If they are just ornaments and do not drain water, they are called chimeras or grotesques, in which case are just there to scare.Īs it turned out, technology put an end with the art of gargoyles. Now, not all the figures we see in cathedrals are not gargoyles proper.
Since the neck and throat of the frightening beast were tempered by the fire, they couldn’t be burned, so Sanit Romano decided to hang it from one of the corners of the cathedral, as a warning to the bad, very bad spirits. Saint Romano, at the time the archbishop of the city, chased the monster, called Gargouille (from the latin gargula, throat), captured it and take it back to town to burn it. Supposedly, some kind of dragon with wings and belching fire, terrorized travelers on a road near Rouan. Not all the priests were glad to see phantasmagoric figures in their churches, but judging by the expansion of catholicism and its power in Medieval Europe, most accepted them.Īs it is often the case, gargoyles have a legend, mainly one in France “explaining” their origin, or at least their name. The sponsors of the great cathedrals wanted people to believe that those menacing images protected them from evil spirits, that is, that the cathedral was a safe haven they could visit as often as possible. Apparently, it was during the Middle Ages, a time when most of citizens did not have access to an education, when gargoyles were used to send a visual message. Over time, probably due to the desire of architects to spruce up their buildings, gargoyles became much more elaborated, until they turned into symbols of fear. I n Egypt the channels were carved on the legs and the water flowed just underneath the head of the animal, but with the same result. It was common to carve in the back of the gargoyle a channel for the water to run off to the mouth and from them to the ground as far as possible from the wall, hence the length of the necks.
To respond the title of this entry, gargoyles are just a system to channel rainfall y and to discharge it away from the building so that the water did not damage the stone or the mortar used to build it.
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