48.] For seven years now Saint Michael the Archangel and the Saints Catherine and Margaret, wearing rich and precious crowns, had been visiting and conversing with her.

It was when the bells were ringing, at the hour of compline and of matins, that she could best hear their words.[1164] In those days bells of all kinds, large and small, metropolitan, parochial or conventual, sounded in peals, or, chiming harmoniously, in voices grave or gay, spoke to all men and of all things.

Their song descended from the sky to mark the ecclesiastical and civic calendar.

They called priests and people to church; they mourned for the dead and they praised God; they announced fairs and field work; they clashed portentous tidings through the sky, and in times of war they called to arms and sounded the alarm.

Friendly to the husbandman they scattered the tempest, they warded off hail-storms and drove away pestilence.