@@cyberserk5614 which is quite funny when you consider that Saunas were very common in the Nordic countries as far back as the Bronze Age and while the word "Sauna" is Finnish, the ancient swedes, Norwegians or Danes would have had their equivalents and this is ignoring the fact that "Scandinavia" takes it name from a snow covered mountain range and there quite a few lakes in what is now Sweden.
@@PewPewPlasmagun By the 12th cent, Paris boasted a population of around 200k, much larger than other European capitals, as well as a booming economic and civic center. It is far from a Medieval village.
Monty python & the holy grail was directed by Terry Jones, an historian. He parodied screen depictions, mostly Hollywood's, of filthy peasants in drab clothing. He Is On Your Side Metatron!
yep, i also loved the communist element, that kind of ridicules the notion of opression of the lower classes, the socialist/communist something peasents just utterly iriitated the knights/the King, because their conception was basicly a god imposed order and they were used to the people around them seeing it the same
My grandfather born in a pre industrial era. His Father was a pessant in 19th century. He allays told me that his father considered extremaly rude to sit down to the table and not to wash hand and face, and change clothes if was with dirt or mud when they came from the field from work. Probably was the case most part of human history.
That goes to show, if people were concerned with sanitation during a pre- industrial and industrial society i.e one of the dirtiest times in human history, why do we default to saying that medieval peasants were dirty?
@@10THPROPHET Really dirty people was probably more a result of overpopulation and thus strained resources for hygiene. Victorian London was huge but the sanitation system just could not keep up. As such it is more an urban then rural problem.
I remember as a child in Glasgow the communal washhouse, where the women from six houses would do a weekly wash, copper boiler, big sinks, mangles, the lot. I am 75 now, my Granny always said, cleanliness is to godliness. Well done young sir, love your channel.
We did that in Afghanistan. Mind you where we were it was essentially changing dirty dirt for clean dirt in your clothes, but when they didn't stand up from sweat they were a lot more comfortable.
My father's mother did that in her kitchen in Queens, New York City, during the 1930s. Women must thanked God when modern washing machines became affordable.
I really like how fundamentally you grounded this video with the biology, anthropology, pre-history, historiography and just general comparative history. Too often historical phenomenas are explored in a vacuum, I feel like.
Venice port soup from Muslim world. The thing is Europe lacked managment of waste especially in big cities. Like for example Paris where perfume was developed to so people coup with the smile. Due to the fact it was 500k+ in the city. Russia too was poor.
this is something i agree with wholeheartedly, the idea that sociological phenomena can only be explained sociological is a bad poisen that effects the humanist sciences
@@ailediablo79 pretty sure that forms of perfumes existed in antiquity also yes big citys had problems with waste and water management because it's wet in europe it raines a lot in the sommer it is relatively warm, but in the winter rather cold, which makes it very hard to build fitting infrastructure as you have to balance several problems, actualy medieval citys almost all had some form of drainage system and people were usualy banned from using it for waste disposal, because that could lead to a clogging of the system and then to the collage of whole buildings this problem persisted in various forms up into the 19th century. europe also had rather lots of smaller towns instead of few mega citys like other regions.
Speaking of city baths -- medieval guilds often obligated their members to bathe a given minimum number of times per week/month (one could take more baths if he wanted). For example, a lawyer in medieval Cracow had to bathe at least twice a week. Less prestigious professions, like stonemasons, had lower requirements (2-3 times a month). Also, the clergy sometimes did speak out against public baths, but not so much against the "bath" part but the "public" part (and the public nudity involved).
The misinterpretation is also largely political: progressive politics was gaining ground during Victorian times in the wake of the Enlightenment and thus is became necessary to cast all of history as a progressive march from ignorance, dirt and violence to wisdom, cleanliness and peace
Ironically they did this by introducing into the social imaginary the idea that the Middle Ages were a massive regression compared to classical times, which automatically refuted their view of history as constant progress. Not that this cognitive dissonance bothered them
"I used to be a slave like you but then I took a Middle Ages to the knee." - a peasant speaking to roman slave. "Well I used to be a slave like him--! Oh, no I never have been." - a Roman slave speaking point at an enlightenment-contemporary chatel slave.
