Gargoyles, Part II: Mystery and Meaning
This is part two of a multi-part series on gargoyles. Part one can be found here. Part three can be found here.
We can start by noting that gargoyles seem like the very last thing medieval Christians would put on their churches. The Middle Ages were the days of the Scholastics ― adherents to a philosophy that privileged the serenity of order, both in the natural world and in architecture. They abhorred the wild and the unnatural. This is why Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a twelfth-century Cistercian abbot, wanted the gargoyles knocked off his monastery. They were offenses against nature and disturbed its inherent harmonies: “What are the filthy apes doing [in the cloister]?… The creatures, part man and part beast? …. You may see many bodies under one head, and conversely many heads on one body.”1
Some moderns wonder if that was, indeed, precisely the purpose of gargoyles. Perhaps they functioned as a way for working class carvers to rebel against the medieval Church ― a subtle “freedom of the press” where artists could scoff at orthodox thinking by erecting bizarre mockeries.2 This seems unlikely. In the Middle Ages, religious art was heavily regulated to ensure it offered safe spiritual messages. If gargoyles were even suspected of undermining the teaching of the Church, they would have been removed.3
Gargoyles did, however, give carvers the chance to add some flare and local charm to their churches.4 This is so much the case that their gargoyles often became landmarks that set specific churches and even cities apart. The most famous gargoyles in the world are those on Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. Even if most of its current gargoyles are from the nineteenth-century (not the Middle Ages) they have nevertheless become icons of Paris. One writer commented that they are “as crucial to the Paris skyline as the Eiffel Tower.” The famous Le Stryge gargoyle, the “pensive demon” whose head rests in its hands (pictured above), has become “the symbol of Notre Dame and … of Paris and even Frenchness.”5
It’s true that, in previous eras, churches needed waterspouts for practical purposes. But it’s also true that their necessarily odd shape lent itself to a bit of ornamental fun for the stoneworkers. Indeed, we shouldn’t discount the fact that gargoyles were partly about humor. Most ordinary medievals probably thought it was funny to see a monkey hurling runoff across the town square. It seems fitting, moreover, that something ugly would be doing the hurling. You’re not going to have a Saint Joan of Arc or a Venus de Milo vomiting rain from the rooftops, as one writer pointed out.6 This might be part of the reason why gargoyles are fearful, absurd, even demonic looking.
But how is it that these stone demons could have been allowed to perch on our churches? It’s important to grasp that, demonic or not, in the Middle Ages, gargoyles were not seen, even by the most orthodox (St. Bernard excepted), as religiously suspect. They were considered, rather, essential parts of the building’s spiritual significance.
So what’s going on here? What is the gargoyle’s theological meaning?
There are, it turns out, a vast array of opinions regarding gargoyles. For one, gargoyles have been somewhat famously interpreted as apotropaic objects ― objects meant to ward off evil. It was thought that, by making gargoyles as ugly as possible, real demons would be frightened away from the church.7 This is similar to the still common opinion that the ringing of church bells frightens demons and drives them away.8
At the same time, gargoyles were also supposed to frighten the townspeople ― not away from the church, but into it. Peered at by monsters, the faithful were meant to realize that evil is all around them and that, as two nineteenth-century writers remarked, “the only true refuge or remedy is within the church.”9 Those who prefer this interpretation often link gargoyles to a prayer from the Psalms: “Deliver … my life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion” (Ps 22:20-21).
Other interpreters point out that many gargoyles are carved in such a way that it’s clear they are not so much doing the frightening as much as they are themselves frightened ― and they’re frightened of us. When they look down into our lives and into the course of human affairs, there’s nothing to do but tremble and scream. It is an artistically ingenious indictment of our behavior. It’s a call to repent. Indeed, perhaps even the demons are scandalized by our lives.10
Still others interpret gargoyles as a spiritual metaphor, with a focus on their function. Yes, gargoyles remove rain from the church’s exterior. But perhaps they also remove sin from its interior, from the congregation within.11 This interpretation is most graphically represented by those gargoyles who are turned around and, instead of vomiting fluid from the gutter, defecate it.12
A very popular interpretation is the allegorical one. According to this thinking, each gargoyle on a church is said to symbolize some specific vice, usually one of the seven deadly sins.13 Some are seen pulling open their mouths ― a reference to gluttony. In general, at that time, animals were said to represent specific sins. The serpent was associated with envy; the wild boar with anger; and so on.14 It is common to interpret a medieval church this way, as though it were a “catechism of stone.”15
There are a number of additional, less common, interpretations. Some have fantastically described gargoyles as fallen creatures who have been kicked out of the sanctuary ― cursed humans, perhaps, who have distorted themselves and become permanently hardened in their place outside the church.16 Others have described them as captured demons who have been forced to perform menial tasks like spewing rainwater or even holding up the building.17
The interpretations are almost endless. They are as various as they are numerous. In the next part, we will look at how more modern interpreters have tended to think about gargoyles.
Cited in Conrad Rudolf, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 11-12.
See Michael Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 112.
See Janetta Rebold Benton, Holy Terrors: Gargoyles on Medieval Buildings (New York: Abbeville Press, 1997), 21 and 40.
See Richard Taylor, How to Read a Church: A Guide to Symbols and Images in Churches and Cathedrals (London: HiddenSpring, 2005), 26.
Patrice Higonnet, review of The Gargoyles of Notre‐Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity, by Michael Camille, The Journal of Modern History 84, no. 2 (2010), 952.
See Louis H. Gibson, “Gargoyles” Modern Art 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1893).
See Benton, Holy Terrors, 24.
See the now abrogated 1908 Rite for Blessing a Church Bell which prays that “all evil spirits be driven afar” at the sounding of the bell. The rite can be seen here.
Charles Cahier and Arthur Martin, Mélanges d'archéologie, d’histoire et de littérature, vol. 1 (Paris: Poussielgue-Rusand, 1847-1849), 76. Cited and translated in Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame, 44.
See Benton, Holy Terrors, 52.
See Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame, 17.
See Benton, Holy Terrors, 60.
See U. Voll and S.A. Kenel, New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, 2nd ed. (2003), s.v. “Deadly Sins,” 565.
Benton, Holy Terrors, 56 and 86.
See Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame, 45.
See Benton, Holy Terrors, 25.
See Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame, 44; Benton Holy Terrors, 50.