Despite the best efforts of historians, the internet is still awash with misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Many of these ideas were the product of Victorian writers and historians reflecting Medieval life through the lens of their own society, as was done by antiquarians before them and by historians since. However, after more than a century in popular culture, and being taught in schools, these sometimes broad, sweeping assertions remain deeply rooted in everyday consciousness. This is especially so when repeatedly reinforced online, in social media, on television and in the movies. Before addressing one such notion, it is worth remembering that the Mediæval period lasted roughly 1,000 years during which peoples’ lives and experiences varied according to time, place and circumstance. So, with that in mind, did Mediæval people really not bathe?
Common people never wash
Medieval people cared a lot about hygiene and washed, often daily - even peasants, farmers and the poor. All were advised to change their underwear daily and virtually every household account book records payment to washerwomen. So, while it is true that some sources tell us that people rarely took a bath, but it would be quite wrong to assume they did not wash; taking a bath is not the same as washing. The reason behind the disparity is largely one of logistics and finance. Bathing would have involved filling a big wooden tub with hot water, which meant boiling a large volume of water over an open fire necessitating an expenditure in terms of the fuel burnt and the time taken. The hot water would have to be carried and emptied into the tub, which may have been lined with fabric perhaps to guard against splinters or the rough surface of the wood. The use of scented herbs or soap only added to the financial outlay. Thus, bathing in the Mediaeval period took a great deal of time and effort, was a costly enterprise for most, and nowhere near as easy as it is today. Far easier would be to use less hot water in a bucket, bowl or a sitz bath (otherwise known as a hip bath), a smaller tub that one could sit in but did not allow for complete submersion. Admittedly, firewood still needed to be burnt to heat water, but fires were already burning for much of the day in almost every household for warmth, light and food. Hot water could be produced by simply placing an earthenware jug or metal cauldron next to or over the fire. Alternatively, a far older method of heating rocks in the fireplace which could be place into the water to produce hot water in seconds. So, a big fancy bath was a luxury most could not afford but washing with water from a basin or bucket, bathing in a hip bath or immersing oneself in a pond or river was available to everyone.
Bathhouses
While communal or public bathhouses are synonymous with the ancient Romans, they were also common and very popular in Mediæval Europe. For example, London in the 13th-century is known to have had 13 bathing establishments, albeit far fewer than the 32 recorded in contemporary Paris. In the 14th-century, Augsburg and Vienna had 17 and 29 bathing establishments respectively, while in the following century Nürnberg is noted for having fourteen. That said, it is not always clear what sort of establishments these places were. It is unlikely that taverns with bathing facilities, small bathhouses or private baths were counted in the totals. It is much more likely, however, that the records are concerned with large public bathhouses.
There was a very good reason why the mediæval forerunners of the aforementioned cities, and our modern capitals, were sited near a clean water supply. As the 15th-century architect Leon Battista Alberti noted: “a city required a large amount of water not only for drinking, but also for washing, for gardens, tanners and fullers, and drains, and in case of sudden outbreak of fire, the best should be reserved for drinking, and the remainder distributed according to need” [1].
A plumb job Water distribution via indoor plumbing was rare in Mediæval Europe, but many royal palaces, monasteries, abbeys and the houses of the wealthy had running water together with the means to remove waste. In Britain, much of the work of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, founded in the 14th-century, involved installing, repairing and maintaining urban conduit pipes. Bath, Bristol, Coventry, Dartmouth, Exeter, Frome, Gloucester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Ludlow, Newcastle, Petworth, Richmond, Southampton, Stamford, Totnes, and a host of other continental towns and cities all had networks of tunnels and pipes to transport and distribute fresh water. In 1237, for example, the City of London acquired the springs of the Tyburn and constructed a small reservoir to help serve the city with a steady, free-flowing water supply. Eight years later work began on the Great Conduit, a man-made underground channel that brought drinking water from the Tyburn to Cheapside in the City. Londoners were at liberty to draw water, although wardens were appointed to stop them taking too much, prevent the unpermitted taking or diversion of the supply, and to repair pipes. Those with the financial means could request extra pipes be connected to their home or, in the case of brewers, cooks, fishmongers, and so on, their place of work.
