The Cagots

[Adaryn]

I've been wondering over this "mystery" for some time and would like to ask the C's who exactly where the so-called Cagots (or Agotes/Chrestians) and if the descriptions about them that we find in historical records are accurate, particularly Ambroise Paré's account:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7108.0

One could see in these descriptions the product of a collection of legends and false information spread by rumour, if, in the XVIth Century, Ambroise Paré (1506-1590), the father of modern surgery, called to the service of King Henry II, hadn't scientifically looked into this strange race, damned for 3 centuries already.. At the time, the Chrestians, who lived isolated, hadn't lost any of their physical and physiological characteristics registered under the Carolingians. Ambroise Paré spent several weeks studying them, doing his best not to let himself influence. He proceeded to collect genuine medical observations and carefully write them down. He notably reports their prodigious capacity to practice "mummification through magnetism". This exercice, reported here in the old original French, is supposed to reveal the power of personal magnetism : " l'un d'iceux tenant en sa main une pomme fraîche, icelle après apparaisoit aussi aride et ridée que si elle eut restée l'espace de huit jours au soleil "
[Translation : "One of them holding a fresh apple in his hand, this one soon appeared as dry and wrinkled as if it had stayed 8 days in the sun".] Ambroise Paré explains this reaction by the abnormally high heat released by their body. It is told that during a bloodlettting, a nearly boiling liquid of a bluish/greenish colour flowed from his [the Cagot] veins. These characteristics caused a specific set of laws to be set up in order to ban them from society and prevent them from mixing with other humans.

Thanks!

 

[cholas]

Interesting Luthien, I hadn't heard of this group before.

The 'high heat released by their bodies' sounds very much like certain ancient Celtic groups and the 'bloodletting' reminds me of the Mayans.

 

[SnoDog]

hmm. I too had not heard of this group of people. A quick Google search turns up this interesting story by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell about the people:

_ttp://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1446

The text is portrayed as a story, though it is difficult to imagine a grouping of people more oppressed and hated. Possibly even more so that people of jewish heritage over the ages. Interesting that becuase of the firece nearly universal oppression of this group that their (Cagots)drive to erase their past in order to escape their oppression has resulted in almost nothing being known about their origins.

some facinating 'facts' regarding the Cagots

There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in the valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and, stretching up on the west side of France, their numbers become larger in Lower Brittany.

In the Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a hundred years since, that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their magical powers as it is said.

There are various ways in which learned men have attempted to account for the universal repugnance in which this well-made, powerful race are held. Some say that the antipathy to them took its rise in the days when leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disease; and that the Cagots are more liable than any other men to a kind of skin disease, not precisely leprosy, but resembling it in some of its symptoms; such as dead whiteness of complexion, and swellings of the face and extremities.

Dr. Guyon, the medical man of the last century who has left the clearest report on the health of the Cagots, speaks of the vigorous old age they attain to. In one family alone, he found a man of seventy-four years of age; a woman as old, gathering cherries; and another woman, aged eighty-three, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed by her great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and other surgeons examined into the subject of the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots were said to leave behind them, and upon everything they touched; but they could perceive nothing unusual on this head. They also examined their ears, which according to common belief (a belief existing to this day), were differently shaped from those of other people; being round and gristly, without the lobe of flesh into which the ear-ring is inserted. They decided that most of the Cagots whom they examined had the ears of this round shape; but they gravely added, that they saw no reason why this should exclude them from the good-will of men, and from the power of holding office in Church and State.

The nearly universal rejection of these people seems to resememble a defeat of some time in their past. There a vague references back to the the 'goths'

Again, it is said that they are descended from the Arian Goths who were permitted to live in certain places in Guienne and Languedoc, after their defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured their heresy, and kept themselves separate from all other men for ever. The principal reason alleged in support of this supposition of their Gothic descent, is the specious one of derivation,--Chiens Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots, equivalent to Dogs of Goths.

King Clovis? Heresy? Like maybe using magic?. Lots to reasearch now...

Being the 'dogs' of anybody doesn't read like a good place to be. The whole story desparately reads like something facinating happend 'way back when' to this group of 'magical' people. Who could they have 'pissed off' to deserve such a badge of rejection for centuries?

I will continue to read more about them if I can find any additonal details.

-Steve

 

[Adaryn]

Again, it is said that they are descended from the Arian Goths who were permitted to live in certain places in Guienne and Languedoc, after their defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured their heresy, and kept themselves separate from all other men for ever. The principal reason alleged in support of this supposition of their Gothic descent, is the specious one of derivation,--Chiens Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots, equivalent to Dogs of Goths.

The origins of both the term "Cagots" (and "Agotes", "Capots", "Caqueux", etc.) and the Cagots themselves are uncertain. It has been suggested that they were descendants of the Visigoths, and the name Cagot derives the name from caas (dog) and "Goth". Yet in opposition to this etymology is the fact that the word "cagot" is first found in this form no earlier than the year 1542. 16th century French historian Pierre de Marca, in his Histoire de Béarn, propounds the reverse - that the word signifies "hunters of the Goths", and that the Cagots were descendants of the Saracens.[2] The theory that the Cagots were "descendants of Moorish soldiers left over from the 8th century Muslim invasion of Spain and France", a 2008 article in The Independent states, "is supported by many French experts."[3]
Another theory is that the Cagots were descendents of the Cathars, who had been persecuted for heresy in the Albigensian Crusade.[2] A delegation to Pope Leo X in 1514 made this claim, though the Cagots predate the Cathar heresey.[5] Yet another theory claims descent from Viking invaders.[6]

Still, that wouldn't explain their so-called horrible/unusual physical characteristics and why they were the object of such disgust and fear.