@@badfoody No, swollen carcasses of all sorts of animals all over the River Thames. Personally, I would have preferred sleeping in horse manure for a year over taking one sip of Thames water in that time. It has even got a name: it's called the Great Stink of 1858.
London during a pride parade is more disgusting. Glad it has become Londonistan now. Just a matter of time until the liberals lose their imaginary rights.
definitely. Everyone loves to view eastern culture as being clean and sophisticated, and western medieval culture as backwards and brutish. This is just wrong. European martial arts are just as good if not better than eastern martial arts. The only reason Europeans were deemed as being filthy compared to the Asians and Japanese, is because they only met sailors, which spent months or even years at sea, where you physically can't bathe properly.
It's a bit of a political agenda as someone mentioned. Medieval Europe is often smeared as being filthy and brutish where as it could be further from the truth. In all honesty, it's anti-european sentiment. That is my 2 cents as an American of European descent
@@10THPROPHET exactly, the educational system is also to blame. All my history/humanities teachers pushed that western medieval Europe= ALWAYS STUPID AND DIRTY, Islamic world=ALWAYS ENLIGHTENED crap. When I studied history on my own in my late teens It was a mild shock learning that crusaders could be in the right, and their foes whether Byzantine, Seljuk or Arab sometimes were in the wrong. Teachers also give the same lie about the Reconquista, even though if you actually read the history the Muslims most definitely had it coming and them some, for the pogroms they subjected conquered Christians to.
Blame Darwin's people in part since his ideology is that the past is primitive, and the latest thing is more likely to be superior. Atheists: "The Bible was written by BRONZE AGE SHEPHERDS!" AD NOVITATEM fallacy. Atheists and logic never get along. ONe time an atheist fanatic even said that the ancient Hebrews lived in the middle of the desert, so they wouldn't know anything about marine life.... so I pointed to the Mediterranean Sea which is right next to the Holy Land. :-)
I know a girl who grew up in a jungle village in Vietnam. She was obsessive about keeping the apartment clean because that's how you keep the bugs out of a grass hut. I cannot imagine it being any different at any point in history.
I also feel the bad hygiene stereotype has its origins in the early modern era just like how witch hunts are associated with the medieval era even though they nearly all happened during the 16th and 17th century. Bathing became more unpopular during the renaissance because of the spread of syphilis caused people to fear public bathing. Also for Samuel Pepys, the fact that his wife took a bath in 1665 was worthy of note in his diary, although he doubted the occasion would be repeated. “She now pretends,” he wrote dubiously, “to a resolution of being hereafter clean. How long it will hold I can guess.”
I guess more and more impoverished folks from the countryside crowding into the cities during industrialisation would pose a greater challenge to cleanliness than living in a village in the country during the middle ages. Also working in factories with coalpowered engines would give ample opportunity to get covered in grime.
I think the "recent" misconception might be associated with the europeans expansions through the americas and other continents, you see, here in Brazil we have documents from the portuguese detailing how the natives bathed frequently and praise their hygine, and there's also the same type of documents detailing this when they met the japanese who in turn found the portuguese "stinky" (I just heard this from a history teacher might be speculation). So the idea of a "filthy european" might be associated with sailers who spent mouths traveling on ships and did not represent the norm, but were falsely labbed as the usual culture. edit: sorry for my grammar, english is not my main language.
Bathing became more unpopular during the renaissance because of the spread of syphilis caused people to fear public bathing. Also for Samuel Pepys, the fact that his wife took a bath in 1665 was worthy of note in his diary, although he doubted the occasion would be repeated. “She now pretends,” he wrote dubiously, “to a resolution of being hereafter clean. How long it will hold I can guess.” But maybe I’m wrong and I’m also just generalising like people do about the Middle Ages.
I watched a video on Japanese culture and even smelling of soap (perfume, deodorant) etc, is all seen as unsocial. The aim is to not smell of anything.
