The Middle Ages are commonly associated with a stench. Faeces poured out on the streets, a mass reluctance to bath and a life at odds with hygiene certainly did not favor the noses of the people of that time. However, the situation was not as dramatic as we imagine it to be. After all, human endurance - also against dirt - has its limits ...
A thirteenth-century French poem A novel about a rose contains a lot of advice for lovers, ranging from ways to achieve a joint orgasm ("Without letting go of each other / let them both sail together / Until at the same time they find a haven / then their delight will be full") to the strategic benefits of pretending ("If the lady did not feel anything , and so she should pretend pleasure / in a known way giving signs / which show fulfillment. / The lover will believe her then / although she has it all for nothing ").
Medieval people are also (sometimes) wrong
The above work, which was hugely popular in France, Italy, England and the Netherlands for the next two centuries, is partly an allegorical interpretation of the knightly code and partly a collection of folk traditions and wisdom beloved by medieval readers.
Pure "Venetian House"
The poem is full of advice on personal hygiene and its role in love. "You must disgust yourself with all dirt," the allegorical figure Amor tells a certain young man. Wash your hands and take care of your teeth often, remember that no black dirt remains under your fingernails. Sew up the sleeves, you comb your hair, but do not reach for the quilt, because only ladies have it; he also advises to use lipstick, those who oppose nature, because they love nature.
A young woman, in turn, is advised to make love in the dark so that her lover does not notice a pimple or something worse :"He cannot see the fault / because he will think about / how to take his legs in his belt and run away, and she will stay with her shame." A woman is even more openly reminded that she has to keep her "Venetian chamber" clean.
Women were advised to keep both their clothes and the "Venus' room" clean.
A novel about a rose conjures up a land of delight, where graceful ladies and elegant young men dance to the sounds of violas and drums, flirt with dice, chess or backgammon, and eat exotic new fruits such as oranges and apricots. Despite the undoubted idealization, the image of society outlined in the novel reflects a significant, real change that took place in it, already noticeable in the 11th century.
As Europe began adopting the feudal system of fiefs and kingdoms, freed from marauding bands of barbarians, and Christianity strengthened its rule over almost the entire continent, the Church and secular power felt more confident . The relative calmness has made travel less hazardous, which in turn has resulted in the development of roads and inn networks, and the importation of luxury goods from afar.
Home life has become more comfortable. Some of the old Spartan habits of the early Middle Ages, such as a lack of interest in personal hygiene, began to offend both clergy and lay people more and more.
"Dirt has never been dear to God"
It is enough to compare the restrictions of St. Benedict reserving bathing only for the old and the sick with the advice that appears in Ancrene Wisse, a treatise for hermits in the first half of the thirteenth century. Addressing his work to devout women who have chosen to live in simplicity and solitude, often in small cells located near churches, an English author, presumably a Dominican, recommends:"Wash yourself whenever need arises and wash your clothes - dirt has never been expensive. God, although poverty and simplicity are pleasing to him. ”
This simple phrase "dirt has never been dear to God" was a kind of revolutionary manifesto. Dozens of early medieval hermits, monks and saints devoted to the cult of dirt would have been terrified to hear such a dangerous statement.
Of course, old habits have not changed overnight. Both the laity and the clergy still wash their hands the most frequently. This was a reasonable practice, considering that the meals were eaten with the hands, without the use of cutlery , but apart from the pragmatic, it had another justification:washing hands was seen as a manifestation of sophistication and culture, dating back to the times of Homer.
Medieval murals depicting the interior of the houses often show a jug, a basin and a hand-drying cloth in the corner of the room. Not washing your hands was a shocking event worth noting:Sone of Nansay, the itinerant hero of one of the thirteenth-century French romances, notes with horror, for example, that Norwegians do not wash their hands after their meal is finished.
Medieval savoir vivre
People of the Middle Ages liked guides and all kinds of tutorials, and those aimed at pious women, as in the case of Ancren Wisse, and those addressed to young people dreaming of love conquest, were popular, as in A Novel of a Rose . Textbooks for elegant behavior, childcare, education and boy health, written by all sorts of authorities, from stewards to philosophers, including the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, proliferated.
Of course, savoir-vivre guides advised washing hands both before and after meals, this activity also appears, with a frequency bordering on obsession, in contemporary poetry . The rhymes rarely managed to paint a feast, or even an ordinary meal, without the mention that all participants had washed their hands.
In a thirteenth-century Provencal knightly poem, Roman de Flamenca, the husband of the title character gives a feast for three thousand knights and ladies who, as the poet informs us, "when they washed themselves, they sat down at the tables", and "when they had eaten, they washed their hands once more ". At times, this obsessive interest in hand washing begins to resemble an organized propaganda campaign for cleanliness. In fact, however, the frequent repetition of such scenes was to emphasize the elegance of the characters described.
After the hands, the cleanest parts of the body were the face and mouth. The etiquette manuals recommended that you wash the former and rinse the latter with water as soon as you wake up.
Theoretically, infants of that day were also clean: medieval guides for mothers recommended washing offspring in warm water at least once or sometimes even three times a day . Undoubtedly, the youngest children enjoyed the bath much more often than adults or older children:they did not know how to deal with the potty yet, and it was much easier to bring and warm water for bathing an infant than an adult (...). However, infants of peasants and the urban poor were bathed and changed much less frequently.
Find out more:10 Amazing Facts About Life in the Middle Ages
Smell of cleanliness
The medieval world smelled immeasurably more than ours. People were used to it and did not complain, but the extremely unpleasant odors did not pass unnoticed. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the more spiritual figures of the era, recommended the use of incense in the church because it suppressed the stench of crowded bodies, which, as he himself admitted, "can be repulsive."
The heroes of "Decameron" were highly sensitive to the smell of their body
The concepts of courtly love and chivalry in the upper strata of society made the degree of attractiveness of an individual dependent on the degree of personal hygiene. Abnegation met with criticism, especially among the knights and aristocracy. About Bruno, brother of Otto I the Great, King of Germany and Roman Emperor, it was written: "When he bathed, he hardly ever used soap or agents to restore the glow to his skin which is all the more surprising as he was familiar with such methods and royal luxury from his early childhood ".
In Decameron Boccaccia, a fourteenth-century collection of short stories, the characters are very sensitive to the scent of their bodies and the scent of their breath. Especially the latter is the subject of deep concern - in one story, an unfaithful woman named Lydia first convinces two servants that "they smell from the mouth", so they should work with as turned heads as possible. She later persuades her husband that his foul breath was the cause of their strange attitude.
Often accentuated in Novel about the Rose , Decameron as well as in other romances, novels, and collections, the thought - that physical closeness is more enjoyable when a loved one is clean and fragrant - seems obvious to us, like the ancient Romans. But in the Middle Ages it was an innovative concept that slowly penetrated the minds of the time.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from Katherine Ashenburg's book A History of Dirt , which has just been released by Bellona.