2023-07-22 13:00:00
Unthinkable for the villagers to approach the cagots. Even meeting their gaze might expose you to the evil eye.
Once upon a time there was a prince madly in love with a village girl. But when the inhabitants, suspicious, placed an apple under the arm of the chosen one, the fruit withered in a few minutes. The beauty was a snag… and was chased out of the village. From Béarn to the Garonne, this legend still circulates and says a lot regarding hatred that inspired the cagots, also called bonnets, gafets, gézitains or crestias. They are described as small, deformed, consanguineous, without earlobes, with atrophied thumbs… In 1962, reporters from Point of view, Images of the world claimed to have encountered the last descendants of what they describe as an “extinct race”. In the photos, two men and a woman with physical degeneration are staring at the camera smiling. We are a long way from the graceful princess of the tale.
The cagots must live on the margins of society
The first trace of cagots dates back to the 11th century when they are mentioned in a text, without mentioning their physical appearance or any rejection. In the fourteenth century, these are recognized carpenters who contribute to the construction of the castle of Montaner for Gaston Fébus, lord of Béarn. Yet their homes and cemeteries are far from the villages, they are forbidden to drink at the fountains, to work the land or to raise cattle. And if they receive communion, the host is held out to them from the end of a long stick. In some churches in Béarn, there is still the small door reserved for them.
But where do the cagots come from?
But their origin remains a mystery. Would they be descendants of Visigoths ? The last survivors of the Cathars? Even Moors, who came from Poitiers following the victory of Charles Martel, or exiled Jews… The most common thesis is that of lepers. And what does it matter if they show no sign of the disease: in the 16th century, Ambroise Paré invented a “white leprosy” to justify this exclusion. An imaginary disease still invoked at the beginning of the 20th century, even when Hansen’s bacillus was discovered, confirming that leprosy is not hereditary.
Anthropological studies carried out in the 19th century had however proved that they were physically healthy. The physical blemishes attributed to them and shown in photographs taken in the 20th century are similar to manifestations of what is called “cretinism”, thyroid insufficiency caused by iodine deficiency. An evil that affects the inhabitants of mountainous regions, cagots or not. But nothing helps. The cagots remain marked with the seal of infamy.
A discrimination that already existed with the cacous
The phenomenon existed in Brittany with the cacous, discriminated until the 18th century. It is found in Japan where burakumin have been considered pariahs for centuries. These are manifestations of ordinary racism once morest marginalsick refugees in the mountains and become, over the generations, untouchables. Today, the cagots have disappeared from their ghettos to blend into the anonymity of the cities and finally escape this curse.
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