@@timokaaarp7779 Not smelling of anything is ok. I work in construction and some of my coworkers never take a shower a put on a ton of perfume, dirty motherfuckers, and they get offended if you say something. It was like in the army, we had to bring by force some soldiers under the shower after 2 weeks without washing. It's a question of education, my girlfriend will kill me if I don't take a shower after work, and she forces our daughters to take a shower everyday, and that's good.
Water on ships were the number one concern! It was more precious than food. There is no way to maintain hygiene with sweet water in a ship. You could wash with salt water, but that raised other problems as well. At the end of a long voyage you would smell pretty bad. Made for bad first contact...
@@swissmilitischristilxxii3691 You don't need to shower **every** day if you haven't done anything physically taxing. Daily showers dry out skin and deprive hair of natural healthy oils if you didn't already received these positive benefits from perspiration. Limiting oneself to a few showers per week is ideal if you're not doing activities that cause a lot of perspiration.
This is a good topic to talk about. People often and sadly look down on medieval people, but they were far more sophisticated than most people would think. Though, in my opinion, it would also be interesting to talk about public hygiene, just like personal hygiene, such as trash and defecation on the roads in cities, the presence of vermin and ways these were dealt with, public latrines, hygiene in case of medical procedures or, as you mentioned, burials/graveyards etc.
Yup. Video on sewer systems and street maintenance in cities would be nice. Hope Metatron will see your comment and research this topic, i'd love to have good video on hand to show people who spread that misinfo on the internet. Sadly i seem to encounter them pretty often.
Yes, he mentioned for example about depending on individual, but I hoped to see more detail on who and how frequently people had access to water for cleaning, being able to pay for clothing, etc
If someone today thinks they're so much smarter than their Medieval ancestors, try measuring out distances by Sun sight and string and doing basic math using Roman Numerals.
Excellent video as always! Sadly, those "10 DISGUSTING THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE MIDDLE AGES!!!" always have tons of views, while videos with a lot of effort on research and sources pass unnoticed by the masses.
breaking wind was considered a form of high art! (hence the origin of the term "artsy fartsy") the king hired someone to pick his nose for him until Henry VIII broke with tradition to save money! (hence the origin of the phrase "You really know how to pick 'em!" )
Wasn't the miasma theory commonplace during medieval times? Which means that bad odors were thought to be related to sickness and the spread of it. If everybody smelled bad by default, such theory wouldn't have any grounds back in that time. In spanish we call the Plague "la Peste" and we use that same noun for strong odors.
Infected wounds can indeed smell and a sick person may be physically unable to bathe for a few days. And the potty under the bed may go unemptied for a few days. In a really bad case bed ridden people may end up soiling themselves. So yes, diesese can indeed smell.
@@michaelpettersson4919 There is a difference between just dirty person, who smells like dirty person, and someone who is literary breaking down, rotting alive and etc. who produce the stench that is absolutely unbearable.
I came across a reference to miasma in regards to Socrate's death.The Hellenes were reluctant to judicially execute someone as it was believed it caused a miasma in the area where it happened and convicted criminals were kept under very loose guard giving them the opportunity to self Exile with the help of friends. Malaria or "bad air" was associate with areas areas like swamps and fens which were breeding grounds for mosquitos. They were astute enough to recognise the connection but didn't have the knowledge of "animicules" or virii.Herb lore was much more advanced than present knowledge though and used a lot.
I like that the lord of the rings movies didn't show a medieval setting that wasn't dirty, gross, and gray. The people of Gondor in one of the movies were well clean and kept, even the soldiers of Gondor looked like they kept up in hygiene.
Well, that’s just military field service. Doubt that has changed ever. As long as you get to change/wash your underwear at least few times a week, everything is golden. :D
I've read similar stories from men who got used to living in the ww1 trenches. they got used to the lice and general smell of the situation pretty quick once they settled in
My arts major was heavily invested in reinassance and medieval art and history, she used to tell me, that we have these misconceptions about medieval period not because Hollywood or modern media but because the Renaissance, you see, people back then needed to convince the masses that the "dark ages" where the worst of the worst that man kind had ever seen so they could "convince" them to abandon their old ideologies that were hevaly influenced by religious fervor, so they started to represent medieval times like this so people wouldn't want to live like that anymore, even if they never did.
