Medieval People Feared Being Left-Handed. Here’s Why.

Would you believe me if I told you that there was a time when parts of the human body were favored over others? In fact, in medieval Europe, while the entire right side of the body was associated with goodness and divine favor, the left side signified weakness and misfortune.

Right-and-left imagery was significant in the Bible. For example, in the Gospel of Matthew, the righteous are placed at Christ’s right hand. And the condemned? Forced to his left. Another example is that God’s right hand was often used as a symbol of power. Examples like these helped shape the narrative that the right side was good while the left was bad.

If we go back to the origin of the word “sinister,” we’ll find that the Latin word meant “left” or “on the left side.” We now use the word “sinister” to mean something threatening or evil, so this connection further strengthens the argument that the left side is bad.

Other languages across Europe also connected the word “right” with correctness and justice. If you think about the language we use now, when something is done the right way, it is the correct and proper way. The good way.

In medieval society, most people were right-handed. This meant that everyday practices favored the right hand. If someone was left-handed, this posed some trouble. They’d automatically look like the odd man out, and their left-handedness may have seemed like unusual behavior that needed correcting.

People definitely feared being left-handed, mainly due to its symbolism. However, there’s one claim that’s been circling that doesn’t have any good evidence supporting it. Medieval Europeans were not burned or executed for being left-handed. Being left-handed, although socially unacceptable, was not a crime.

Another rumor swirling around is that left-handed people were suspected of being witches. While being left-handed could cause some speculation, it wasn’t used to identify witches. Besides, the major witch hunts only peaked during the early modern period.

Thanks to Christian art and literature that placed evil figures on the left side of a scene, the “left” was connected to the devil and spiritual danger. Thankfully, left-handed people weren’t automatically shunned and believed to be the devil, but I’m sure it wasn’t a nice feeling to know the association.

If your child was left-handed, you best believe that you did everything you could to get them to use their right hand. While there isn’t much evidence of this retraining in medieval times, in the 19th and 20th centuries, proof of such is much more documented. It’s sad to think that children who were left-handed weren’t viewed as perfect individuals and had to change something about themselves at such a young age to fit social standards.

Dinner etiquette has been around for centuries, and in medieval times, there were certain customs you had to follow, especially among the elite. If you were to perform a customary gesture or reach for something across the table, you were expected to use your right hand.

We know that Christianity was very influential on society, and because blessings were traditionally given with the right hand (signifying Christ’s position as the right hand of God), people took it to mean that the right side was the better side.

When oaths and agreements occurred, gestures would involve the right hand. Today, when you’re in court, you raise your hand to swear that you speak the truth. So, even though left-handed people shouldn’t feel any reason to feel outcast today, there are still customs we practice that favor the right hand.

If you were a left-handed scribe in medieval times, things could be quite difficult for you. Because European scripts ran from left to right, being right-handed made your job a whole lot easier. Being left-handed could mean potentially smudging freshly written text. I guess if you were left-handed, you should probably have other career aspirations.

Medieval crafts also favored right-handed techniques, meaning that a left-handed person could get lost and confused when trying to follow a right-handed teacher. I guess being self-taught was the way to go.

Medieval combat systems also favored right-handed fighters. Formations were built around right-handed fighters, so if a left-handed fighter joined the mix, that could cause some chaos.

Left-handed people just couldn’t catch a break, especially in some parts of Scotland where they believed that it was bad luck to meet a left-handed person at the start of a journey. Imagine thinking your whole trip is ruined just because you bumped into a random person along the way.

It’s really sad to say, but in medieval Europe, any unusual physical characteristic could lead to people believing they were a bad omen or a demonic sign. Even something as small as a birthmark could attract negative attention.

Funnily, the Bible doesn’t only portray right-handed heroes. For example, in the Book of Judges, Ehud is left-handed and uses that trait to successfully defeat the Moabite king Eglon. Proof was right there that left-handedness wasn’t all bad, but I guess when the overwhelming consensus is that the left side is evil, one story won’t make much of a difference.

Christian ideology may have dominated society, but not all religions saw the left side as something bad. In fact, in Tibetan tantric Buddhism, the left hand actually represents wisdom. Left-handed people could’ve been widely praised if everyone had practiced Buddhism.

It wasn’t until the late 20th century that left-handed people started to be accepted into society. A report in 1971 from The Florence Times—Tri-Cities Daily reported that left-handed people had finally found their “right (or left) place in the world.” They also mentioned that discrimination was still present and there was still a long way to go until left-handed people were fully accepted.