It was said that he was an assassin who acted at the behest of Catherine de Medici, whose own family of origin was notorious for dark political machinations, when she was the Queen of France. Not surprisingly John the Scourge as he was also known came to a violent end, but not before promising to return and carry out his deathly curse.
The initial assessment of the archaeologists is that these were plague victims that died during several times the Black Death came to Paris, however it was during the French Revolution that the bodies should have been moved, and it appears that those who were alive thought it was expedient to just leave them where they were.
Contrary to the stories appearing on film, in Hugo's novel Quasimodo is a gypsy changeling who is exorcised and then left as a deformed foundling at Notre-Dame. The gypsy Esmeralda is ultimately executed by hanging at Montfaucon, Paris' most famous gibbet which was usually covered in carrion crows who pecked at the various corpses left there to rot.
In 1999, the discovery of a diary in Cornwall appears to reveal the real-life inspiration behind the character of Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer of Notre Dame, and his tragic, unrequited love for the gypsy girl Esmeralda.
