Poulaines: The Shoes that Scandalised Medieval Britain. | Issy Rixon

Medieval Europe was full of many oddities and one that has captured our imagination in the centuries since is the pointy shoe. Whenever we conjure up images of medieval dress we often think of the pointy shoe and its somewhat ludicrous appearance. However, the shoe was just as infamous during its own time and incited scandal across Britain.

The pointy shoe’s official name is the poulaine, a name that derived from a French phrase meaning ‘shoes in the Polish style.’ As the name gives away, the poulaine is thought to have originated in the courts of fourteenth century Poland and became known as ‘crakows’ after the Polish capital. The trend for the poulaine slowly moved across Eastern Europe before making its way to Britain. The shoes were adopted in Britain in the mid fourteenth century but the catalyst for the poulaine craze that was to sweep the nation was the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1382.

By the time the fifteenth century rolled around the nobility and gentry were wearing almost exclusively poulaines, and as the century progressed, the trend only continued to grow.

Not many examples of poulaines survive but the examples we do have provide a fascinating insight into their design.

This example, found in the Museum of London Docklands, is from the late fourteenth century and is thought to be made from calf leather. The intricate design work and quality of the material indicate the wearer was wealthy.

Poulaines were typically made of leather and the tip stuffed with moss or other materials to keep the shape rigid and the length as pronounced as possible.

However, as the poulaine grew ever more popular, so did the shoe itself. The pointed tip that marked the distinctive feature of the shoe started to grow longer, taking on comedic proportions. The tip could reach anywhere from two to twenty inches, and became so long that the wearer found themselves unable to walk properly.

The poulaine’s popularity within the wealthy classes is believed to be due to the fact that they could clearly show the socioeconomic status of the owner. The impractical nature of the shoe meant that the wearer could not possibly be engaging in menial tasks. Further study into the shoes suggests that they were possibly painful to wear, as researchers from the University of Cambridge discovered. In a study of grave sites around Cambridge they found that a large number of wealthy individuals had foot deformities such as hallux valgus (bunions.) Some of the skeletons with foot deformities also displayed fractures in their hands and arms, in line with a fall. This suggests that wearing poulaines was so impractical that it was causing the wearer to experience physical discomfort and even fall over as a result.

The growth of the poulaine attracted attention from the church and many clergymen denounced them as being sinful. The length of the shoes meant that people were unable to kneel for prayer, a fundamental aspect of religious worship in the period. Many members of the clergy also thought them to be a symbol of overindulgence and sin, leading them to publicly lambast the shoes. A monk in Malmesbury, during the late fourteenth century, wrote that "they are better called demons' claws than decorations for men."

Part of the objection against poulaines came from their obviously phallic image, and the exaggerated length is thought to have been used by men to emphasise their own masculinity. The poulaine grew in popularity at the same time that mens hemlines in fashion rose, drawing even more attention to the lower half of their bodies.

From a fifteenth century illuminated manuscript

The effect of this fashionable appearance was a lot of emphasis on masculinity and virility, which inevitably caused scandal.. It was said that men could use the long point of the poulaine to slip their foot under a woman's skirt and introduce the phallic metaphor into their personal space. This behaviour led to concern and outrage with Boccaccio believing that the shoes could be used to ‘hook women’ and lead them to illicit pleasure.

However, women also adopted the fashion for the poulaine, and some began to wear points that extended beyond the hem of their dress, causing outrage. It was seen as offensive in the period for women to show their feet and their gowns had to completely cover any sign of them. The poulaine harboured “the potential to inspire women to masculinize themselves by projecting their footwear and the body parts they enfolded beyond a feminine enclosed, intimate space into the male-dominated open, public sphere.” (Laughran, Vianello, p.260)

Finally, in 1463, King Edward IV put an end to the ludicrous lengths of the poulaine and passed a sumptuary law forbidding the tips from extending two inches beyond the toe. While the law did not outright ban the poulaine it still served as a death warrant for the shoe and by 1475 it had all but vanished. It was replaced by the newly fashionable box-toe or ‘cow-mouth’ shoe with its short, flat toes.

However, in typical human fashion, people started taking things to the extreme with the cow-mouth and started padding the top of the shoe to be as wide as possible. As a result of these modifications the wearer would take on a waddling gait when walking due to the shape of the shoe. Not surprisingly, a law had to be passed banning that as well.

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Issy is a digital copywriter based in Wales. She is interested in history and literature and explores this in her own writing. In her spare time she enjoys running and pretending to know how to cook.

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References:

• LAUGHRAN, MICHELLE A., and ANDREA VIANELLO. “‘Grandissima Gratia’: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear.” Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella, University of Michigan Press, 2011, pp. 253–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.2056317.16. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-europeans-pointy-shoes

• https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/poulaine/