Did People in Medieval Times Really Not Bathe?

in the video today we're answering a fewer question because mark R asks us why doesn't people in the Middle Ages ever bathe but just before we get into that this video is brought to you by bag blaze using at a 15 day free trial of bag blaze com forward slash brain food so there are a variety of commonly held ideas about what it was like to live in medieval times in Europe from a hygienic standpoint from the idea that people tracked the contents of their chamber pots out their windows onto the streets to that they rarely if ever bothered to bathe but well is any of this actually true as the former question do be sure to check out our video did people in the Middle Ages really throw fecal matter out of their windows for more on that but moving on to bathing habits to begin with when dealing with diverse cultures spanning a large area and timeframe like medieval times which are generally considered to be from around the fifth to the 15th centuries there is not going to be a definitive one-size-fits-all answer but well obviously that's not very interesting so let's go and give it our best college try shall we it turns out the humans during medieval times were just as keen as humans are now not to stink nor have dirt and grime on themselves thus in the general case it would seem that contrary to popular belief they did still have some basic hygienic practices towards this end we know definitively from surviving texts that people did bathe in some form reasonably regularly generally varying based on their circumstances for example it appears at the minimum that washing one's face hands and cleaning one's teeth was extremely commonly done every morning on the night of teeth beyond rags cleaning twigs were also used the general method here was to chew one end of a twig for a time then once it was properly mashed up use that end sort of toothbrush in fact in some cases while they didn't know it at the time the twigs or roots used actually contained antibacterial substances perhaps this explains why certain plants became so popular for this purposes people observed the effects even if they didn't understand why they worked so well at cleaning their mouth and teeth moving on to washing hands beyond doing so during a morning body scrubbed down from a basin they were also usually washed again before and after eating that this was a time before the widespread use of utensils and the fork at one point was actually viewed as sinful to use for a variety of hilarious reasons which are going to get into in the bonus facts a little bit later on beyond eating with one's hands particularly those of lower classes also often ate and drank from the same containers as well from this it should come as no surprise that getting your hands clean before eating was considered good manners and cleaning the fingers after was something of a necessity to get rid of the remnants of food moving back to bathing at least during medieval times while some medical professionals did advise against doing it excessively many others extolled the benefits of bathing regularly at keeping one healthy for example Italian physician magnus medial a nurse's who functioned as a court physician as well as for a time region master at the University of Paris in the 14th century noted the bath cleans the external body parts of dirt left behind him exercised on the outside of the body if any of the waste products a third digestion are left under the skin that were not resolved by exercise and massage these will be resolved by the bath he also recommended bathing as a means to cure or ease discomfort such as for the elderly and women who were pregnant of course when talking full body bars only the reasonably well-off at this point could actually afford to own a bath of some sort and to supply it with hot water so most reliant on bath houses rivers lakes hot springs etc thus the poorest of the poor who could not afford to go to a bathhouse a generally thoughts who have had extremely poor hygiene during the winter months outside of washing using basins but for the rest of our houses were common particularly after the 11th century when Crusaders who had become accustomed to such and the excellent hygiene habits of Muslim and Jewish peoples popularized and regularly frequented these establishments not just for bathing purposes but also to socialize in fact if we fast forward to the 15th century bathing and eating of bath houses were often combined as noted in the book clean a history of personal hygiene impurity by Virginia Smith by the 15th century bath feasting in many town bath houses seems to have been as common as going out to a restaurant was to become for centuries later German baths airings from the 15th century often featured the town bathhouse with a long row of bathing couples eating a meal naked in bathtubs often several to a table with other couples seen smiling and in the mid distance while this might seem a little odd at first glance through a modern lens consider that many people today enjoy soaking in a hot tub or pool with their friends while drinking alcoholic beverages which is not too dissimilar to these former bathhouse practices except now usually featuring skimpy bathing suits going back to bath houses given that many were connected to bakeries in order to use heat from their ovens to warm the water let's just face it there was no way one could sit there in the water smelling freshly baked bread and not develop a voracious appetite and speaking of voracious appetites given that many bath houses were not gender divided and featured naked now clean people having a good time together it should also come as no surprise that bath houses were known to be places to go to have a really good time for those without a non-paid partner these establishments were also frequently places do you find or engage the services of exceptionally good smelling prostitutes as you might have guessed from all of this many church groups looked down on bath houses for that very reason for example consider this excerpt from an 11th century minister known as bear should of worms if thou being a married man has shamed the nakedness of any woman as I say her breasts and her shameful pots if thou hast thou shalt do penance for five days on bread and water but if thou art not married two days on bread and water hast thou washed thyself in the bath with thy wife and other women and seen them nudes and they thee if thou