Spend a penny It is fairly evident that Mediæval Europeans wanted to bathe. Most castles, monasteries, and houses of the urban elites had private bathhouses or bathrooms. For the commonfolk, just as it had been for the ancient Romans, with work completed then a trip to the local bathhouse was a social occasion where one could get clean while catching up on the gossip. As further evidence that personal hygiene was taken seriously, in some towns those who did not visit a public bath at least once a week could be fined.
Public bathhouses existed in nearly every mediæval city from the 12th-century onward. Permission to operate a bathhouse was granted by the local authorities, as was the entry price and opening times. Most it seems were open at least three days per week, Saturday being the most popular as it marked the end of the working week, while bathhouses were usually closed on Sunday undoubtedly to encourage church attendance. It seems likely that the remaining days in the week were used for cleaning the bathhouse, getting enough wood for the fires, and producing soap.
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In some countries employees might be paid a clothing, drinking and bathing allowance in addition to a salary. In 14th-century Rochsburg, for example, accounts reveal the town’s stonemasons receiving 6 pennies a week as “Badegeld” (bathing money or bath tokens). Records from the city of Bamberg (“Bamberger Baderordnung”) reveal that, in 1480, a peasant had to pay 1 Heller (the smallest denomination coin worth ½ a pfennig) to partake of a steam bath in one of the public bathhouses. Naturally fees varied across the Mediæval period and according to region, individual bathhouses, what service(s) the bather desired, and on their social status. Wealthy citizens of Bamburg paid double (1 Pfennig) for a “schwitzbad” (steam bath), while immersing yourself in a tub (“wannenbad”) cost 6 Pfennige, for example. Overall, visiting a bathhouse was affordable for most people less the extremely impoverished. Even so, measures were taken for the poor to bathe for free on certain days, sponsored by the wealthy or the church.
More rural communities might not have had ready access to a bathhouse, yet people still washed daily. Bathing and laundry might be conducted in a nearby lake, millpond, stream or river although this was not without risk. In 2015 Professor Suzannah Lipscombe demonstrated how water was one of the “Hidden Killers” in Tudor England causing many an unfortunate drowning (
right). Indeed, surviving coroners’ reports from the period suggest it was all too easy to fall into the water with potentially lethal consequences. Some may know or have experienced the effect of cold water immersion causing a completely involuntary sudden intake of air. Were the person to be underwater at that moment, they will breathe in cold water and as it hits the larynx, the resulting spasm will cause the individual to suffocate. Even in relatively mild weather the temperature of a river can induce cold water shock leaving a person gasping for air and hyperventilating. Moreover, water takes heat away from your body twenty-five times more quickly than air at the same temperature. Thus, as body heat is rapidly lost, vasoconstriction narrows or constricts the blood vessels to conserve heat, but this increases blood pressure while decreasing blood flow to specific tissues or organs. If the heart does not receive enough oxygen for the muscles to continue pumping, then cardiac arrest occurs.
As well as the cold and shock it would be difficult to keep one’s balance. Voluminous clothing might drag or snag on submerged objects, and any current might act to further unbalance the person or pull them underwater. Getting out is made even more difficult as woollen clothing becomes waterlogged and heavy, a direct result of wool’s structure having two internal layers. While the outer layer is moisture, dirt and stain repellent, the inner layer is uniquely good at absorbing water. In fact wool can absorb more moisture than any other fibre before becoming saturated - up to 1½ times its dry weight. Clothing becomes much heavier hampering any escape from the river’s clutches.
Extras? Mediæval bathhouses were not brothels. Once again from Bamberg we know that prostitutes and children who still needed breastfeeding were not allowed in the city’s public bathhouses. Furthermore, travellers visiting a local bathhouse sometimes reported their disappointment at the appropriate and modest behaviour within. Yet, municipal authorities understood, with men and women stripping off to relax with a drink in the hot water of a bath, things could get a little risqué. Accordingly, in many regions there were very strict laws about keeping men and women segregated either in separate bathhouses or at different times of the day. Any man caught sneaking into the women’s bathhouse risked severe punishment. We should remember, and not be drawn into salacious gossip, that Mediæval bathhouses were an important place of social gathering for communities and neighbourhoods. Townsfolk visited them together with their entire family. So, with grandparents, parents, children, infants and even the neighbours all potentially present, having a naughty encounter with someone was not at all easy.
