The Curious Case of France's Untouchable Castes

Theater kids may sit at their own lunch table, but discrete, socially excluded classes of people aren’t culturally universal. Not even close. To the Western imagination, examples of such are supposed to have historical roots in India and other places, not in France, where modern European egalitarianism was born. Everything in the study of untouchable classes is confusing and idiosyncratic, and often the existence of these groups flies in the face of national self-images. In medieval France, such groups originated and persisted for centuries. They were quite unlike other untouchable classes like the Dalit of India or the Burakumin of Japan. They were also unlike Jews of Europe who were similarly situated in a medieval milieu, socially excluded in some ways, religiously distinct, but not untouchable in any real way. Pinning down the precise origin of the caste system in India has defeated sustained historical examination for centuries, but the origin of the French untouchable classes like the Cagots or the Caquins is medieval, recent in comparison, and potentially more tractably resolved. The fact remains that there are no extant contemporary records. It’s also interesting that the earlier proposed origins for these groups, to my eye, were actually correct and subsequently confused by theories supported by very little evidence. This post will be a comprehensive examination of this subject, the untouchable classes of France, so go get a cup of coffee. It will span some history, some medical science, and some genetics. We will compare these classes to other examples of untouchable classes to see what kind of clues might exist to their true origin. Basic Background Cagots The Cagots were a caste of people who originated in southwestern France and northeastern Spain sometime before the 12th century. In what we’ll see as a recurring theme, part of the caste definition was occupationally mediated and the Cagots were typically restricted to jobs in carpentry or woodworking. They also had separate living quarters and cemeteries apart from their non-Cagot citizens who in general despised and feared them. Caste/untouchable complexes typically have a hereditary dimension and this was the case of the Cagots. Children inherited the caste status from their parents, became the stigmatized woodworkers themselves, and so on. Intermarriage with Cagots was forbidden, which created a necessary endogamy within the group, but the Cagots themselves were indisputably Christians, and there was no religious dimension to the stigma as with medieval Jews. In fact, one pope in the 16th century actually attempted to induce better local treatment of the Cagots, but there’s little evidence this worked; the prejudice was astonishingly resilient and it even persisted through the forced egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution and survived into the 20th century. Caquins This story is occupationally and geographically distinct from the Cagots, but otherwise looks quite similar, a fact which itself raises some interesting questions. The Caquins are geographically associated with what’s now northwestern France, Brittany. They were similarly relegated to semi-skilled artisan occupations like ropemaking. They were similarly shunned, with similar demeaned status. One pertinent difference was that this group’s legal separation from other Breton subjects was determined by pronouncement of the local ducal authorities. As far as I’m aware, no analogous discrete legal declaration exists for the Cagot groups. The most natural question to ask here is “Are these untouchable groups literally the same people separated across French geography by migration, but with a common origin?” which we’ll return to later. Before travel agents existed and went extinct and even before Fodor’s, people compiled travel journals other people could use. It’s a little hard to tell, but AFAIK, a German guy named Von Zach was such a travel compiler and was probably the earliest one to consider this question, in 1798. Do the caquets or caqueux in Brittany and the cagots in Bearn, like the cassos in Navarre, belong to one and the same family? … The close affinity of names, the similarity of their condition, the same contempt in all places, and the same spirit emanating from all the ordinances concerning them, seem to prove this. As to their exact, presumed common, origin, he is more circumspect. He lays out several what seem like very wayward origin hypotheses and then states Which of [the hypotheses] is right must be decided only later; and before that can happen, the matter must be investigated still more closely. After Von Zach’s sort of amateurish inquiry, later investigators have looked into this issue from a variety of different angles. Fig 1. A group of Agotes in Spain sometime around 1900. Fig 2. Caquins in Brittany plying their craft. Other Untouchables We need to acquire better points of comparison with other known untouchable classes to explain why the French un