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‪In the late 19th century, the Cagots were depicted in learned discourses as either descendants of a Gothic race or a category of lepers. Discriminated against in southwestern France between the 13th and 19th centuries, the Cagots were nevertheless a group of men and women of perfectly ordinary appearance, who had been assimilated into the rest of society by the second half of the 19th century. The discrepancy between who the Cagots actually were and how they were represented in learned works reflects the intellectual and scientific trends that prevailed in the latter half of the 19th century. With the development of learned societies, the mysterious Cagots became a fascinating subject of study that could be used both to confirm the postulates of a rapidly developing racialist anthropology and to defend, despite bacteriological discoveries, the hypothesis of the hereditary nature of leprosy. This article thus aims to explore how the figure of the Cagots was shaped by controversies and scholarly interests surrounding race and leprosy during the second half of the 19th century, influencing the broader social imaginary of this formerly discriminated group.‪