The 'Dirty Middle Ages': Bathing and Cleanliness in the Middle Ages

Albrecht Classen

The ‘Dirty Middle Ages’: Bathing and Cleanliness in the Middle Ages. With an Emphasis on Medieval German Courtly Romances, Early Modern Novels, and Art History: Another Myth-Buster

Modern Misconceptions About the Middle Ages

Most medievalists are only too aware about the many myths that blur ordinary people’s understanding and conceptualization of the Middle Ages, that is, both negative and positive views. Extreme and miserable conditions in everyday life seem to have existed then, since everything must have been so much worse than today, at least according to the global, but certainly wrong, notion that history, hence also cultural history, is determined by a linear, or progressive, develop-

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ment. We can often only shake our heads considering the extent to which mis-

1ꢀSee the illuminating discussion by Otto Borst, Alltagsleben im Mittelalter. insel taschenbuch, 513 (Frankfurt a.ꢁM.: Insel, 1983); this is now impressively complemented by Peter Dinzelbacher, Lebenswelten des Mittelalters 1000–1500. Bachmann Basiswissen, 1 (Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Bachmann, 2010); see now also Albrecht Classen, “Survey of Fundamental

Reference Works in Medieval Studies,” Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends,

ed. id., vol. 1 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), XXV–LXVI. See also Philosophy of History After Hayden White, ed. Robert Doran. Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); Progress, Apocalypse, and Completion of

History and Life After Death of the Human Person in the World Religions, ed. Peter Koslowski (Dor-

drecht and London: Kluwer Academic, 2002). The discussion about progress in human history is legion, of course. As to progressivism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism (last accessed on April 16, 2015). A solid, philosophically oriented discussion of this issue, outlining the contrast between the eschatological worldview in the Middle Ages and beyond and the optimism exuded by the Enlightenment, is offered by Friedrich Rapp, “Fortschritt,” Lexikon der

Geisteswissenschaften: Sachbegriffe – Disziplinen – Personen, ed. Helmut Reinalter and Peter J.

Brenner (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 2011), 194–202; Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (Edinburgh and London: Canongate, 2009). Of course, the entire concept of ‘progress’ is the result of Enlightenment theory and developed further in the nineteenth century, while the twentieth century experienced a dramatic decline in this optimistic world view; see, for a

Albrecht Classen, The University of Arizona

DOI 10.1515/9783110523799-017

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conceptions and prejudice dominate popular opinions about the medieval world, which is mostly seen only through the lens of the modern film industry or popular writing. Binary oppositions make good stuff for fantasy, but they are highly detrimental to a rational and critical approach to the study of the pre-modern world

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based on a careful analysis of the rich panoply of sources and historical objects.
Aside from truly simplistic perspectives regarding the infantile character, ignorance, boorishness, crudeness, simplicity, or outright incompetence of medieval people, we are often confronted with such absurd notions as that the Black Death eliminated a large portion of the entire population; that medieval thinkers believed the earth was flat; that lords had the right to deflower the wives of their subjects after the wedding (ius primae noctis); that the medieval Inquisition had invented and used the most abhorrent torture instruments, as obviously documented by countless but mostly silly modern-day torture museums; that everyone drank wine and beer instead of water because of wide-spread pollution; that most people did not reach an age beyond thirty or forty years; that medieval medicine was largely based on superstition; that virtually everyone in the Middle Ages was stationary and did not travel; that the hygienic conditions were simply horrible and people reeked unbearably because they did not wash and clean themselves properly; that women were totally subjugated and had no rights, living an existence comparable to sex slaves; that the witch craze raged already in the Middle Ages; that the medieval Catholic Church ruled supremely and dominated everyone’s personal lives, hence that there were no counter-movements, no heretics,

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or no atheists ; that peasants barely carved out an existence and were constantly victims of famines; that physical violence was very common and criminals were hardly ever punished; and that husbands commonly employed the chastity belt

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to control their wives’ sexuality during their own absence.

good overviews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_of_Progress; and http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/progress/ (both last accessed on June 12, 2016).

