Quasimodo Sunday

Quasimodo Sunday marks the day in 1467 when an abandoned infant was found at Notre-Dame Cathedral and adopted by Claude Frollo. Set sixteen years before the story’s 1482 present, the occasion links a church custom of public charity to the beginning of Quasimodo’s life and to the name he would carry.

Date and Setting

The narrative places the event on Quasimodo Sunday, after mass, in the year 1467. The wooden bed for foundlings stood in the cathedral’s vestibule, on the left, opposite an image of Saint Christopher. A copper basin for alms was set before it. The arrangement made the infant’s exposure public: whoever wished to take in a foundling could do so.

The Foundling and His Discovery

A sizable group had gathered around the bed, mostly women and, in the account, almost all elderly. Their curiosity centered on the child lying there. Claude Frollo noticed the group as he returned from saying mass at the Altar of the Lazy, near the nave’s right-hand door and an image of the Virgin. He approached the foundling and took him in.

Naming and Chronological Significance

Claude baptized the child Quasimodo, a name the account gives two possible meanings: it could commemorate the day he was found, or mark how incomplete the child seemed. The naming therefore binds the foundling’s identity to the occasion itself. Recalled from the story’s 1482 setting, Quasimodo Sunday is both a point on the chronology and the beginning of the life that has since unfolded at Notre-Dame Cathedral.