Pigache

The pigache was worn in the late 11th[12] and early 12th century[6] and excited the ridicule of poets and historians and the censure of clergy[4] to the point it is sometimes described as "notorious".

[18][19] The fashion historian Ruth Wilcox offers that it may have been a simple adaptation of the Normans' sabatons, which they had extended to a point and turned down in the late 11th century to better hold their stirrups during battle.

[20] The pigache became common in England under William Rufus (r. 1087–1100), whose courtier Robert the Horny (Robertus Cornardus)[17] used tow to curl the ends of his shoes into the form of a ram's horn[4] (instar cornu arietis).

[21] Orderic blamed the spread as caused by and contributing to the effeminate men (effeminati) and "foul catamites" (foedi catamitae) involved in the royal courts of Europe,[17] while simultaneously describing how most courtiers adopted the fashion to "seek the favors of women with every kind of lewdness".

[1] Guibert of Nogent, while no less dismissive, associated the style more with women and blamed its origin on footwear exported from Islamic Cordoba, whose residents he separately associated with effeminacy and homosexual rape.

The Antichrist , depicted in a 1120 copy of Lambert 's Liber Floridus with pigaches or their pattens extended into absurdly long horns, [ 1 ] a style later actually worn as the 14th-century poulaines
Priestly Byzantine Egyptian footwear (5th–8th cent.) , sometimes conflated with the later pigaches
Fulk , King Philip , Bertha , and Bertrade , from the Chronicle of St Denis (14th cent.)
Pigaches in an 11th cent. illumination from an Aquitaine tonary
William Rufus in pigaches in a 1915 illustration of the life of St Anselm