The Middle Ages are arguably both the most popular and poorly understood era in European history. On the one hand there is a fascination for the Middle Ages. You can understand this wonderfully in films or series, but also in the popularity of medieval festivals, role-playing games and much more. Many people want to use this route to understand and experience culture and life in the Middle Ages. After all, the Middle Ages are considered to be something primeval – in the best sense of the word. At the same time, there were still infinite prejudices about exactly this life back then. A very big one:In the Middle Ages, people didn't wash themselves. Where does that come from and what's in it?
The importance of cleanliness in the Middle Ages
You probably know the picture as well as I do. In almost every film and series about the Middle Ages in Europe we see it in one way or another:a farmer or craftsman on the side of the road, his face blackened by the dirt of the decades. How not! After all, he works every day and never washes! We've learned to accept this version of the story and rarely ask ourselves, "Why doesn't he just go wash his face?". A very simple question and the answer would also be simple:Of course he did! Of course, people washed their faces in the Middle Ages too! People weren't stupid. They were well aware that cleanliness was important and that a lack of personal hygiene could result in illness. You might not know why, but that didn't really matter.
The knowledge had grown in people for thousands of years. Dirt in wounds leads to infection and, in many cases, disease. The same applies to contact with excrement. One does not need to understand microbiology to recognize this fact. And it is not without reason that humans have developed an evolutionary aversion to feces, urine and dirt over time. Cleanliness and fairly regular bathing, at least whenever possible, were important in the villages and towns of the Middle Ages. But what exactly did that look like in everyday life? How did one lead a reasonably clean life in the Middle Ages?
Bathhouses, latrines and other amenities
In fact, especially in the early Middle Ages and even in the High Middle Ages, the possibilities were not as bad and limited as one often thinks. In large parts of Europe there was even a fairly good infrastructure in terms of supplying the cities with drinking water and disposing of excrement and garbage:the old Roman infrastructure! In Roman times, after all, aqueducts were built all over the continent, and they still stand around here and there today. In the early Middle Ages, these were already there and in many cases still fully functional. So the townspeople used them and there were at least certain places in the village or town where fresh drinking water was available. And of course bath water.
The bathhouse also made it from Roman times to the European Middle Ages. It's not for nothing that the Romans are still known today for their culture of bathing (although this culture wasn't always just about cleansing the body, but also liked to have sex and entertainment). Their bathhouses were still used in the Middle Ages and new bathhouses were built everywhere. So it was not uncommon in the everyday life of an average citizen to go to the bathroom and wash themselves once a week. The same applied to clothing. Already clear:The very poor estates, especially in the countryside, were denied this luxury. Nevertheless, one cannot speak of a general crust of dirt on the face in the Middle Ages. The bathhouses were also important from a medical point of view. Teeth were also pulled in them, cupping glasses were put on, bloodletting was carried out or the hair was simply cut. Ok... the word medicine might have been a bit of an exaggeration and none of it really increased the lifespan of people in the Middle Ages that much. But still.
Last but not least:When it comes to the disposal of excretions, not everything was as bad in the Middle Ages as one would often assume. It was well known to the people that direct contact with the excretions could have health consequences, and so there were latrines in every major town. These were central places where a cesspool was dug and "toilets" were built above it. Toilets should be put in quotes here because they were more like a couple of wooden sticks to crouch over. But even that is much better than nothing! The richer citizens had their own pits behind their houses anyway. It's also true that they sometimes dripped into the drinking water and led to epidemics... but okay:we don't want to set standards that are too high.
The modern age is to blame again
So people did wash in the Middle Ages. In many cases they went to the bathhouse weekly, washed their clothes and relieved themselves in latrines. So where does the reputation of the filthy Middle Ages come from? Or to put it another way:did the situation change for the worse at some point? In fact, it did. Life in the Middle Ages changed forever for its people when the plague swept the world in the 14th century. Again, like other plagues in history, no one knew exactly how the disease was transmitted. But you could already see that it obviously migrated from person to person. Because I'll repeat it again:the people weren't stupid! The result? They avoided the bathhouse and other large crowds as much as possible. Perhaps this 14th-century “social distancing” would have helped a little if people hadn’t gone to church in hopes of finding protection from the disease. Unfortunately, a prayer helps against the plague about as well as a pack of globules. Especially when you sit in front of the altar with hundreds of sick people.
But that brings us to the very end of the Middle Ages! After the plague epidemic, that era was all but over. It may be splitting hairs, but the Middle Ages end somewhere in the mid-15th or early 16th century, depending on how you define it. And even if personal cleanliness had certainly decreased after the plague, it was the gentlemen of the modern era that followed, who drove general cleanliness to a new low well into the 18th century. These modern (or rather modern) gentlemen first declared it a trend to wash as little as possible. It was also these gentlemen who drowned their own stench in the aisles of Versailles with liters of perfume, kilos of powder and hundredweights of ignorance and took pride in only taking a bath once a month or even once a year.
A few centuries earlier, gentlemen would have been viewed with disgust. But history was not written by the people of the Middle Ages. It was then written by exactly these stinky bastards, who wrote extensively in their writings about the time before them and in particular what is now known as the High Middle Ages. The result is the myth of the Dark Ages, which is still influential today. Everything was bad, everyone was stupid and dirty... they were anyway.
The topic of cleanliness and especially hand washing are important again in today's Corona period. For this reason, I delved deeply into this week's podcast and look at the history of hygiene not only in the Middle Ages, but from antiquity to the present day. Listen!