ABSTRACT
Covering a full folio of the great fourteenth-century illuminated codex recounting her life story, the holy duchess Hedwig, patron of Silesia could well be regarded as the emblem of medieval art history's material turn. As devotional objects and as subjects of tactile encounter, Hedwig's statuette and prayerbook have received much attention in recent scholarship. It is important to keep in mind too that neither the text of Hedwig's life nor its attendant images present an unmediated view of their subject. This chapter explores the role shoes (and other things) played in the legend of St Hedwig. Running the gamut between necessity and frivolity, shoes speak to their wearer's myriad contacts with both the physical and the social world. Shoes do not seem to have been used often as projectiles in medieval Europe. Reading bodies into sewing machines or shoes is of course not merely a literary or philosophical fancy; historians of material culture do this all the time.
