An Accursed Race

Book excerpt: 'An Accursed Race' is a non-fiction book written by the English author Elizabeth Gaskell, best-remembered today for writing the first biography of Charlotte Bronte. Here, she discusses a group of people called the Cagots, which were a persecuted minority found in the west of France and northern Spain: the Navarrese Pyrenees, Basque provinces, Béarn, Aragón, Gascony and Brittany. They were groups of people who didn't necessarily have shared ancestry or religion, yet they were shunned and hated. While restrictions varied by time and place, many discriminatory actions were codified into law in France in 1460 and they were typically required to live in separate quarters. Cagots were excluded from various political and social rights. Few consistent reasons were given as to why they were hated; accusations varied from Cagots being cretins, lepers, heretics, cannibals, sorcerers, werewolves, sexual deviants, to actions they were accused of such as poisoning wells, or for simply being intrinsically evil.