2ꢀRémi Brague, The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christi-

anity, Judaism, and Islam, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (2006; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 3ꢀFor a significant and solid analysis of atheism in the Middle Ages, see Peter Dinzelbacher,

Unglaube im “Zeitalter des Glaubens”: Atheismus und Skeptizismus im Mittelalter (Badenweiler:

Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Bachmann, 2009); Paolo Golinelli, Il Medioevo degli increduli: mis- credenti, beffatori, anticlericali. Storia, biografie, diari (Milan: Mursia, 2009); for a useful text

anthology, see Dale McGowan, Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics (Santa

Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012). 4ꢀThe internet offers numerous good pages where many of those myths about the Middle Ages are well summarized, and often also busted, see, for instance: http://www.medievalists. net/2014/06/27/15-myths-middle-ages/; http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/medmyths.html;

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Most stunningly, we also hear from serious scholars in the field of sociology or anthropology that rationality and reasonable operations were the characteristic features only of the early modern age, as if individuals such as Roger Bacon or

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Albertus Magnus never existed. At the same time, current youth culture, just as in the age of Romanticism, seems to colonize the Middle Ages once again for its own purposes, playing out its characteristic needs for fantasy somehow situated

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in the past.
Undoubtedly, mythical concepts about the past have been of greatest influence both on the lay public and also scholars, as the history of literature, the visual arts, music, and architecture especially mostly since the early nineteenth century

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has demonstrated. Just as much as the Romantics can be credited with having

http://listverse.com/2009/01/07/top-10-myths-about-the-middle-ages/; http://io9.com/10-worstmisconceptions-about-medieval-life-youd-get-fr-1686799982 (all last accessed on April 5, 2015). To the credit of the internet, as many of these myths actually circulate today, as many efforts are being made to combat them as well in a critical fashion. I have engaged with the last myth myself

intensively, see Albrecht Classen, The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process. The New

Middle Ages (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). This has led recently to online interviews and newspaper reports: Rita Abundancia for El Pais Jan.ꢁ26, 2016: http://smoda.elpais.com/placeres/la-verdadera-historia-del-cinturon-de-cas- tidad/; Interviewed by Lauren Oyler for Vice’s Broadly Channel (online) on the medieval chastity belt: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/chastity-belts-arent-real-tell-it-to-the-firemen-who- rescued-a-woman-from-one. See also the contributions to Misconceptions about the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008). However, neither hygiene nor medicine, neither baths nor the use of water are addressed here. For a critical examination of medieval cosmography, hence of the alleged concept of the ‘flat earth,’ see Frank Schleicher, Cosmographia Christiana: Kosmologie

und Geography im frühen Christentum (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014). 5ꢀSee, for instance, Don LePan, The Cognitive Revolution in Western Culture. Vol. 1: The Birth of

Expectation (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: The Macmillan Press, 1989). For a range of

contrastive opinions, see the contributions to Which Past, Whose Future?: Treatments of the Past at the Start of the 21st Century: An International Perspective. Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of York, 20 ‒ 21 May 2005 (2007), ed. Sven Grabow. BAR International Series,

1633 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007); see also Charles P. Webel, The Politics of Rationality: Reason Through Occidental History. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 87 (New York: Routledge, 2013).

6ꢀNúria Perpinya, Ruins, Nostalgia and Ugliness: Five Romantic Perceptions of the Middle Ages and a Spoonful of Game of Thrones and Avant-Garde Oddity (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2014).

7ꢀSee the book series edited by Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, Mittelalter Mythen, 1–5 (St. Gall: UVK – Fachverlag für Wissenschaft und Studium, 1996–2008); see also Norma Lorre Goodrich, Medieval Myths, Newly rev. and enl. ed. (New York: New American Library, 1977); Pat-

rick J. Geary, The Myths of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 2002).

