Talk:Cagot

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What the hell is the "ith century"?

It is the century between the hth century and the jth century. 216.69.219.3 (talk) 23:28, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Story about "The only living Cagot" in today's Independent

This may be a useful source for those editing this article: [1] 86.132.142.207 (talk) 15:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Page move

I suggest that the page is moved to Cagot as that name is used by both the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition and the Independent article --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

.I added a template about the moving based on this. Cagot already excist that page redirects here, so maybe the things here should be copied there and this Agote should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petrobolos (talk • contribs) 07:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --RegentsPark (sticks and stones) 18:18, 15 July 2009 (UTC) Agote → Cagot — Agote is the Basque term; Cagot is the Occitan term; Cacon is the Breton term. It is essentially arbitrary as to which version we pick in English; neither one is any more "right" than the other... but I definitely get the impression that Cagot is the most common term used in English (mildly confirmed by Google Scholar). It seems like the Cagots of Gascony and Bearn are the most extensively chronicled, and the prejudice took a very long time to die out there, so I think there's a weak preference for having the article at that title. SnowFire (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• Sure is quiet here... I'll just note for the closer that users supported a move long ago on the talk page (not sure why it never happened), and presumably haven't changed their minds when it comes to consensus. SnowFire (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

In fiction

Do we still have 'in fiction' sections? Who knows.

Nick Harkaway's book 'Angelmaker' features a lightly fictionalised version of the cagot called the 'hakote'. The cagot's putative origin as a fallen guild of carpenters is sexed up into being inheritors of a natural gift for understanding the workings of machines. Perhaps Mr Harkaway thought that by changing the name, he could obscure the origin; he should already have learned that that does not work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.127.91 (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

More likely he altered the name because Angelmaker is a work of fantasy rather than realistic fiction, hence not intended to depict the real world. The fact that Harkaway's created word "hakote" is extremely close to "agote" (one of the other real-world names for the cagot) indicates that instead of attempting to obscure the origin he intended to make the connection quite obvious to any reader already familiar with the term "agote." 173.155.81.127 (talk) 18:36, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Ethnicity question

At the moment, we have the following line:

• The Cagots were not an ethnic group, nor a religious group. They spoke the same language as the people in an area and generally kept the same religion as well. Their only distinguishing feature was their descent from families identified as Cagots.

The linguistic factor tells me that the Cagots had assimilated but their continuity of ostracisation with every generation (largely preventing interbreeding) meant that contemporary members had somewhat pure roots. I know that ethnicity is and always was the nation by which an individual has identified and I also know that for some villages in Bulgaria, the demographic structure of Bulgarians/Roma is 60-40 though one look at the population sees everyone with dark skin. To that end, would it not be better to say something along the following lines:

• Whilst this population did not identify as Cagots ethnically (and made efforts to become assimilated), **possible WP:OR** their prevention from mixing with local populations meant that their identity was marked and persons could not easily disguise their background.

Even this is on the assumption that original Cagots were an ethnic group. If not, does anyone know how one group of people came to be labelled Cagots? Evlekis (Евлекис) (argue) 23:10, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

google pics told me they're dwarfs. no mention of that in the article? 78.48.59.229 (talk) 18:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Hoax

Total hoax. Erase. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.157.44.24 (talk) 21:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Birth certificates

Hi there. I changed "During the Revolution, Cagots had stormed *government offices* and burned birth certificates" to "offical records" because under the monarchy in France the Church was in charge of keeping birth certificates, not the governement. I could probably say "Church records" but there might have been some local exceptions unknown to me, where the government held these certificates. Have a nice day. 145.248.195.1 (talk) 11:44, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

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Changes to the origins section

Hi all, I have a couple of suggestions about how to improve the current section on the origins of the Cagots. I'm a little worried that it leaves people with the wrong impression about who historians think they were because of the sources it uses and the way it uses them. Ideally it would rely less on references to the Cagots in books of sometimes dubious quality written by non-historians about other topics, and should include more reference to existing scholarly articles and books about the Cagots. Admittedly a lot of these are in French, but even the MA dissertation by Hawkins has a good outline of the modern historiography on the Cagots. I've grouped the main issues and potential changes under three headings:

Dubious sources

This article cites Graham Robb's The Discovery of France nine times. If we go to the Wikipedia article about this book, we find two paragraphs describing how historians of France have called it a 'distressingly bad book' that doesn't engage with any of the recent scholarly literature published on the subjects it covers and propagates a Romantic view of French rural life that has since been revised and discredited. So it seems like a problematic source. I wanted to highlight a couple of places in this entry where Robb's book and its speculations and judgements are used as though it were authoritative that I think should be removed or changed.

First, Robb's suggestion that the Cagots were a collapsed carpentry guild is given an entire heading of its own, despite the fact that the entire section is written as speculation with no factual claims to support it (emphasis my own):

A modern hypothesis of interest is that the Cagots are the descendants of a fallen medieval guild of carpenters. This theory would explain the most salient thing Cagots throughout France and Spain have in common: That is, being restricted in their choice of trade. The red webbed-foot symbol Cagots were sometimes forced to wear might have been the guild's original emblem.

There was a brief construction boom on the Way of St. James pilgrimage route in the 9th and 10th centuries; this could have brought the guild both power and suspicion. The collapse of their business would have left a scattered, yet cohesive group in the areas where Cagots are known.