Barring prostitutes from most bathhouses did not necessarily curtail illicit behaviour, however. Human nature has meant that from the earliest times bathhouses and brothels have often been synonymous. Contrary to some popular misconceptions, Mediæval church authorities recognised this but did not object to people bathing. The fear of debauchery and sin encouraged the church’s objections but not an outright ban. While it was true that some may have forsaken bathing and other pleasures as a penance, the church remained keen to ensure its flock was free from sin. In practice this meant the church disapproved of sloth, vanity, and ideas that people should frequent baths for hours purely for pleasure. So, while Pope Gregory the Great (ca. AD 540 – AD 604) recommended Sunday baths, he also warned against them becoming a “time-wasting luxury”. Any supposed “anti-bathing policy” is further undermined when one considers washing has a central role in Christian beliefs. From Mary bathing Jesus to Jesus washing the feet of the poor and saints bathing the sick, keeping clean was a virtue. And if that was not enough, some churches even ran their own bathhouses to keep people from bathing and sinning at the same time.
Hotbed of disease
In 1347, and not for the first time, plague struck Europe. Now known as the Black Death, this bubonic plague pandemic, occurring from 1346 to 1353, was one of the most fatal in human history. As many as 50 million people may have perished; perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th-century population. Unsurprisingly, with a highly contagious disease killing millions, people started to avoid bathhouses. Fearful of getting sick from a touch or even breathing the same air, no one wanted to get in a tub with some strangers or visit other busy public places. When plague struck again, the Dutch philosopher Erasmus wrote in AD 1526:
“Twenty-five years ago, nothing was more fashionable in Brabant than the public baths. Today there are none…the new plague has taught us to avoid them.”
The various waves of plague shifted the focus for hygiene among some people from washing their body to washing their clothes. The fear that hot water would open the skin’s pores and permit infection drove some to wash and bathe less frequently. Greater effort, however, went into changing their underclothes more regularly and washing them routinely. We should not assume that people stopped washing all together - many simply used a fresh cloth and cold water to rub themselves clean. But such a change in behaviour might explain why mention of fully immersive and public bathing waned at this time. It is also possible that awareness of the declining use of bathhouses in the period, coupled with reading how people bathed less often, fuelled the common and persistent misunderstanding that mediæval people were filthy and never washed.
Soap
Iron Age No bathing practice would be complete without some form of soap, which had been used in Europe for thousands of years. The Gauls, Germans and other northern European Iron Age tribes are all known to have manufactured and used soap before the Roman era. The Romans themselves eschewed soap in favour of oils to clean their bodies, but they appear to have been very impressed with what they found as they conquered northwestern Europe. According to Aelius Galenus (anglicised as Galen or Galen of Pergamon), a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire (AD 129 to ca. AD 200/ 216), German soap was regarded as the best. Even earlier Gaius Julius Caesar, Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Publius Cornelius Tacitus and the Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia all wrote about German tribespeople using soap, bathing and generally caring about their hygiene:
- Over a century later Pliny the Elder records in Chapter 47 of Book XXVIII of Naturalis Historia (“Natural History”) that: “Soap too, is very useful for this purpose, an invention of the Gauls for giving a reddish tint to the hair. This substance is prepared from tallow [2] and ashes, the best ashes for the purpose being those of the beech and yoke-elm: there are two kinds of it, the hard soap and the liquid, both of them much used by the people of Germany, the men, in particular, more than the women.”
- In Chapter XXII of his work De origine et situ Germanorum (“On the Origin and Situation of the Germans”), written around AD 98, Tacitus provides a general description of the Germanic peoples that includes the observation: “As soon as they wake up, usually late, they wash themselves oftentimes with warm water like those accustomed to a prolonged winter.”
- In Book II of his De curatione diuturnorum morborum (“On the cure of chronic disease”), written ca. 2nd-century AD, Aretaeus of Cappadocia notes “There are many other medicines…of the Celts, which are men called Gauls, those alkaline substances made into balls, with which they cleanse their clothes, called soap, with which it is a very excellent thing to cleanse the body in the bath.”
