The Cagots

The Cagots were a shunned minority in France and Spain. They lived in excluded places and had no social or political rights. They were made to wear distinctive clothes with the foot of a goose or duck attached to mark them. It was a crime for them to walk the common roads barefoot, so pestilential was their touch. They were restricted to the trades of butcher, carpenter, or ropemaker. They were not an ethnic group, nor a religious group. They spoke the same dialect as their neighbors, and there is no known reason why they were despised from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution. Some claimed Cagots had no earlobes, or their ears were different sizes. Some said they bled from their navels on Good Friday. During the French Revolution, Cagots sometimes stormed into government offices and burnt their birth certificates to conceal their heritage, but the names of Cagot families were kept in rhyming songs to prevent the prejudice from fading. Many moved to America and began new lives free from old prejudices, and, over time, the stigma was forgotten.