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rediscovered the value und importance of the pre-modern past, as much they have been responsible for the creation of a strong obfuscation tendency, mostly

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idealizing that world or casting it in the worst possible light. The vast number of modern movies and television shows about the Middle Ages, and especially those situated in that era for entertainment purposes, serves as a vivid testimony of the deep impact which mythical notions about the past have had on popular opinion until today, mostly to the detriment of the critical understanding of what that era was all truly about and why it is so important for us today to understand it beyond what popular notions convey. At best there is some curiosity, at worst there is the deep contempt, and sometimes also the ridicule of that past age, none of which

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proves to be appropriate, historically sensitive, and accurate.
My intentions here are to focus on the significant but often overlooked topic of cleaning, washing, and baths. Accusations of uncleanliness have always

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worked best in satire or hate speech. Were medieval people really as dirty as Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin have made us believe when they produced their famous, but spoofy, Monty
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Python and the Holy Grail movie in 1975? What was the level of cleanliness espe-

8ꢀBerta Raposo, “Rediscovery of the Middle Ages (Late 18th Century / Turn of the Century),”

Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New

York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), vol. 2, 1171–84; see also Ulrich Müller, “Medievalism,” ibid., vol. 1, 850–65; Siegrid Schmid, “Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature,” ibid., vol. 1, 866–73. 9ꢀThe number of critical studies on medieval movies is growing steadily; see, for instance, Kevin

J. Harty, The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and

Asian Films about Medieval Europe (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 1999);

John Aberth, A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film (New York and London: Routledge, 2003); William F. Woods, The Medieval Filmscape: Reflections of Fear and Desire in a Cinematic

Mirror (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2014); Michael N. Salda, Arthurian Animation: A

Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2013).

As to the ridiculing of the Middle Ages, see Louise D’Arcens, Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages. Medievalism, IV (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). As to the Middle Ages on televi-

sion, see The Middle Ages on Television: Critical Essays, ed. Meriem Pagès and Karolyn Kinane

(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015).

10ꢀAlexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame, IN: Univer-

sity of Notre Dame Press, 2007), identifies strong strategies by Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the early Middle Ages to malign the respective other side as dirty and disgusting. I suspect that this has not changed much since then.

11ꢀRebecca A. Umland and Samuel J. Umland, The Use of Arthurian Legend in Hollywood Film:

From Connecticut Yankees to Fisher Kings. Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, 2 (West-

port, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996); Juliette Wood, Eternal Chalice: The Enduring Legend of the

Holy Grail (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008); Gail Ashton and Daniel T. Kline, Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); for an

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cially among the aristocrats? What do we know about basic standards of hygiene, hence of health, treatment of excrements, and all those aspects even we moderns normally do not talk about much or regard as too private for public conversa-

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tions? I will first review what we know about the cultural history of bathing in the pre-modern world, and then turn to a number of examples from the history of medieval German literature to illustrate how we can draw data from those texts to support art-historical evidence. The proverbial saying, very common in American usage, “Throw out the baby with the bath water,” somehow but erroneously associated with the Middle Ages, might tell us all, since the image suggestively confirms how common it was to give babies a bath. This is a popular saying in modern English, yet it is nothing but a cliché, if not a myth, that in the past families tended to use one and the same bath water for every person in the household, and when it was finally the baby’s time, the water must have been so dirty that

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one could no longer see the person in it. Such erroneous notion about hygiene in the past are rampant until today all over the world.
This widely-used phrase especially in contemporary English originally derived from the German apothegm created by Thomas Murner in his satirical poem Narrenbeschwörung from 1512, directly based on Sebastian Brant’s Narren- schiff from 1494, “das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten.” Poking fun at the fools here on earth who easily cause more damage than good when they try to rectify a situation, he provides the image of the calf which the stupid person kills along with the cow in the process of getting his revenge. Next, he warns his readers not to follow the example of throwing the baby out the tub when the maid wants to empty the dirty water: “Vnt schit das kindt vß mit dem bad / Zuo unfal macht im selber schad” (And pours out the child together with the bath water and thus

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causes a damage for himself). But the broadsheet depicting this scene only

excellent plot summary and discussion of the critical features of this famous movie, see http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail (last accessed on April 5, 2015). 12ꢀGerhard Jaritz, “Excrement and Waste,” Handbook of Medieval Culture, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), vol. 1, 406–14. 13ꢀFor the related folk-etymological urban legend see David Wilton, Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 66–67.

