cast by Hans Peier on 5 September 1442. While sounding a storm warning in June 1489 it disintegrated. In 1490 the cathedral chapter and representatives of the council commissioned Ludwig Peier to cast a new bell; for reasons unknown this commission was never carried out. It was not until 17 October 1493 that the gun founder Jerg von Guntheim, who worked in Strasbourg, cast the new bell on the Münsterplatz. Together with a four line verse by Sebastian Brant it bore the inscription: "Christus, König der Herrlichkeit, komm zu uns mit Frieden, 1493" (Christ, king of glory, come to us in peace, 1493). The fragment comes from this second papal bell. Above the coat of arms of Savoy it shows a Basle 'Rappers' coin, and above that the crossed keys of St Peter with the three tiered crown (tiara) as papal symbols, also a 'Steblei' (half a Basle 'Rappers ). The fragment was drilled out of the papal bell in 1873, before the Munster bells were recast.