There are two German fairy tales: Bearskin and The Devil's Sooty Brother. In those stories soldiers made a deal with the Devil forbidding them to bathe for 7 years. Therefore the people were repulsed. That wouldn't work, if people were dirty all the time.
Another thing a lot of people don't realize is that there was deodorant in the medieval period. People were known to take a crystal of alum, moisten it, and rub it in their armpits. I've personally tested it and can say that it works quite well, though in very hot weather while camping I did develop a rash that cleared up in about 2 days of using regular deodorant instead of alum.
I always imagine the peasent farmer, after working his field all day, being sweaty and smelly, just jumps into the nearby river or creek. Surely to cool down, but also to get rid of the smell.
Funny how when you went over the hygiene habits of older civilizations you decided to skip completely over the hygiene habits of pre-Roman Western Europeans, whose medieval descendants would be the ones to face the brunt of these medieval bathing myths. “The word sapo, Latin for soap, likely was borrowed from an early Germanic language and is cognate with Latin sebum, "tallow". It first appears in Pliny the Elder's account,[17] Historia Naturalis, which discusses the manufacture of soap from tallow and ashes. There he mentions its use in the treatment of scrofulous sores, as well as among the Gauls as a dye to redden hair which the men in Germania were more likely to use than women.[18] The Romans avoided washing with harsh soaps before encountering the milder soaps used by the Gauls around 58 BC.[19] Aretaeus of Cappadocia, writing in the 2nd century AD, observes among "Celts, which are men called Gauls, those alkaline substances that are made into balls [...] called soap".[20] The Romans' preferred method of cleaning the body was to massage oil into the skin and then scrape away both the oil and any dirt with a strigil. The 2nd-century AD physician Galen describes soap-making using lye and prescribes washing to carry away impurities from the body and clothes. The use of soap for personal cleanliness became increasingly common in this period. According to Galen, the best soaps were Germanic, and soaps from Gaul were second best.[21] Zosimos of Panopolis, circa 300 AD, describes soap and soapmaking.[21]” en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The moment they rise from sleep, which they generally prolong till late in the day, they bathe, most frequently in warm water; as in a country where the winter is very long and severe.” (Tacitus on Germany) www.gutenberg.org/files/2995/2995-h/2995-h.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they make it their practice to increase the distinguishing color by which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater, and they pull it back from their forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck... Some of them shave their beards, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the mustache grow until it covers the mouth.” (Diodorus Siculus) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The voices of most sound alarming and menacing, whether they are angry or the reverse, but all alike are clean and neat, and throughout the whole region, and especially in Aquitaine, you will hardly find a man or woman, however poor, who is dirty and in rags, as you would elsewhere>: (Ammianus Marcellinus, The Character of the Gauls) So we see hygiene was not new to Western Europeans before or during Roman occupation, so why the hell would they suddenly give it up after the Romans left?
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the education. My dad was from a poor farm family in the US and he did not have indoor plumbing until he joined the military in 1968, yet their family of 10 were bathed, clean clothes, my dad always tells stories of how his mom had the cleanest house.
@@AverageAlien It's relevant because he closed them down after the end of the "dark ages." They were closed down due to "enlightenment" attitudes, and not medieval attitudes. It was a good point
@@senecavermeulen8110 it wasn't enlightenment attitudes either, it was in the 1500s, not 1700s, dude just wanted to break the power of the church and set up one under his control
thank you for this! It's one of my pet peeves, next to the misconception that people only expected to live till 30 or something, so a 40-year-old person would be considered to be ancient (could you please do a clip on the average age vs the predicted life span?).
Yeah, that's a common misconception. But of course, most adult people still got to become 60 or 70, the expected life span was only so low because so many children died in the first days or months of their lives. And of course, if many die very young, that lowers the life expectancy (which is calculated from the average age people die) considerably.
