What do gargoyles represent

The word gargoyle derives from the French gargouille , meaning "throat. For centuries, according to the story, the dragon swallowed up ships and flooded the town, until around BCE, when a priest named Romanus came along and agreed to vanquish the beast in exchange for the townspeople's conversion to Christianity.

Romanus tamed the dragon by making the sign of the cross, then led it into town where it was burned at the stake.

Because most Medieval Europeans were illiterate, the clergy needed visual representations of the horrors of hell to drive people to the sanctuary of the church. Churches would also model gargoyles after the creatures worshipped by pagan tribes, thinking this would make their houses of worship appear more welcoming to them. It was a bit of clever marketing that worked, according to scholar Darlene Trew Crist. Signing up helps us not Zuckerberg stay in direct contact with you and create the best horror website possible.

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By Jerome London Updated October 1, Come press play with us. We hear you like all things creepy… we do too. We only haunt the willing.

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By definition, a real gargoyle has a function—to throw rainwater away from a building. The word gargoyle is from the Greek gargarizein meaning to "wash the throat. In fact, the word spelled as gurgoyle was commonly used in the 19th century, most notably by British author Thomas Hardy in Chapter 46 of Far From the Madding Crowd The function of a gargoyle is to spit out excess water, but why it looks the way it does is another story.

Legend has it that a dragon-like creature named La Gargouille terrorized the people of Rouen, France. In the seventh century A. Many early Christians were led to their religion by the fear of the gargoyle, a symbol of Satan. The Christian church became a protective haven for the mostly illiterate people. Romanus knew the legends that the townspeople of Rouen did not know. The oldest gargoyles have been found in present-day Egypt from the Fifth Dynasty, c.

The functional and practical waterspout has also been found in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Gargoyles in the shape of dragons are found in China's Forbidden City and imperial tombs from the Ming Dynasty.

Waterspouts became more ornate toward the end of the Romanesque architectural period. The Middle Ages was a time of Christian pilgrimage, often with the pillaging of sacred relics. Sometimes cathedrals were specially built to house and protect sacred bones, such as those of Saint-Lazare d'Autun in France.

The mythical Greek chimera became a popular figure stonemasons used as gargoyles.