Pigache

What it was

The pigache was a shoe whose toe stretched out and curled upward. The pointed end was sometimes filled with stuffing so that it stayed stiff and stood up instead of drooping. On some pairs a small bell hung from the tip. Set beside what came later, the point stayed fairly short. At its most extreme, the sources describe an extension of roughly two inches, or five centimetres, past the foot. The toe bent like a hook. Orderic Vitalis, a monk who wrote history, thought it resembled a scorpion's tail. That shape was the whole point of the shoe, and it is what people noticed and complained about.

Its names

The word pigache came into English from French. In French it first meant a kind of hoe, and hunters also used it for the mark left by a wild boar's hoof when one side of the print ran longer than the other. Writers of Medieval Latin set the word down as pigacia and pigatia. Other English names for the shoe include pigage, pulley shoe, pulley toe and pulley-toe shoe. Some writers turned Orderic's insults into labels, calling it a scorpion's tail or a ram's horn shoe. The same word is sometimes used for earlier pointed footwear from the Byzantine world, which appears as early as the fifth century.

Bans and mockery

Not everyone admired the shoe. Poets and historians made fun of it, clergy spoke against it, and it has been called notorious. In 1102 St Anselm forbade English clerics to wear it at the Synod of Westminster, a meeting that also took up the Gregorian Reform, slavery, clerical marriage and the buying and selling of church offices. In August 1215 Robert de Courson, once a professor and by then a papal legate, told the other teachers at the University of Paris to give the style up. In the same year the Fourth Lateran Council barred Catholic clergy from wearing pigaches.

Stories of its start

Ruth Wilcox, who studies the history of dress, suggested a practical reason for the long toe. Norman soldiers had already stretched their sabatons and bent the ends downward late in the eleventh century so that their feet gripped the stirrups better, and the shoe may have grown out of that. Orderic Vitalis told a different story. He blamed Fulk of Anjou, a count who lived from 1043 to 1109, saying the count wanted to hide a deformed foot from Bertrade, the woman he married in 1089. In England the style became common under William Rufus, who reigned from 1087 to 1100; a courtier of his, Robert the Horny, curled tow into a ram's horn shape at the tips of his shoes.

Later years

Writers of the period did not only object to the shoe. Some of them attacked the people who wore it. William of Malmesbury questioned the wearers' manliness. Guibert of Nogent linked the style to women and said it came from footwear exported from Islamic Cordoba. Orderic tied its spread to men at European royal courts whom he mocked as soft and effeminate, while noting that courtiers adopted the fashion to win favour with women. After the first excesses the toe was cut back and the shoe became neater for about a hundred years. Then the poulaine, an even longer shoe, travelled westward out of Poland in the middle fourteenth century, around the time of the Black Death, and took its place.

How Pigache is kept

The pigache was a fashion rather than a ceremony, so no fixed rite surrounded it. Courtiers and other wealthy people wore the shoes, and the pointed ends were stuffed to keep them upright, with a small bell on the tip of some pairs. When the style grew, church leaders answered with rules. St Anselm barred English clergy from it in 1102, and further bans came in Paris and at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Men of letters wrote against it. In time the longer poulaine replaced it.

When and where

The shoe was worn in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, at its height in Western Europe during the Romanesque period. Its most extreme form reached about two inches beyond the foot, after which it became more compact for roughly a century. The longer poulaine, which came westward from Poland in the middle fourteenth century, pushed it aside.

The pigache belonged to Western Europe, and the sources place it most firmly in England, where it became common at the court of William Rufus. It was also worn in France: the name itself was borrowed from French, and the University of Paris banned it in 1215 alongside the wider Catholic ban. Earlier pointed shoes of a similar kind came from the Byzantine world, and one writer traced the style to footwear exported from Islamic Cordoba.

What Pigache means

For the people who wore pigaches, the stretched toe was a display of luxury and rank, a way of standing out at court. For their critics it stood for vanity and softness, and church leaders treated it as worldliness that had to be regulated. The arguments that gathered around one shoe, about dress, display and who was allowed what, are part of why it is remembered.

Questions people ask about Pigache

See also

Vyshyvanka DayAn annual day for wearing traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts across the worldTartanThe checked woollen cloth of Scotland, woven from crossing stripes into named patternsKiltA pleated knee-length skirt in tartan wool, worn as Scottish Highland dressBliautA fitted medieval overgarment with trailing sleeves, worn in France and nearby lands

Good reading and sources

• Pigache on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-12.