The only factual claims in this section is that there was a construction boom on a pilgrimage route through areas populated by Cagots (well before they began to be identified as a separate group by contemporaries), and that Cagots were frequently carpenters; there's nothing to support the suggestion that such a fallen medieval guild of carpenters existed, or that the Cagots were related to them. This suggestion as written probably doesn't need an entire subsection devoted to it.

Secondly, the article treats Robb's judgement that 'nearly all the old and modern theories are unsatisfactory' as final and uses it to discredit 'most of the above theories'. This is a problem for two reasons. First, there's no indication which of the theories listed above are considered by Robb, let alone why he considers them to be unsatisfactory. Second, when it takes Robb's (dubious) word that 'nearly all the ... modern theories are unsatisfactory', it privileges Robb's explanation above all other modern explanations (without presenting any other credible modern explanations).

It may well be fine to cite factual statements and examples from Robb's book if they're properly cited there (I don't have the book at hand so I can't check), but given that historians are skeptical about the quality of research and some of the arguments made in the book I think it's best to avoid uncritically reproducing them in case readers come away with the impression that it's the consensus view.

Questionable judgements and framing

A number of sentences could be rewritten because they give the impression that they aren't properly supported by evidence. For example, 'early edicts apparently [emphasis mine] refer to lepers and Cagots as different categories of undesirables', which suggests that neither the editor nor the author of the cited work (Robb again) are familiar with the contents of the edicts this sentence is referring to. I think think the whole 'medieval popular explanations' section could be rewritten to make it clearer what the alternative theories were and how they have been disproved in the intervening years.

The final subsection of Origins contains a couple of very questionable paragraphs that should be removed. It claims that 'The Scandinavian origin seems to be confirmed by Martin de Viscaya in 1621', even though the quotation this statement is based on never refers to any Scandinavians. The final paragraph seems to suggest that Martin de Viscaya mistook visigoths for the vikings but the explanation it provides is unconvincing and unsupported by any citations.

Significant historiographical gaps

The only modern explanations for the origins of the Cagots given here are from Robb, whose book is dubious and whose explanation is purely speculative; and from Supery's other history of the vikings. Supery's book is about the Vikings rather than the Cagots, and the French entry (which is more fleshed out and better cited) doesn't mention his work at all, suggesting it might not be a major contribution to the scholarly debate. It might be worth putting both Robb's theory and Supery's theory in a subsection together called 'Alternative speculative hypotheses' to avoid giving the impression that they're the scholarly consensus.

It might be worth including a subsection called 'Modern explanations' which goes through the arguments of Guerreau and Guy and Cursente about how the emergence of the Cagots may have been due to changes in the structure of feudalism in the 12th century. This created groups of landless people on the margins of normal society who eventually settled together in communities. These arguments can be found in the Hawkins MA dissertation if an English source is desired.

I'm planning on introducing the changes I've suggested in the near future. Is it acceptable to translate parts of the French entry into English, because it's considerably fuller?

--Apodemic (talk) 19:14, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Joel Supery and defeated vikings

The subsection on defeated vikings in the section on the origins of the Cagots comes from Joel Supery's La Saga des Vikings, une autre histoire des invasions. The preface of his book calls historians studying the Vikings a 'mafia' and the book has been described by an academic historian as 'a total fraud', a 'pseudohistory' that ignores all evidence that might undermine his thesis, suggesting that Supery claims that no one had made the argument before because people were seeking to hide the truth. It's therefore comparable to claiming that aliens built the pyramids.

A previous editor has removed edits before for citing another work by Supery (Le secret des Vikings) because that work was also controversial. As WP:UNDUE points out, we shouldn't legitimise pseudohistory by presenting it alongside credible scholarly works. I think the best course of action is to delete it; if people want to mention it, it should be in a section emphasising that it's a fringe view from someone who most scholars view as a pseudohistorian.

--Apodemic (talk) 14:14, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Note to grab pics

Note to grab pictures from the following articles in near future:

• https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots
• https://an.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot

--Cdjp1 (talk) 12:41, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Possibly useful if French speakers can contribute

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjEFybgC6tc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O9Ztt1wdds

--Cdjp1 (talk) 11:16, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

September 2021

"... the Cagots predate the Cathar heresy." This is likely false, and I have absolutely no clue how it can be stated with any certainty sense the earliest references to the "Cathari" are from the 9th century. I have absolutely no clue why this is being repeated with such confidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:600:9c00:e48:d5d1:b75e:1a81:7eeb (talk • contribs) 19:43, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

René Descazeaux

René Descazeaux wrote a book Les Cagots - histoire d'un secret which claims in it's blurb "What if there was a Cagots secret? A secret wanted, kept, then almost lost? ... René Descazeaux, in line with his work Mysterious and Magical Routes of Pyrenean Spaces (Pélican d'or 2001 of the European Festival of Myths and Legends of Carcassonne), tries to open up new avenues - logical and coherent - and to sweep away the “fog” of the cagote enigma in order to lift a corner of the veil." Does anyone know what standing Descazeaux has, and whether they are a source we should investigate? --Cdjp1 (talk) 08:21, 12 October 2021 (UTC)