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The popular image of medieval Europe as a dirty, smelly place where people rarely bathed is a myth that has been thoroughly challenged by modern scholarship. In fact, medieval people in the High Middle Ages were remarkably clean by the standards of the time, and they had a well-developed culture of personal hygiene that included regular bathing, laundering of clothes, and attention to grooming. The image of the dirty medieval European is largely a product of the early modern and Victorian periods, who projected their own anxieties about hygiene back onto the medieval past.
The popular image of the dirty medieval is a nineteenth-century construction, not a medieval one. The Roman tradition of public bathing survived in fragments through the early Middle Ages and was widely revived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the famous late-medieval closure of the public bath houses had less to do with soap-or-no-soap than with the medical theory of miasma, the recurrence of plague, and the new moral climate of the Reformation.
Medieval Bathing Practices
The bathing practices of medieval Europe were well developed in the High Middle Ages. The Roman tradition of public bathing had survived in various forms through the early medieval period, and it was revived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the construction of new bath houses in the major cities and towns of Europe. The bath houses of the medieval period were often large, elaborate structures, with separate facilities for men and women, and they offered a variety of services, including bathing, massage, haircutting, and shaving.
The bath house was a major social institution in the medieval town. The bath houses were often owned by the town government or by private entrepreneurs, and they were regulated by town ordinances that specified the hours of operation, the prices of services, and the standards of cleanliness. The bath houses were frequented by people of all social classes, and they were a major site of social interaction. The bath houses were also associated with prostitution in many cases, and the Church often condemned the bath houses as incubators of sin.
The medieval bath house typically offered a variety of bathing options. The cold bath was a simple pool or tub of cold water, used for a quick dip or for swimming. The warm bath was a pool or tub of warm water, used for a more leisurely soak. The hot bath was a steam room or sauna, used for a deep cleanse and a profuse sweat. The medieval bathers would typically progress from the hot to the warm to the cold, ending with a plunge into the cold water to close the pores and stimulate the circulation.
Soap and Cleaning Products
The medieval Europeans had a well-developed technology of cleaning products, including soap, herbal cleansers, and abrasives. The soap of the medieval period was made from animal fat and wood ash, and it was produced in specialized workshops in the major cities. The soap was typically hard and long-lasting, and it was used for laundering clothes and for personal hygiene. The herbal cleansers — soapwort, saponaria, chamomile, lavender — were used as alternatives to soap, and they were often grown in the kitchen garden or gathered in the wild.
The laundering of clothes was a major activity of the medieval household. The clothes were typically washed in hot water with soap or herbal cleansers, and they were rinsed in cold water and hung out to dry. The laundering was typically done by the women of the household, and it was a labor-intensive process that could take several days to complete. The clothes of the aristocratic household were often sent to specialized laundries in the towns, where they were washed, bleached, and pressed by professional launderers.
Personal Grooming
The personal grooming of the medieval European was also well developed. The hair was typically cut and styled by barbers, who also offered shaving, haircutting, and other services. The nails were trimmed and cleaned with special tools. The teeth were cleaned with toothpicks and herbal powders, and the breath was freshened with herbal mouthwashes. The skin was treated with oils, perfumes, and cosmetics, and the aristocratic household maintained a sophisticated array of grooming products.
The barber was a major figure in the medieval town, and the barber’s shop was a major site of social interaction. The barber typically combined the duties of haircutter, shaver, dentist, and surgeon, and the barber’s shop was a place where people could get a haircut, a shave, a tooth extraction, or a minor surgical procedure. The barber’s sign — the red and white pole — is still used in many countries as a symbol of the barber’s trade.
The Decline of Bathing
The culture of bathing that had characterized the High Middle Ages began to decline in the late medieval period, and it was largely abandoned in the early modern period. The decline of bathing is attributed mainly to the religious reforms of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, which associated public bathing with sin and immorality, and to changes in learned medical theory, which came to see hot baths as dangerous to the health because they opened the pores to miasma. The closure of bath houses was also accelerated by the recurrence of plague, by the rise of syphilis after c. 1495 (which was associated with the bath houses and with prostitution, but is only one factor among several), and by the spread of the private domestic wooden tub in better-off households.
The decline of bathing in the early modern period was a major factor in the spread of disease and the decline of public health. The public baths of the medieval towns were closed or converted to other uses, and the practice of bathing retreated to the private sphere. The decline of bathing was reversed only in the nineteenth century, with the development of modern plumbing, sewer systems, and public health measures. The modern culture of hygiene is, in many ways, a recovery of the medieval culture of bathing that had been lost in the early modern period.
Sources
Principal sources used in this article:
- Jean Verdon, Le Plaisir au Moyen Âge (Hachette, 1996), for the lived-world synthesis.
Further reading:
- Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, vol. 1, pt. 2 (1961).
For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).