“Gothic King in His Car”. Illustration from the book The Story of the Nations: The Goths by Henry Bradley.

Given that the unfortunate connotation this word now possesses as being a term of derision aimed at anyone who dares to refuse the assumed moral validity assigned to sexually perverse lifestyles, its etymology is all the more fascinating. By means of a footnote, British philologist and lexicographer Henry Bradley related in his 1887 historical work The Story of the Nations: The Goths that:

The meaning of bigot in the Old French was “detested foreigner,” “heretic,” and it is supposed that the word was a corruption of Visigoth. To the Catholic Franks, of course, the Visigoths of Southern Gaul and Spain were the objects of bitter hatred, both on religious and worldly grounds.

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Despite Bradley’s pleas to the contrary, the Catholic French were quite correct in viewing the Visigoths as such, for the Visigoths had brought with them the odious heresy of Arianism to Spain and Southern France.

Such a rediscovery, therefore, carries with it a great degree of irony; for today, this very word is used by detestable foreigners and heretics to attack faithful Catholics! Dare we hope that this word takes on a new life, that it becomes utilized by the Catholics of the English speaking world to once more identify these enemies of our civilization and our Church?