36. It Took the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to Grant Cagots Legal Equality
Things finally began easing for the Cagots in the eighteenth century, when Enlightenment ideals challenged the legal disabilities imposed upon them. However, it was not until the French Revolution of 1789 that the laws against the Cagots were formally abandoned. Even then, although freed from legal discrimination, Cagots were still discriminated against socially.
Nonetheless, the revolution allowed many Cagots to begin the process of assimilation. During that period of upheaval, many Cagots raided local archives, and either erased or burned records of their ancestry. In the years since, the unique Cagot culture, developed under the bizarre circumstances in which they were forced to live, has vanished, as few if any descendants have been willing to identify as Cagots. In the early twenty-first century, the British newspaper The Independent was able to find just a single person in the Pyrenees, a woman in her forties, openly admitting to Cagot ancestry.
