'Chimeras that degrade humanity': the cagots and discrimination (original) (raw)

The cagots were a poorly understood marginalised group found on both sides of the western Pyrenees. They started to become prominent from the thirteenth century before largely disappearing in the twentieth century. This paper describes a curious incident in Biarritz in 1721. To explain what happened, it gallops over 500 years of history to examine the reasons cagots faced discrimination. In doing so it considers the ambiguity of medieval leprosy, the rise of the persecuting society, changing attitudes to poverty, defiled trades, the birth of racism, Jews and violence, Gypsies and assimilation, honour and pollution and conflict between communities and the state.