
Medieval people bathed regularly - fanf2
https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/
======
philwelch
"Regularly", but not as frequently as we do now, and to whatever extent this
was true, it certainly didn't extend to conquistadors in the early modern
period because American Indians all considered white people intolerably dirty
by their standards.

The Internet seems to have amplified a certain contrarian tendency that goes
too far. While it's true that the people of medieval Europe were not just a
bunch of ignorant, filthy peasants, they were still more ignorant and probably
more dirty than you and I are at the moment. While the early middle ages in
western Europe were not "dark ages" completely bereft of human accomplishment,
they were by many measures crappier than either the heyday of the Roman empire
or the early modern era that would follow (or indeed even the late Middle
Ages).

~~~
mopsi
I've always found the chart of Rome's population [1] very thought-provoking.
That's unimaginable collapse of cities, trade, arts...

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/bVjPVPK.png](https://i.imgur.com/bVjPVPK.png)

~~~
heavenlyblue
You’re certainly misrepresenting something here.

The population of the world doesn’t follow this chart which simply implies
Rome became irrelevant in history and people moved elsewhere.

~~~
codeulike
I think that was their point

~~~
heavenlyblue
Their point was more akin to “all cities have been abandoned as civilisation
ceased to exist”.

If that was the case we would observe a definite decline in population numbers
across the world.

We don’t see that which either implies that the existence of civilisation
wasn’t the prerequisite for our survival or that civilisation went elsewhere.

I am betting on the second one. By the time Rome become irrelevant we observe
the raise of Paris and London.

~~~
philwelch
Or the population dispersed into rural areas and returned to lives of
subsistence farming.

------
voldacar
The myths we tell about history always tend to be so self-serving and
belittling of the people who came before us. I'm not sure I want to know what
people will think about us 500 years from now

~~~
tom_
What on earth makes you think anybody 500 years in the future will give a shit
about any of us?

~~~
xwdv
A person 500 years in the future is more likely to give a shit about you than
a person 5 minutes from now.

Consider your comment, a throwaway one liner of no significance. Most people
just read it and move on. But what if, your comment and our comments were all
preserved through a series of backups and database migrations over time until
eventually they were 500 years old! Imagine some future archaeologist coming
across our threads and seeing what people of this day were thinking and saying
to each other. Sometimes I stumble across old posts from 2001 or so and read
with fascination about what the world used to be like back then. It’d be
pretty meta if that future archaeologist was actually the one reading this
comment right now.

Imagine if we found some text in a 500 year old book somewhere plainly asking
the same question “why would people 500 years in the future give a shit about
us?”

Clearly there will be people in the future that give a shit so long as the
human race remains a curious species.

~~~
amelius
Future archaeologists will treat our comments as big data.

------
robbrown451
Ok, I get that the author is trying to shake things up common-perception-wise,
and really loves the f word.

"So the average person would likely wash daily at home, but once a week or so
they would treat themselves to a bath at the communal bath house."

This needs support. "Average" person would go to the bath house once a week?
Across all of Europe? That's a pretty extraordinary claim.

"In fact soap is a motherfucking medieval invention. .... Medieval people? Oh
you better believe that they had soap."

Let's say soap actually is a medieval invention. (I see this debated, but the
author seems to emphatically feel it is an important point) Doesn't that mean,
pretty much by definition, that some medieval people didn't use soap? Unless
they invented soap on the actual first day of the middle ages and it
immediately went viral.

~~~
coldtea
> _Let 's say soap actually is a medieval invention. (I see this debated, but
> the author seems to emphatically feel it is an important point) Doesn't that
> mean, pretty much by definition, that some medieval people didn't use soap?
> Unless they invented soap on the actual first day of the middle ages and it
> immediately went viral._

Well, the author already notes that in absence of soap earlier they used oil
for scrubbing, and/or added herbs to the water for aroma.

> _Unless they invented soap on the actual first day of the middle ages and it
> immediately went viral._

Well, whether it was unavailable for the first day or first couple of
centuries of the middle ages is not really important for the general claim
that medieval people had it. E.g. people in the last 4-5 centuries of the
middle ages are still medieval people, still considered "non bathing" by many
moderns, and half a millennium is still a good chunk of time.

Especially since the author already covered what e.g. Romans did pre-soap (or
rather, in lieu of soap, as soap was available in the empire, but not
preferred by Romans until towards the end).

