"Did people in the Middle Ages take baths?" Topic

Old… but still interesting read…

"It is often thought that medieval men and women did not care too much about personal hygiene or keeping clean. One nineteenth-century historian writing about daily life in the Middle Ages commented that there were no baths for a thousand years. However, a closer look shows that baths and bathing were actually quite common in the Middle Ages, but in a different way than one might expect.

There are stories of how people didn't bathe in the Middle Ages – for example, St Fintan of Clonenagh was said to take a bath only once a year, just before Easter, for twenty-four years. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxons believed that the Vikings were overly concerned with cleanliness since they took a bath once a week. On the other hand, we can also see many literary references and works of art depicting people taking baths, and noting that it was part of daily activity.

Personal hygiene did exist in the Middle Ages – people were well aware that cleaning their face and hands was a good idea – health manuals from the period note that it was important to get rid of dirt and grime. They also explained that it was important to keep the entire body clean. For example, the fourteenth-century writer Magninius Mediolanesis stated in his work Regimen sanitatis that "The bath cleans the external body parts of dirt left behind from exercise on the outside of the body."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

One of the things my players think I make too much of a big deal about in my RPGs are sanitation and public baths. Public baths are probably safer places than taverns to meet and talk to townspeople.

I wouldn't mind if somebody would make a modular public bath and possibly an orcish sauna.

STEWS!!!

Yes!!!

Agree with you Coelacanth1938!!

Amicalement
Armand

Yes in Al Andalus
And most certainly in Russia.

Having traveled on the tube in London I sometime wonder do people take baths in 21st century.

My experience with wargamers is that they should be the last people on earth to make catty comments about others personal hygiene.

Fisherking speaks with insight.

But anyway. It's worth remembering of course how long the Middle Ages lasted. Common practice in the early Middle Ages might well have borne no relation to common practice in the 14th century. It also likely varied widely by area. I imagine in southern Europe, where the population was more urbanised, and there was more remaining Roman infrastructure, cultural elements like baths would have been more common than in a backwater like England, which was less Romanised, or Germany, where none of it was ever built in the first place.

I've heard it suggested that baths remained relatively, if decreasingly, common in much of Europe until the time of the Black Death, for reasons which are probably obvious.

It's also been pointed out that "baths" are not the only method of keeping oneself clean. Washing from a basin – at least the dirtiest parts of the body – might well not be considered "bathing" per se but would still serve. In the Renaissance at least, and the custom likely originated earlier, people would rub themselves with cloth to scour away dirt, which would also have helped.

In general medieval popular history and cultural perception is still recovering from the sweeping generalisations and questionably-founded assumptions of the Whig history era in the 19th and early 20th century, so it's not that surprising that bathing is yet another area where it turns out it's more complicated than people generally think.