Yeah the arrogance people display is astounding. They think just because they have smartphones they are different species from people who lived before.
@@nenadmilovanovic5271 What's even funnier is they think we're still evolving when man is defined partially by technology: something that is made to suit our needs as to make adaptation unnecessary
@@account2871 we are still evolving, only it's not directed by natural selection as much. Evolving for humans and even other animals is now based solely on what we want to see and accomplish.
@@account2871 what's even funnier than that is we're trying to undergo some new weird technological & information revolution when we haven't even adapted as a species to the last several industrial revolutions yet and also that we've essentially created societies & systems requiring a certain minimum IQ threshold to operate at and this minimum already exceeds the value of the general population's IQ in most places. we've really created a world where the
It's not "the modern world's teachings of history", it's ignorance and reliance on hearsay and myth. Real historians know their shit. All you need to do is seek out that information in well documented examples and not trust movies or social media posts. I've watched enough documentaries about life in the past to understand that, if people made soap and washed their clothing, they definitely took care of themselves. My granny, a poor peasant all her life who didn't even own a TV until the 80s, didn't know about shampoo for most of her existence, but she knew about soap and she used it, both on clothing and on herself.
@@ravenguard0098 God I dislike Bretonnia. I used to think they were cool. Medieval knights fighting for the goddess of virtue, honor, and purity and protecting the common man against monsters, heretics, and evil nobles. Then I found out the memes weren't just memes. They are LEGITIMATELY a bunch of idiots who got tricked by an elf god to give up technology and they treat the peasants like garbage... not even metaphorically. They literally treat them like garbage. But it's all okay because one day they get to be the slave soldiers of the elves in heaven... yey. I mean it gets worse when you get into the lore of norsca, halflings, and especially the dark elves. XD sorry if I sound like I'm shitting on WHFB, but that's just why I can't get into it.
I think some of the points highlighted in this video can also be applied to our drawings of prehistoric "cave people," who are always shown with dirt smeared on their faces and long, scraggly hair that's full of knots and not combed at all. The idea there is that "life was too brutal and short to bother with taking care of your appearance." Meanwhile, modern hunter-gatherer groups who basically live like it's still the stone age all have beautiful face paints and all sorts of fascinating headdresses and hair styles, from the Hadza to the Papua New Guineans to the various tribes of the Amazon. Even the great apes groom one another constantly for bugs and have fairly uniform, neatly kept fur (especially gorillas, it would seem). There's also a rare find of a carved bust of a woman in a cave dated at 27,000 years old who was wearing some kind of elaborate headscarf with cross patterns all over it. Certainly not what we might first think when we think "cave woman."
It is much harder question than you think. Since there were no "cave people" as well as no "modern people". The standards of life were very different from time to time and place to place. There were a lot of examples of people literary living in own dirt until it became too unbearable to stay. Even among much more modern populations of the 1900s there were plenty of examples of people successfully living in what we will call a pig den. The difference was - when there are not that much humans, and contact is limited - disease either kill entire local population, or they will develop immunity to it (so below certain numbers - mass spread of epidemics was impossible).
I appreciate that you take the time to differentiate between hygiene practices of social groups too. Instead of just mentioning sources regarding hifg society, you mention the practices of peasants and common folk as well.
I always loved how in the Très riches heures du duc de Berry for example, you can see the peasants wearing old, worn clothes over their normal garments while working to protect them from wear and dirt.
Bathhouses are seen around the world and throughout history in almost every culture. Even to modern times now. These aren’t talked about. These bathhouses and water as a resource would be constricted during wars and sieges. So there could be a misconception of siege/war necessity and common practice.
Exactly. You might not have running water at your home, because the infrastructure is just to expensive. But a public bathhouse means just one place that needs water.
It's quite scary and sad that misconceptions like this are so deep in the general understanding of the topic to a point that teachers are relaying this to children in schools. In secondary school our literature teacher told us that the medieval people were extremely dirty because the layer of dirt on their skin worked as a shield from germs and diseases.
