THE SCENE: A “knavish” artisan convinces Charlemagne to gift him a fortune in silver with which to build a majestic bell. When the crafty man builds the bell out of tin instead, he seems to invite God to enact divine retribution.
THE TEXT: He took [the silver] and went off rejoicing, he smelted and refined the brass; but he used, not silver, but the purest sort of tin, and soon he made a bell, much better than the one the emperor had formerly admired, and, when he had tested it, he took it to the emperor, who admired its exquisite shape and ordered an iron clapper to be inserted and the bell to be hung in the bell-tower. That was soon done; and then the warden of the church, the attendants and even the boys of the place tried, one after the other, to make the bell sound. But all was in vain; and so at last the knavish maker of the bell came up, seized the rope, and pulled at the bell. And behold the iron fell out of the middle, right on the head of the cheating brass founder, killed him on the spot and passed straight through his carcass and crashed to the ground, carrying his bowels and genitals with it. When the aforementioned weight of silver was found, the most righteous Charles ordered it to be distributed among the poorest servants of the palace.
– Gesta Karoli, Notker the Stammerer, 9th Century AD
