Yeah, I could have said that too, mousethief. Either expression will serve in this case: village heretic or village idiot.

Look, it works this way in the medieval village. Most of the "respectable" citizens are gossipy and competitive by nature, capable of being quite mean given a good excuse, and nothing really makes them (subliminally) happier than the presence of an utterly despised individual in their midst, someone at whom to toss their garbage without experiencing guilt, someone whom even the little children can torture and harass, someone who can hopefully be eventually dragged like Quasimodo into the central square, there to be hectored, laughed at, abused, and picked upon by the most sadistically passive-aggressive people in the community as well as the superficially righteous. It's good clean fun for the decent folks! ;-D A crowd is guaranteed to gather and much spectacle is guaranteed to unfold. Every village needs its idiot, its Quasimodo...a truly symbiotic relationship.

And it can only be better if the village's Quasimodo will not crawl quietly off to lick his wounds, but will return again and again to take on the respectable mob and fight back, as it were, providing them with yet more opportunities to righteously attack him. Anthony Quinn gets to play the part of the idiot if it's made into a movie.

Villages love that sort of thing. It helps compensate for a lot of other frustrating stuff in life that isn't nearly so easy to define or to formulate a satisfying response to.