14ꢀFor Murner, see Barbara Könneker, Satire im 16. Jahrhundert: Epoche – Werk – Wirkung. Arbe-

itsbücher zur Literaturgeschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1991), 68–86; Dirk Jarosch, Thomas Mur-

ners satirische Schreibart: Studien aus thematischer, formaler und stilistischer Perspektive. Schrif-

tenreihe zur Mediävistik, 9 (Hamburg: Kovač, 2006). For the common American usage of this proverbial saying, see Wolfgang Mieder, “‘(Don’t) Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water’: The Americanization of a German Proverb and Proverbial Expression’,” Western Folklore 50.4 (1991, published 1992): 361‒400; see also A Dictionary of American Proverbs, ed. Wolfgang Mieder (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 33; and the Cambridge Dictionary of American

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shows a maid who holds a small wooden vessel just big enough for an infant’s bath.
Murner had no intention at all to ridicule contemporary hygiene or to comment on the common practice of taking baths at his time. The transformation of this proverb in the following centuries simply reflected the growing ignorance about the Middle Ages and the increased desire to denigrate the past in its basic living conditions. Accusations of uncleanliness have always worked best in satire

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or hate speech, and people have misunderstood, probably deliberately, and misinterpreted thoroughly the message conveyed by Murner. His remarks cannot be used at all as supporting evidence regarding the allegedly ‘dirty’ Middle Ages or early modern period (Fig. 1). The opposite is actually the case, especially since the image confirms how common it was to give babies a bath, and that maids were in charge of this task.
We also learn of cleaning methods and practices particularly for infants in the contemporary collection of jest narratives, the anonymous Till Eulenspiegel (perhaps by Hermen Bote, first printed in 1510 or 1511), which is, however, mostly filled with accounts of filthy actions defying all principles of hygiene. The shock effect of all those episodes reveals, however, the true degree of hygiene people normally would have expected. Right away, in the first account, after Till having been baptized, the maid carrying the baby, being tipsy, falls off the bridge when bringing it home, soiling it badly in the muck, so they have to wash it in a kettle:

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“Thus was Eulenspiegel baptized three times in one day” (5).

Idioms, ed. Paul Heacock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 14. For more details on

the German tradition, see Simone Loleit, Wahrheit, Lüge, Fiktion; das Bad in der deutschsprachi- gen Literatur des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008). 15ꢀAlexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (see note 10), identifies

strong strategies by Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the early Middle Ages to malign the respective other side as dirty and disgusting. I suspect that this has not changed much since then. 16ꢀTill Eulenspiegel: His Adventures, trans., with introduction and notes, by Paul Oppenheimer (1991; New York and London: Routledge, 2001). For a critical review of the relevant scholarship

and an analysis of the text, see Albrecht Classen, The German Volksbuch: A Critical History of

a Late-Medieval Genre. Studies in German Language and Literature, 15 (Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 185–212. See now Herbert Blume, “Hermann Bote – Autor des Eulenspiegelbuches? Zum Stand der Forschung,” id., Hermann Bote: Braunschweiger

Stadtschreiber und Literat: Studien zu seinem Leben und Werk. Braunschweiger Beiträge zur

deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 15 (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2009), 211–35 (orig. 1994). A much later, but still pre-modern example of a scientific examination of hygiene can be found in the learned treatise by Bernard Lynch, A guide to health through the various stag-

es of life: Wherein are Explained, I. The different Degrees and Changes of Age, the principal and inevitable Causes of Old Age, and finally of our Dissolution; with a Chronological and Historical

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Much later in the collection of tales, we also hear of Eulenspiegel frequenting a bath house in Hanover which the owner has called “House of Cleansing” in order to brag about his fanciful establishment. But the rogue does not only intend to clean his outer body, he also cleanses his inner body and “deposited a great pile of shit in the water trough in the middle of the bathing room, creating a stink through the whole place” (143). The ensuing bickering between Eulenspiegel and the owner does not end well, although the latter can force him out of the bath. Certainly, he insists that his house of cleansing excludes cleaning the inner body: “‘One usually does your sort of cleaning in the lavatory. This is a house of cleaning-by-sweating – and you are turning it into a shithouse” (143). But Eulenspiegel gets the better of him since he uses the privacy of the dressing room in order to leave more of his shit behind, telling the proprietor: “‘Dear Keeper of the Baths, in this room I cleansed myself thoroughly for the first time. You’ll be thinking about me a great deal before noon. I’m leaving this place” (144).