When
I decided to write a novel based on one of the Roland legends, I knew very
little about the Middle Ages, but I was certain of one thing: medieval people
didn’t bathe. I recall being told by teachers that the folk thought it was
unhealthy. As an author, all I needed to decide was whether the characters
would notice how bad they smelled.
So
imagine my surprise to find a section about bathing in Pierre Riche’s Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne. Carolingian
princes took baths and changed their clothes once a week. OK, so that’s not as
often as Americans who can’t live without their daily showers, but it’s a lot
more frequent than what I was led to believe.
Commoners
would have bathed less often than aristocrats because of the time and labor it
took to fill a tub, but they would have bathed as often as they could.
Go
back to the Carolingians of the eighth and ninth centuries, and you’ll find a
different attitude. Baths were a requirement for palaces, and bathhouses
contained hot and cold pools. The bathhouse at the Charlemagne’s palace at
Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French) was spring fed and could accommodate up to
100 bathers.
Abbeys
also had baths for the residents, guests, and the sick. Yes, you read that last
part right, the sick, who were allowed baths on a mostly regular basis. So much
for bathing being bad for health. Frequent hair-washing in the winter was to be
avoided, but that’s not exactly a surprise when you consider how cold it was
indoors.
Some
medieval people didn’t bathe, but the reason had nothing to do with health.
Abstaining from the bath was a form of penance, just like giving up wine or
meat or something else you enjoy.
In
later years, bathing would take place in tented tubs placed in bedchambers or
public bathhouses, which were a flimsy cover for brothels. English HistoricalFiction Authors has excellent post with a lot of the particulars, even though I’ve never seen a
reference to early medieval folk using the oils and strigils of the Romans in
my daily life books.
Between
baths, people of all classes would wash using basins of cold water. Just like
most of us, medieval people wanted to be clean.
Sources
Daily Life in the World
of Charlemagne,
Pierre Riche, translated by Jo Ann McNamara
Daily Life in Medieval
Times, Frances
and Joseph Gies