~~~
Gibbon1
I think the Germans and Gauls were making and using soap before the Romans
showed up. And eventually Romans were using it too. Would seem to follow that
medieval people would find soap to be unremarkable.

------
mikedilger
Minor nit: Soap is not a medieval invention. It has been around since ancient
Egypt. One of the most classic soaps is still in production today
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_soap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_soap)
which was the forerunner to Castile soap (I'm not sure how much the Syrian war
has affected production, Aleppo was hit hard).

~~~
atdrummond
The Aleppo and Castile soap connection is mentioned in the article.

------
MarcScott
I don't know much about the medieval periods, but in the 16th century, people
certainly didn't bath very often.

They tended to wear fresh linen everyday, which did a remarkable job of
cleaning the skin of dirt and sweat, then washed their clothes regularly.

"Method" historian Ruth Goodman has described trying this herself, and claimed
that it was a very effective way of keeping clean, saying that even after a
few weeks, she still lacked significant body odour.

~~~
stewbrew
Who determined the "lack of significant body odour"? How was it measured?
What's the threshold? Was there a control group? Was the experiment repeated
at several times of the year?

------
Darkphibre
This is a rather blanket claim. My step-dad grew up in crazy-rural Oregon.
_His_ dad refused to take a bath more than twice a year. Those long-johns with
a trap door stayed on a looong time during the winters. They were still using
an outhouse.

I kind of feel like there's plenty of modern examples in which regular bathing
is not a priority (or even an advantage, given the lack of warm water during
the winter).

~~~
magic_beans
So did the wife just tolerate the smell during sex? Was there no sex? Just
seems so unhygienic for intimacy.

~~~
k__
There is a running-gag in the gay community "a guy with an unwashed ass" which
is used for straight guys.

Also, many women told me that they were in love with guys with bad hygiene,
some of them never washing between their cheeks because "nothing goes between
my ass cheeks, that's gay shit!"

Some women even going so far as saying "if sexuality was a choice, why in
their right mind would anyone choose (unwashed) men?!"

So maybe this isn't that big of a problem in terms of sex and intimacy as you
and I would think?

~~~
falcrist
Memes aside... Sex has weird and sometimes offensive smells. This holds true
for queer folks, straight folks, and even folks with good hygiene. I feel like
most sexually active adults already know this.

You aren't always going to get a shower and a toothbrush just prior to bumping
uglies.

~~~
k__
Body odors are one thing. Not having showered for weeks is another.

~~~
wingerlang
Maybe, when everyone stinks you'd get used to it and think nothing of it?

~~~
Doubl
I once spent a summer working in the equivalent of a knacker's yard. The first
day or two there the smell was appalling but it got to the stage where I no
longer noticed it. People away from work noticed me though!

------
est31
It's funny that nowadays we look at images in churches, old books, and other
old buildings to deduce what medieval people did. What will people use in 200
years to deduce what we did? Will they use social media selfies? Or will those
have disappeared?

~~~
quotemstr
I suspect that our inventory of digital media will survive as long as people
do. It would take a complete technological collapse to expunge all the random
TV shows and internal discussions floating around the infospher, and even
under the worst ecological scenarios, technological collapse everywhere is
unlikely. Future scholars will be able to just spool up our mass entertainment
as we do. They might even read this comment.