hast thou should ask first for three days on bread and water however contrary to popular belief on the whole at this time it doesn't seem as if most church organizations had a big problem with the act of bathing itself just the perceived immorality exhibited as many bath houses for example 6th century Pope Gregory the 1st is known to have encouraged Christians to bathe regularly and as alluded to Muslim and Jewish groups were likewise known to be even more fastidious than their Christian brethren about keeping clean as for the Christian Church in Europe to solve the issue whether a whole lot of nakedness and loving taking place at the bath houses it became relatively common for bath houses to be built by the various church groups themselves near monasteries the difference between these bath houses and the others was that they were a whole lot less fun specifically they separated men and women instead of having them mixed together further demonstrating that most church organized Asians did not really have anything against the act of bathing itself many monasteries actually piped water into their own sometimes elaborate baths and even required the clergy to bathe before many events for example at Westminster Abbey they required their monks to bathe for Christmas Easter and at the end of June and at the end of September this doesn't however mean that the monks weren't bathing elsewise just that they were required to do so during these periods in fact evidence seems to indicate that they bathe much more frequently than that as they seem to have employed a bath attendant year-round at that Abbey so if people during medieval times actually did bathe reasonably frequently where did the perception that they did not come from well this came about thanks to the latter end of this period and beyond where people really did start bathing less as to why to begin with around the mid 14th century about 60% of the European population died within about seven years or so not too dissimilar to the snap verses in this case because of the black death this saw the former popular practice of people communing in bath houses together start to become decidedly less popular for a time though it seems to have picked back up after things went the other way again around the early 16th century when diseases like syphilis were rearing their ugly heads in Europe around this same time a popular notion arose in some regions of Europe that water could carry disease into the body through pores in the skin especially hot water it wasn't just diseases from the water itself that they were worried about though they also felt that with the pause widened after a bath this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body and spazing particularly at bath houses became connected with the spread of diseases of course given countless people were all bathing together in the same warm water sharing food and even sometimes having sex this probably did genuinely invite the spread of disease at these establishments further or even in home baths water still was commonly shared with many people as hauling it all Lind was no small task and even much more work and cost if you chose to heat it as well thus the popularity of bath houses began to significantly decline when syphilis was making the rounds as noted by Dutch philosopher Erasmus in 1526 25 years ago nothing was more fashionable in ribbons than the public baths today there are none the new plague has taught us to avoid them but again then as now people tended not to like the stink if they could help it thus without the bathhouses around or as popular many began mostly relying on the age-old method of washing using a basin and the like as a primary means to keep clean as well as when weather permitted taking dips in lakes and rivers to further get around the stink problem people who could afford it too frequently changing their linen undergarments as well as rubbing themselves down with freshly clean linen or scented rags various perfumes were also used as well as the practice of wearing small bags containing fragrant herbs these hubs were often rubbed under the armpits and elsewhere for use as a deodorants that said while most still bathed occasionally just less frequently than before it does appear that Sun even among the nobility really did forego full-body bathing at this point for example one Russian ambassador to France noted his majesty louis the xiv stunk like a wild animal Russians were not so finicky about bathing and tended to bathe regularly even after their European brethren had largely abandoned bath houses Qing through the fourteenth the stench seems to have come from the fact that his physicians advised him to bathe as infrequently as possible to maintain good health he also stated he founds the act of bathing disturbing because of this he has said to have only bathed in a bath twice in his lifetime another in this gruesome twosome class among the aristocracy was Queen Isabel the first of Spain who claimed that she had taken a full body bath only twice in her lifetime when she was first born and when she got married of course in both cases they are perhaps forgetting many times that servants bathed them as children and given certain moral attitudes of the day particularly in the case of Isabel it may be this they were just saying they didn't ever bathe rather than this actually being the case whatever the case amazingly these post medieval time attitudes against regular full-body bathing in certain pockets of Europe lingered among some groups until around the mid 19th century but to sum up there doesn't ever actually seem to have been a time in recorded history that people are known to have ceased bathing in some form all together with the record for the least hygienic not going to ultra distant ancestors like medieval peoples all those before but two are more recent ones with the abandoning of better hygiene by some groups around the 16th century and beyond thanks to widespread disease and the development of more prudish attitudes but even then with exceptions most people seems to have not enjoyed being dirty and took steps to keep as clean and freshly smelling as possible given their circumstances while they certainly weren't anywhere close to as hygienic as our modern selves who enjoy hot running water cheap sips etc on the whole they were not covered in dirt and grime as is so often depicted by Hollywood and you know another thing we can all easily enjoy in the