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Page 2
In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it was considered
no more a crime to kill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious vermin. A
"nest of Cagots," as the old accounts phrase it, had assembled in a
deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen hundred; and,
certainly, they made themselves not very agreeable neighbours, as they
seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians; and, by some acoustic
secrets which were known to them, all sorts of moanings and groanings
were heard in the neighbouring forests, very much to the alarm of the
good people of the pure race; who could not cut off a withered branch for
firewood, but some unearthly sound seemed to fill the air, nor drink
water which was not poisoned, because the Cagots would persist in filling
their pitchers at the same running stream. Added to these grievances,
the various pilferings perpetually going on in the neighbourhood made the
inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a
very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the Chateau
de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded by a moat, and only accessible by a
drawbridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce and vigilant. Some
one, however, proposed to get into their confidence; and for this purpose
he pretended to fall ill close to their path, so that on returning to
their stronghold they perceived him, and took him in, restored him to
health, and made a friend of him. One day, when they were all playing at
ninepins in the woods, their treacherous friend left the party on
pretence of being thirsty, and went back into the castle, drawing up the
bridge after he had passed over it, and so cutting off their means of
escape into safety. Them, going up to the highest part of the castle, he
blew a horn, and the pure race, who were lying in wait on the watch for
some such signal, fell upon the Cagots at their games, and slew them all.
For this murder I find no punishment decreed in the parliament of
Toulouse, or elsewhere.
As any intermarriage with the pure race was strictly forbidden, and as
there were books kept in every commune in which the names and habitations
of the reputed Cagots were written, these unfortunate people had no hope
of ever becoming blended with the rest of the population. Did a Cagot
marriage take place, the couple were serenaded with satirical songs. They
also had minstrels, and many of their romances are still current in
Brittany; but they did not attempt to make any reprisals of satire or
abuse. Their disposition was amiable, and their intelligence great.
Indeed, it required both these qualities, and their great love of
mechanical labour, to make their lives tolerable.
At last, they began to petition that they might receive some protection
from the laws; and, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the
judicial power took their side. But they gained little by this. Law
could not prevail against custom: and, in the ten or twenty years just
preceding the first French revolution, the prejudice in France against
the Cagots amounted to fierce and positive abhorrence.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Cagots of Navarre
complained to the Pope, that they were excluded from the fellowship of
men, and accursed by the Church, because their ancestors had given help
to a certain Count Raymond of Toulouse in his revolt against the Holy
See. They entreated his holiness not to visit upon them the sins of
their fathers. The Pope issued a bull on the thirteenth of May, fifteen
hundred and fifteen--ordering them to be well-treated and to be admitted
to the same privileges as other men. He charged Don Juan de Santa Maria
of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this bull. But Don Juan was slow
to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots grew impatient, and resolved to try
the secular power. They accordingly applied to the Cortes of Navarre,
and were opposed on a variety of grounds. First, it was stated that
their ancestors had had "nothing to do with Raymond Count of Toulouse, or
with any such knightly personage; that they were in fact descendants of
Gehazi, servant of Elisha (second book of Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-
seventh verse), who had been accursed by his master for his fraud upon
Naaman, and doomed, he and his descendants, to be lepers for evermore.
Name, Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gehazites. What can be more clear? And
if that is not enough, and you tell us that the Cagots are not lepers
now; we reply that there are two kinds of leprosy, one perceptible and
the other imperceptible, even to the person suffering from it. Besides,
it is the country talk, that where the Cagot treads, the grass withers,
proving the unnatural heat of his body. Many credible and trustworthy
witnesses will also tell you that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered
apple in his hand, it will shrivel and wither up in an hour's time as
much as if it had been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are
born with tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them
off immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the
children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep's tails to the dress
of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive them? And
their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they
must be heretics of some vile and pernicious description, for do we not
read of the incense of good workers, and the fragrance of holiness?"
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