I remember from high school one exam, often later used for preparing, that had sources about local customs of washing - it told one story about somthing similar to saunas descibred as a way Slavic population cleaned itself (with some colorful description about how "steam made all scabies and eschar to go off") and then another story about how Queen Hedwig sent one of the most honorable knight to check candidate for husband Jogaila of Lithuania and he came back with "positive review" describing that he has been invided to bathhouse (actually sauna).
@@larrywave I'm not an expert, word "banya" (or "bania" in Polish transliteration) is used sometimes, but wiki tells me this specific type came to Poland later on with some Russian immigrants. The word typically used (and as far as I remember used in this exam) was "łaźnia" which just means bathhouse, sometimes with addition "parowa" which means "steam". But considering that it all happened close and to people who constantly exchanged ideas - yeah, probably the construction was similar. And maybe in English "banya" is the proper name for any similar construction from Eastern Europe.
I remember in Elementary school (in the US) they taught us the Puritans saw bathing as unhealthy, and I feel a lot of people just applied that to all history beforehand.
@@viviennedunbar3374 Pretty saucy before marriage too lol. Very few children born out of wedlock but there were plenty of "miracle" babies that just happened to pop out about 6-7 months after vows were took.
In certain medieval Slavic (including but not limited) countries (after Christianity was adopted) the lice were considered as "bearers of Christian blood" and not something to be removed and preferably burned to the ground.
Well when popular media has characters to use words like "unwashed peasants" or "unwashed masses" that sort imagery is going to get into people's heads.
Amazing how many misconceptions regarding the medieval period can be traced back to propaganda. It makes sense. The easiest way to prevent someone from taking pride in their heritage is to portray their ancestors as barbaric/ignorant/dirty etc.
Also, certain types of filth causes actual discomfort. Decomposing blood itches the skin, and so do dried genital fluids and urine, not to mention it would have attracted insects which sometimes would try to enter the nose and eyes. So even if they were not disgusted by the smell, they would certainly feel a certain amount of physical discomfort. A quick wash would have solved the issues, so they could focus on doing their work instead of preventing flies from getting into their airways or nursing their burning crotches. Also, certain bright colors could be obtained extremely cheaply. For example, marigold could be obtained with the lichen that grows on fire wood and onion peels. You know, things that would have been thrown in the fire anyways, so you know, the medieval peasant could have decided to keep it either so his wife could wear a pretty yellowish ribbon or to sell it the next time he comes to the market. The barks of certain trees can give a purplish or pinkish hue, which again, a wood crafter would have access to them as a by-product of his labor. Basically, a lot of strong natural dyes could be obtained rather cheaply and give beautiful colors. So again, it would have been pretty strange for people to systematically pick the dullest, ugliest colors if they could get a nicer one for just as cheaply.
@@diegogatjens3023 Did... did you not watch the video or something? It literally explains why your comment about medieval people and hygiene are absolutely incorrect
@@diegogatjens3023 common sense: only a naive fool would think any human being would live in their own filth gladly without doing anything whatsoever to combat said filth. I suppose you think the plebs were to dumb to smell? Too stupid to figure out that In order to smell better and look cleaner all you needed was water and friction?
@@diegogatjens3023 He addressed that in the video, in short he said standards of course varied from person to person in the era, but generally speaking they still washed themselves, their clothes, and their linens frequently.....
I think a lot of people mistake that for Victorian England. Especially since the Native Americans bathed frequently and complained that their new visitors were smelly and almost never bathed. Bathing was probably considered something of a necessity until it was determined that for a short time that "all the cool kids in Europe don't bathe" 😎
The presence and recurring plague in those times also leads people to believe that conditions were unsanitary. How ever evidence shows that it was no unsanitary conditions, but a malnourished populace that made plague so devastating. The Middle Ages were a period of global cooling, crop yields were low, rain and muggy condition were the norm leading to spoiling a of stored grains and even more disease from fungus that grew in food stores.
