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The Old World’s Medieval Untouchables and Other Random Historical Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2020 33 min

Pancho Villa - Mexican Revolution — General Pancho Villa before a firing squad in 1912. Wikimedia

38. Bizarre Prohibitions

A holy water font for Cagots in Bearn Cathedral, southwestern France. Wikimedia

Cagots were barred from most trades and professions, other than as drawers of water and hewers of wood. The latter was quite literal: Cagots mastered woodworking, and often became expert carpenters. They actually built many of the churches in which they were discriminated against. Farming was expressly prohibited for Cagots, and when one of them dared farm a field on his property, he was punished by having his feet impaled with hot spikes.

In addition to having to alert non-Cagots to their presence by shaking rattles, Cagots were required to wear a goose’s foot conspicuously pinned to their clothes. They were not allowed to touch bridge parapets, and were prohibited from sharing food or bath water, or from walking barefoot around non-Cagots.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.