modern world and that's the ease of backing up our digital files using today's sponsor Backblaze the best way to backup your files it's absolutely with Backblaze as you guys know I like to try all of the sponsors that we have on this show and indeed today's sponsor I've not only been trying I've been using for I think three or four years now well before they started sponsoring this show it's just the best way to do it right now my computer over there it's syncing files with back blazars servers wherever they might be super securely just uploading this video right now it's already being uploaded to back blazars service all of that happens securely computer just churns away in the backgrounds automatically I never even think about backing up stuff anymore I can just rest assured the Backblaze is taking care of it all now I've not to call on them yet because of a hard disk failure or something like that but I know it's all good if something bad happens because I can just grab my restored files super easily in the back place have restored billions of files can either download the files using my internet connection it's pretty fast so that's pretty easy or if you've got a slow connection or just a lot of files I think I've got over 10 terabytes backed up with them so they could ship me out a hard disk which is just a really efficient way to do it and right now you can see how easy bag blazes to use by getting a free trial of the service just go to Backblaze comm forward slash brain food and going through that link not only gets you that discount but it also helps by supporting this show and let's get into today's bonus facts okay everyone's at house opener just to get rid of bacteria well wonder no more contrary to popular belief most soap doesn't actually kill microbes unless it specifically has some sort of antibacterial agents added and it's also noteworthy here that studies show antibacterial soap isn't really that much more effective at getting rid of bacteria from say your hands than normal soap is as for that non antibacterial variety when you wash your hands with it the so chemically works to break down the oil in your hands that is often riddled with microbes thus the more soap and the longer the hands are rubbed together once rinsed away with water the less oil and microbes are left on your hands and now for another bonus fact the Chia culture from 2400 to 1900 BC that resided in part of present-day China are also known to have used Forks a couple of thousand years later the forks popularity in the Western world spread via the Silk Road into Venice with one of the earliest recorded instances of forks in Venice coming from an 11th century story of the wedding of a Byzantine princess Theodora and a du Cana to Dominica sell though she supposedly brought gold Forks as part of her dowry however the god-fearing Venetians saw these pronged monstrosities as a slide against the Lord Himself who gave us perfectly good fingers to eat with and if you're now thinking we're exaggerating consider this quote from some Peter Damian Gordon his wisdom has provided man with natural Forks his fingers therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating of course in the book of Samuel chapter 2 verse 13 thought to have been composed around 640 to 540 BC it states that Jewish priests assistants used Forks and the priests custom with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice the priests servant came while the flesh was in seething with a flesh of three teeth in his hand such trivial mentions as usage in the holy scriptures bike none other than the priests servants themselves didn't stop many religious elite from vilifying the fork and pour Theodora they boss it in like the fact that she used napkins among other things like that when the princess died two years later of a mysterious degenerative disease it was considered by some to be punishments for her pride and perceived excesses despite being mentioned as okay to use in the Hebrew Bible Forks in the Western world continued to carry this negative stigma due to their association with eastern decadence and being perceived as an affront to God the porks popularity began to grow however during the 16th century due to the infamous historical trendsetter Catherine de Medici she helps popularize the fork with the French tables after her marriage to Henry the second at this time anything Italian was in vogue thanks to the Renaissance the four-course it became more popular as hygiene ideals began to change particularly as people started bathing and washing less frequently around this time as previously noted actually the fort began to seem increasingly attractive to those who preferred their food to be free of anything on their hands however many men still rejected them as they were considered too feminine this attitude begins you alter when they began to be crafted with ruffled cuffs this might seem strange to ask but let's not forget that high heels were originally invented for men who also commonly wore tights on that note when forks began gaining in popularity this resulted in less of a need for a pointed knife during mealtimes as such in 1669 louis xiv the same guy who loved doing up his hair wearing tights and high heels as was the manly fashion at the time made these overly sharp knives illegal at the table and replaced them with blunter and wider knives that said they wouldn't be until the industrialization period that the lower and middle classes began commonly using forks thanks to the reduction in their price when this happened forks quickly surpassed knives is the most popular calorie item of course any discussion of cutlery would not be complete without giving a nod to the facts that ancient spoons in China also sometimes featured a pointy end to be used as a one prong fork slash knife perhaps the first known instance of the spork or snipe depending on how you want to look at it so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did smash that like button below and don't forget to subscribe also probably the best thing you can do to support this show is check it off sponsor Backblaze 15-day free trial link below and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 953,139

Rating: 4.933043 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, history, medieval europe, european history, society, culture, bathing, bathe, bath, shower, clean, hygiene

Id: leXulVvpkL8

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019