Béarn and the Pyrenees

by Louisa Stuart Costello

The learned Marca, who has treated this subject, remarks: "These unfortunate beings are held as infected and leprous; and by an express article in the Coutumes de Béarn and the provinces adjacent, familiar conversation with the rest of the people is severely interdicted to them. So that, even in the churches, they have a door set apart by which to enter, with a bénitier and seats for them solely: they are obliged to live in villages apart from other dwellings: they are usually carpenters, and are permitted to use no arms or tools but those expressly required in their trade: they are looked upon as infamous, although they have, according to the ancient Fors de Béarn, a right to be heard as witnesses; seven of them being required to make the testimony of one uninfected man."

Though previous to the time of Louis VI. called Le Gros, in 1108, the Cagots were sold as slaves with estates, it does not appear that their fate, in this respect, was different from that of other serfs, who were all transferred from one master to another, without reserve. A denomination given to a Cagot, however, in the record of a deed of gift, mentioned by Marca, gives rise to other conjectures, involving still more interesting inquiries. It is there stated, that with a "nasse" was given a Chrétien, named Auriot Donat; that is to say, the house of a Cagot and himself with it.

In the cartulary of the ci-devant Abbey of Luc, in the year 1000, and in the Fors de Béarn, they are designated as Chrestiàs, and the term Cagot, we are informed by Marca, was first employed in acts relative to them in the year 1551. They are called gaffos in an ancient Fors of Navarre, in 1074; and the term Chrestiàas even now is used to denote the villages where the Cagots reside.

It appears that the Cagots of the present day are ordinarily denominated Agotacs and Cascarotacs, by the peasants of Béarn and the Basque country: that of Chrétiens seemed affixed to them formerly, but was equally so to the lepers who were obliged to live isolated, and their abodes were called chrestianeries.

As the serfs became emancipated, the Cagots, who had been slaves peculiarly appropriated by the Church, and called by them, it seems, Chrestiàs, were allowed similar privileges: added to which, from having belonged to the ecclesiastics, and from not enjoying the rights of citizens, they were exempt from taxes. In later times, this led to innovations by these very Cagots, who, becoming rich, endeavoured to usurp the prerogatives of nobility. The Etats of Béarn, issued a command to the "Cagot d'Oloron,"—who appears to have been a powerful person—to prevent him from building a dovecote, and to another to forbid him the use of arms and the costume of a gentleman.

At the church of St. Croix at Oloron is still to be seen a bénitier, set apart for the use of this race; and at the old fortified church of Luz, was a little door, now closed up, by which they entered to perform their devotions.

The prohibition to carry arms, which never extended to lepers, would seem to indicate that the Cagots, always separately mentioned in all the public acts, were persons who might be dangerous to public tranquillity. And this, together with the appellation of Christians, may give colour to another opinion, entertained by those who reject the idea of their being descendants of those Goths who took refuge in the mountains after the defeat of Alaric by Clovis.

The opinion to which I allude, and which is adopted by Palassou, is that they come from those Saracens who fled from Charles Martel in the eighth century, after the defeat of their chief, Abderraman, near Tours: these Saracens are supposed to have sheltered themselves from pursuit in the mountains, where, being prevented by the snows from going further, they remained hemmed in, and by degrees established themselves here, and conformed to Christianity; but does this account for the contempt and hatred which they had to endure for so many centuries after? for no race of people, once converted, were any longer held accursed in the country where they lived. If, indeed, they remained pagan, this severity might naturally have visited them; but the Cagots were certainly Christians from early times, as the accommodations prepared for them in churches proves.

There seems little doubt that the armies of Abderraman spread themselves over the Pyrenees, where they long kept the French and Gascons in fear: traditions of them still exist, and the name of a plain near the village of Ossun, in Bigorre, called Lane-Mourine, seems to tell its own tale, as well as the relics found in its earth of the skulls of men, pronounced by competent judges to be those of the natives of a warm climate: in other words, of Saracens, or Moors. But still there seems nothing to prove that the Cagots are the children of these identical Moors, who are said to have been infected with leprosy, and consequently shunned by the people amongst whom they had intruded themselves.

Lepers, at all times, were ordered to be kept apart from the rest of the people, and were placed under the care of the Church to prevent their wandering and carrying infection with them; and the miserable condition in which the proscribed race of Cagots existed, probably made them more liable to take the hideous disease which would have separated them from their kind, even if not already in that predicament: but there must have been something more than mere disease which kept the line for ever drawn between these poor wretches and the rest of the world.