My Lucas Type 2 Irish Shoes and ring dagger

[consmiles]

xxx

[oleg]

...

[brendan]

Gah!
Just when I thought I had escaped the need to make more shoes...good discussion on here though - have to admit to liking the differences being expressed - raises the questions I will have to attempt to address in the next pair I make. My last pair have sort of fallen apart

The church/poulaines question...I don't have access to much information right now, but any ordinance on footwear or other clothing generally indicates that people were wearing it and that there was a reaction against it i.e. It is reasonable to say that a contemporary cleric/monk was wearing them but was doing so against best practice...Also, there is the question of the degree of pointyness (is that even a word?) that they were referring to.

Great to see research that will further the number of people wearing shoes based on Irish rather than non-Irish finds

Brendan

[consmiles]

Hi Brendan, thank you for your input.
You say - "the next pair I make. My last pair have sort of fallen apart" I assume you are referring to LT2's. Please show some images to contribute to the topic.
Google - Poulaine or Crakow shoe - It wasn't monks that were wearing these pointy shoes - it was young men in the towns and cities. The church ban was progressive and ended up with measurements for each social class with regard to toe length... Nobles became exempt.
See

"William II, introduced a fashion for pointed shoes which remained popular and became more exaggerated over the next 300 years. These long toed shoes, called poulaines or Crackowe shoes, were fashionable for men and lengths for these shoes were eventually legislated by sumptuary laws. Young men would stuff wool and moss into the pointed extensions to keep them erect and soon the style began to include chains that attached to the knee in order to prevent tripping. It was at this point that the vulgar trend of painting these extensions in a flesh color began, and a favorite pastime of the younger crowd was to stand on the street and wiggle their feet suggestively at any young lady who happened by.

The Roman Catholic Church was shocked by the obscenity of the poulaines and banned them on the pretext that men could not kneel to pray while wearing them. The majority of the population ignored the Church's edict , though university professors were banned from wearing them. Then in 1347, at the height of the Black Plague, clergy named the Plague as God's revenge for wearing poulaines. Still, the style prevailed until the length of the shoes was legislated to denote a person's social status. Pointed shoes were prohibited to anyone who did not have an income of at least 40 pounds per year (the average income of most peasants at the time was from 12-20 shillings). A commoner was permitted no more than 6 inches, a bourgeois landowner could have points no longer than 12 inches, a knight could have up to 18 inches, barons were allowed up to 24 inches, and princes and kings could wear any length they liked. In 1367 Pope Urban V banned commoners from wearing pointed shoes by threatening excommunication or even death for the lowest classes of society, but he turned a blind eye to the nobility which gave them free license to wear the poulaine. The fashion or pointed shoes reached a peak around 1460 when Edward IV created a law prohibiting shoemakers from making shoes with more than two inch extensions for "underprivileged" people. The fashion finally died out a few years later in part because of two events: Duke Leopold II of Austria died because his long, pointed shoes prevented him from escaping assassins, and King Charles VIII of France had six toes on each foot, requiring him to wear broad square-toed shoes. Fashion follows the ruling class and so fashion changed to follow Charles the VIII." http://www.sneakerhead.com/shoe-history-p2.html

It would be great to see a few pictures of your LT2s as it would contribute to the ongoing research

[Billy]

Wasn't all the poulaine banning madness in the fourteenth century though, after the period of these Lucas shoes, and certainly long after the last pagan chieftains and druíthe of Ireland had converted or died off?

In any case, nice work again Con, the shoes look great.
Oleg, have you a link to the youtube video of your shoe attempts?

Beir bua,
Billy.

[oleg]

Oleg, have you a link to the youtube video of your shoe attempts?

I've posted in the thread nearby - Lucas Type 2: real patterns and hands on experience

[consmiles]

Hi Billy,
see http://www.fashioner.com/magazine/2010/ ... ong-shoes/ - the long pointy shoe was around for ages before it got banned - one source says 1066 Willian 11, I quote that above in a previous post.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/20696354 - Brehons were the equivalent of judges administering Gael Law even in the 1500s, they were Drui just as the Genealogists and Poets - Druí meant learned class if you read other than catholick histories... The Druid tonsure was legislated against in Ireland in the late 1500s so they were still here to the annoyance of the foreign church of Rome.

Any further discussions on pointy shoes, Krackovs or Poulaines should be a different thread please.
The Druí reference was an aside and any further discussion could be on another thread please.