this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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It is also notable that in religious and superstitious Christian medieval Europe, being left handed is considered "evil" (because the person who who berated Jesus while he was nailed to the cross was on his left side) and so the left handedness was beaten out of people. There are anecdotes of left handed people who went to Catholic schools in 1950s and 60s, and were forced to be right handed.
Southpaw folks are already not that many, but they would have been all the more rarer in medieval Europe because of superstition and forcing them to be right handed.
Don't have to go back to 50s and 60s for that. My sister-in-law was forced to write right handed by her grandmother in the 2000's...
The old-world Italian version of this that I always heard was: left-handedness was considered evil because if one was to stab someone in the back, a lefty would be better oriented for the heart. Supposedly this is why the word "sinister" exists, in Italian "left" is "sinestro".
Hell my mother is old enough to have her hand smacked for writing with her left hand.