If your knoweldge of gargoyles is mainly informed by a certain Disney film - The Hunchback of Notre Dame - then you may well have it wrong on a number of scores.  For a start the gargoyles in the Disney film are actually grotesques - there is a definite and not so fine line between the two.

Furthermore those featured in the Disney film (based on real grotesques at Notre Dame in Paris) are in fact reproductions.  The original medieval ones were so decayed that they were replaced in the eighteenth century.  However, gargoyles themselves have a certain fascination for many - each of them has its own meaning.

This piece looks in to that and - with the help of some marvellous pictures - explains the gargoyle hierarchy and what they represent.

Gargoyles – Glorious Gruesome Grotesques | Quazen