The New Murrey and Blue blog

Well, I have always regarded those awful pointed shoes of the 14th to 16th centuries as a rather daft fashion fad, and to be avoided if you had to go up stairs because you’d have to accomplish the ascent sideways, like a crab. But it seems this footwear was much more than that! In fact it was rather naughty, and frowned upon by the Church because of its sexual connotations! Pointy shoes were even called Satan’s claws. Eh? Really?

This new information was happened upon when I found this article. Crikey. All that to be perceived in rather silly shoes? Who’d have thought it?

A monk of Evesham wrote that some people wore shoes with pointed toes “half a yard in length [45 centimetres], thus it was necessary for them to be tied to the shin with chains of silver before they could walk with them”. We find this so amusing, but there was even a suggestion that the Black Death was retribution for such fashions. Medieval folk (read mainly the Church) associated extravagant fashions with, um, alternative sexualties. Well, if that were the case, the entire upper class must have been “alternative”, because all illustrations from the period show men and women wearing pointy shoes. Even knights in armour!

Are you telling me that all those warriors were into sexual practices which the Church held in horror? All of them? Oh no, wait a moment, barons, knights and so on could get away with it because they were less susceptible. Hmm….

Pope Urban V passed an edict banning these shoes, but few seem to have taken any notice. Not even the two high-ups from the Church pictured above at the coronation of the boy-king, Richard II. Now then, do you or do you not spy little pointy shoes peeping from beneath those sumptuous robes? Okay, they aren’t ridiculously long, but they are elongated. Tut, tut, chaps. In fact, every toe visible in this illustration is pointed. Satan’s claws! Burn them all immediately! The shoes, that is.