~~~
ancientworldnow
Don't be so confident. MySpace lost basically all the original music uploaded
to that site, much of which only existed there. I've personally seen one off
masters of tons of video and audio content destroyed to make room for new
stuff or because the media can't easily be played anymore. Much of our digital
archives are only maintained with constant and fragile upkeep.

~~~
munificent
Another case in point:

I used to make electronic music. Back in the 90s, I made a track and uploaded
it to mp3.com, back when that was a place for people to share music. It got
relatively popular, for what "popular" meant at that. I got messages from
people saying they liked it, there were lots of downloads.

As far as I can tell, that song no longer exists anywhere on the Internet.

~~~
comboy
Now I want to listen to it. Why not put it somewhere on the Internet? Maybe it
will bring some joy to a few more people. Worst case scenario it will get
ignored (it will get one listen from me though).

~~~
munificent
_> Why not put it somewhere on the Internet?_

I don't think I have a copy any more. If I do, it's likely in a format for an
old MOD tracker that I may not be able to open any more.

------
forkLding
They should probably put the title as Medieval Europeans, the misconception
that Medieval "people"/Europeans don't bathe isn't a global notion because
Medieval people from other places bathed such as the Japanese.

~~~
robbrown451
Most definitions of "medieval" or "middle ages" seem to reference Europe. It's
considered the time between the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance / Age
of Discovery.

~~~
umeshunni
Agree. I have never heard Medieval used in, say, Indian history where
different timescales are used to denote historical periods - e.g. Vedic
period, Ancient, Sultanate and Mughal periods, British raj etc.

------
agumonkey
I asked a related question on reddit but no answer yet.

How did taverns handle hygiene of dishes. Especially since it was a crossing
of wild varieties of people.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Soap and water? Soap was known to civilization by ~2000 BCE, long before the
middle ages.

~~~
agumonkey
did they had enameled ceramics back then ?

soap cannot clean porous things I suppose

------
kleiba
Perhaps a bit more balanced (both in language use as content-wise) treatment
of the same topic can be found at the Ancient History Encyclopedia:

[https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Hygiene/](https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Hygiene/)

------
dsign
And why does this matter?

My roomie was a staunch defender of medieval times, when allegedly things were
oh so much better. He left me a bit of creatine monohydrate in a closet, he
absorbed the stuff by the kilograms. I was thinking with some scorn "they used
to grind this from the bones of peasants before, didn't they?".

I feel pity of the people that was before us, grateful for some of their
legacy, and very bitter for other parts of it, and I'm extraordinarily, rabid
jealous of how much better the coming generations will most likely have it.

~~~
slazaro
It matters because most people believe the opposite, because it's a
misconception. A lot of people also think that it was believed the world was
flat for centuries, but it was known to be spherical or spheroid since greek
times.

------
wazoox
In fact public baths in Europe were closed in a futile attempt to curb
contagion during the Great Plague, during the 14th century. From there on,
bathing was frown upon as being dangerous and even unhealthy.

For instance in the late 1500, Henri IV from France was writing letters to his
prime minister Sully to pray him not to bathe so often (uncommonly for the
time, Sully used to have a weekly bath) because it would destroy his health
and be a huge loss to France to lose such a valuable man.

------
swayvil
Did you ever see the movie, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"?

An excellent portrayal of medieval baths in that.

------
sklivvz1971
What an interesting and well-researched article. Also, the tone is hilarious,
as appropriate. Bravo!

~~~
tom_mellior
I feel the opposite about the tone. Sure, I have also heard that medieval
people didn't bathe, and if I asked about it I would have repeated it as the
best information I had. Not sure how that warrants being insulted by the
author who is upset that not everyone else in the world is a medievalist like
they are.

------
mcguire
" _The Romans – whomst I don’t see a bunch of basics going around accusing of
being filthy – did not, in fact have soap, in contrast._ "

"Basics"?

~~~
new_guy
Romans did have soap but they mostly used it to clean clothes not themselves.

The article title is correct but whoever wrote this uniformed garbage needs to
go back to grade school.

~~~
zokula
The Romans also used human pee to clean clothes.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Old pee is basically ammonia.

