Note 121 — Chapter I · LANGUEDOC. (continued 3)

Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 341-2.--Coll. Doat, XXVII. 198-200, 248; XXVIII. 128, 158. The entire disappearance of a sect once so numerous and powerful as the Cathari has appeared so unlikely that there has been a widespread belief that their descendants were to be found in the Cagots--the accursed race of the Pyrenees who in French Navarre were only admitted to common legal rights in 1709, and in the Spanish province in 1818, some of them still existing in the latter. The Cagots themselves even assumed this to be their origin in an appeal to Leo X., in 1517, to be restored to human society, and claimed that their ancestral errors had been long atoned for. Yet among all the conjectures as to the origin of this mysterious class, the descent from Catharans would seem to be the least admissible, and M. de Lagrèze’s opinion that they are descendants of lepers is sustained by arguments which appear to be convincing.--Lagrèze, La Navarre Française I. 53-60. Cf. Vaissette, Liv. XXXIV. c. 79.