Pliny the Elder’s comment about soap giving a reddish tint to Gallic hair is probably an example of his misunderstanding or, in true Plinian style, a complete fabrication. The combination of tallow and ash is unlikely to produce any form of hair dye, but it does imply that soap was being used to clean hair. However reliable Pliny might or might not be, it is interesting that he mentions both hard and liquid soaps. Might this suggest different uses? Determining whether soap was being used to cleanse the body or hair, to launder clothing as a degreaser, as a general cleaning agent, or for medical purposes is difficult to establish as the historical sources can be somewhat vague. Moreover, errors in translation and transcription over time can cast a shadow on a manuscript’s reliability. For example, while Zosimos of Panopolis described both soap and the process of making it circa AD 300, most of his work only survives in later translations and compilations meaning we cannot be 100% certain it is indeed Zosimos’ work. Regardless, in typical Roman style, soap was widely traded across the Empire and as already mentioned, that from Germania was considered of uniquely high-quality by scholars in Egypt, Rome, and Palestine.
The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula ca. AD 711 to AD 720s, also known as the Arab conquest of Spain, resulted in the end of Christian rule in most of Iberia and the establishment of Muslim Arab-Moorish rule in that territory, which became known as al-Andalus under the Umayyad dynasty. Among the many benefits introduced by the Moors were new types of hard soap of a higher quality. In the very south of Europe, and more so in the Middle East and Northern Africa, soaps with ingredients like olive oil and aromatic herbs soon replaced local versions made with tallow. Initially these oil-based soaps were more expensive because of transporting the ingredients but as trade links stabilised and improved, Europeans quickly started importing the oil to make their own soap. The soap industry became a massive enterprise across Mediæval Europe which soon saw the establishment of Guilds for the skilled men and women involved in its production and trade. Naples had a soap maker’s guild from the 6th-century, and France a century later. At a more local level, many people grew plants like the native European
Saponaria officinalis, better known as common Soapwort, in their gardens. The plant contains saponins from which a liquid soap can be produced by soaking the leaves in water.
The authentic Mediæval experience
Having hopefully dispelled some of the myths while showing that personal hygiene was taken seriously, what would a Mediæval person smell like? From
Tastes Of History’s plentiful experience delivering our
cooking demonstrations, the short answer is…smoke. Every household relied on woodfires to produce warmth, and light in their homes and for cooking. The smoke from such fires is inescapable especially in an era before chimneys were commonplace and where fumes were left to ascend to the roof and filter out through the thatch. Smoke impregnates woollen clothing and hair, even if a head-covering is worn. So, whether someone washed every day or not, used soap, deodorant or perfume (for those who could afford such luxuries), the Mediæval world smelt of smoke.
As for body odour, once again our practical experience has repeatedly shown that linen undergarments are excellent at absorbing and neutralising odours. Linen’s anti-bacterial qualities make it especially good at dealing with sweat, and simply cleaning your body with a linen rag or cloth is also remarkably effective.
In summary
Throughout history people have taken steps to keep themselves clean and healthy. While fully immersive bathing in a hot tub was far more problematic than now, the average Mediæval person washed daily. From the time of the ancient Romans through the Middle Ages public bathhouses were available, and affordable, in many European towns and cities. Similarly, another myth concerning access to clean water is disproved by the engineering efforts undertaken to supply urban centres with water. Mediæval Europeans made full use of soap, detergents, deodorants and perfumes to ensure their bodies and their clothes smelt clean and fresh. In short, people in the past were much like us, so do not fall for the outdated trope that the Middle Ages was any dirtier and more malodorous than today. Bon appétit!
This article was very much inspired by the work of Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse,
The Fake History Hunter. Her book ”
Fake History: 101 things that never happened” is a fascinating myth-busting read that debunks 101 things that many people think happened but never did. Her mission to take down fake history and reclaim the truth is humorous, enjoyable and highly recommended reading.
References:
Gaius Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, Liber VI, 21, available online (accessed 12th May 2025).
Gaius Plinius Secundus, Natualis Historia, Liber XXVIII, 47, trans Mayhoff, K.F.T., (1906), Leipzig: Teubner, available online (accessed 12th May 2025).
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, De origine et situ Germanorum, 21, trans. Bozzi, L., (2005), available online (accessed 12th May 2025).
Endnotes:
1. “Did people drink water in the Middle Ages?”, Medievalist.net, available online (accessed 17th April 2021).
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