------
macawfish
Underlying many of these comment conversations: _don 't you dare challenge my
belief that contemporary western society is superior because of [global
capitalism, technology, "advanced" knowledge, etc.]._

Narratives of progress are very loud on HN.

Meanwhile, a lot of people _you know personally_ don't really bath all that
often. They stay clean. But not by showering every day. And it really is none
of your business. No you cannot necessarily detect them with your nose.

------
matzie
Finally some good style of writing

~~~
Biganon
Is that a joke? I found it absolutely insufferable. You're upset, I get it,
now stop using the f word in every sentence.

------
codesushi42
Another telltale sign that the dark ages weren't actually that dark.

The dark ages still brought us:

Windmills

Prostheses

Plow

Just to name a few.

~~~
quotemstr
First of all, the medieval period comes _after_ the dark ages. The world of
the 12th century is a very different and much more prosperous one than the
world of the sixth century.

Second, the dark ages were very, very hard indeed. Ward-Perkins, in "The Fall
of Rome and the End of Civilization", _demolishes_ the pleasant-transition-
period interpretation of late antiquing that's been popular for the past few
decades. Material culture collapses: trade volume crashes and Britain (being
hardest hit) nearly become illiterate again.

Did it work out all right in the end? Yes, clearly. But for several centuries,
the level of civilization in Europe was lower than it'd been in a thousand
years. A ton of knowledge and literature was lost forever. As late as the
seventeenth century, parts of Rome that in 100AD were apartment blocks and
fast food joints we'd recognize as such today were still sheep pasture. It
does no good to deny that something was lost.

It's a cautionary tale: complexity and interconnected civilizations are more
fragile than most people think.

~~~
codesushi42
> _First of all, the medieval period comes after the dark ages._

Untrue, medieval period and dark ages typically refer to the same time period
that lasted until the 13th century.

But agreed with the rest of your post. It was not an easy time to survive. But
not as barbaric and barren as previously thought.

And in much of Western Europe (Gaul, Germania etc), life was mostly the same
as it had been even during the Roman Empire, generally speaking-- those areas
either hadn't been ruled by Rome, or they hadn't exactly been centers of
culture and technology even under Roman rule.

Sure, Europe ended up being in a backwards state of decay during the medieval
period. But much of it had been during the Roman times that preceded it
anyway. And yet there were still valuable advancements that were achieved.

~~~
cygx
_Untrue, medieval period and dark ages typically refer to the same time period
that lasted until the 13th century._

The term 'dark ages' is used by some as reference to the early medieval period
specifically, which may also be classified as 'late antiquity' (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_antiquity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_antiquity)
).

So depending on who you talk to, the dark ages can be synonymous to the middle
ages, be just its earlier part, or predate them...

------
blunte
The information here is fascinating. But the delivery... I don't even know how
to describe it. Is it bro, or ?, or everything-ass-cool? At first it's fun,
but then it becomes overdone. Skatergnome did this well, with a measured
approach that was such that it didn't become tiresome -
[https://everquest.fandom.com/wiki/Skater_Gnome_Stories](https://everquest.fandom.com/wiki/Skater_Gnome_Stories)
.

Anyway, "cool story bro".

~~~
mxcrossb
It’s because actually determining how often average people bathed is hard,
requiring evidence from many different sources across a huge time span and
geographic area.

Instead, he went for the secret knowledge approach. People tend to believe
things more if you’re telling them everyone else is wrong. The f bombs make
everyone else seem even more stupid for not knowing this secret knowledge.

~~~
LaGrange
_She_ 's a PhD that literally teaches the stuff, and you're the person who
couldn't even be bothered to read the mini-bio, not to mention the references
at the end.

~~~
tom_mellior
If she starts all of her lectures with "I cannot believe I need to explain
these things to you basics", she might not be very good at teaching though.

~~~
arkitaip
How would you know how she teaches? One of her problems as a scholar is having
ignorant geniuses claim all kinds of nonsense about the medeival times that
are patently false. Her tone is to some extent a reflection of having to deal
with those people.

------
snambi
Probably a myth.

