12. Untouchables in Europe
“Untouchables” usually brings to mind the Hindu caste system. However, from before the thirteenth century through the end of the eighteenth, the Cagots who lived in the Pyrenees Mountains region were, for all practical matters, medieval European Untouchables. First mentions of the Cagots in the documentary record date to the thirteenth century. By then, they were already established as an inferior caste – the de facto Untouchables of northern Spain and southwestern France.
Forbidden to practice most forms of work, the Cagots faced weird types of discrimination that combined aspects of medieval anti-Semitism with the worst practices of Apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow South. They were confined to their own ghettos, known as Cagoteries, that were sited on the least desirable land. They were stereotyped as criminals, cannibals, and lepers. When Cagots entered a town, they had to announce their presence by shaking rattles, just like lepers who were required to ring a bell. They were routinely blamed and killed for unsolved wrongdoings.