I was born in 1947 and I can tell you from experience that even with all the advantages of then 'modern civilization', by the standards of today, most people were filthy. Because open fires were virtually the only form of heating, we were all covered in a fine layer of soot. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes or a pipe, every public room was wreathed in smoke that sometimes obscured one end from the other, shirts, underclothes and bedding were washed at best once a week and heavier clothing like trousers and jackets, very rarely indeed. Poorer households didn't bother since they often only had one set of clothes. Workmen worked in their everyday clothes, whatever the job and would be stained and crusted with whatever the filth of choice was for their profession. Children literally played in the gutters or ran wild in the surrounding woods and fields where they would inevitably cover themselves in dirt sitting to play marbles or 'scrapping' with each other, even the girls. And when it came to bathing, once a week was something of a luxury and the bath water would end up with a floating scum on the surface that stuck to the bath sides and required vigorous application of abrasive powders containing bleach to remove it. I won't turn your stomachs with some of the more revolting bodily consequences of such a life - but I promise you, I could make you barf for the Olympics. In the middle ages I can only guess how it must have been. At least we didn't have to share the house with livestock just to keep warm.
I did my first tour tour in Afghanistan and we all thought we were clean until we left the country. The we got to the UAE and realized we were filthy and had a shower. Then we got to Cyprus and realized we were still filthy and had another shower. Cleanliness is definitely relative.
The funny thing is that the nobility were the stinky and dirty ones- not only was the water considered unhealthy but also it also was fashionable in France (and thus pretty much in rest of Europe) to hide the stench with massive amounts of perfume. Most of the peasants in northern part of Europe had a small bathhouse just besides the house and it was a custom to take a bath at least every Saturday. Bathhouses were actually considered so clean, that peasant women would give birth in them till early 20th century.
How about "you peasant, mildly stinking of piss, 'cause you washed your clothes in a bowl suplemented with it and forgot to rince them!" ... Okay, I can see how that won't work.
I remember learning somewhere that people of the medieval era believed that bad smells carried diseases, so they took hygiene very seriously, that trope of emptying your chamber pot by tossing its contents out the window into the streets would have had you get fined or arrested
I was under the impression "the dark ages" referred to the time in between the collapse of the western Roman Empire and Charlemagne/ before widespread christianisation
I live in Portsmouth and went to see the "Mary Rose" - Henry VIII's flagship, which sank in the Solent. The number of flea combs recovered from the wreck outnumbered the men in the crew. And there I was, thinking they just scratched their heads and lived with it.
I think most misconceptions were brought in during the Victorian time, cause the people wanted to feel like they had a better life than their ancestors, and sadly those „rumors“ survived till today…
You're right about how we've forgotten how to FIX our clothes instead of just throwing them away for minor holes. I recently started repairing minor rips and it really does make a difference. Which reminds me, my favorite nightshirt is due for a repair...
Regarding clothes: I'd guess that people back then would rather wear rugged or damaged old clothes for labour where said clothes were in risk of getting damaged or stained and wear their clean, good-looking and newer clothes for their free time, going to the market, meeting others etc. I mean ... I do that too ^^ Yes, that shirt is washed out and it's got holes under the armpits and somesuch. Throw it away? No?! It's still perfectly comfy for when I need to clean my home, paint the walls, put together something from IKEA, or doing sports.
I love when history youtubers include sources! Always more sources! It helps a lot if we the viewers want to read more ourselves and learn more detail than a video can cover. It also makes you the content creator look way better when you present your point and can prove it.
From a historical clothing POV, it would not be out of the ordinary for a peasant or lower-middle class individual to have one garment - maybe a nicer garment for special events - and two or three undergarments. The linen undergarment is a miraculous thing - it soaks up the sweat and grime the body accumulates and protects the outer garment so it doesn't need to be repeatedly washed. A bit of sponging at spots before going to bed, and then ready to go in the morning!
I remember a story about a French king who didn't bathe for some bizarre reason and just used tons of perfume instead. And of course, no one dared to tell him the truth. But that happened after the middle ages.
I always just assumed they were as dirty as most farmers are now. People don't like being covered in dirt and sweaty,pretty sure that's consistent throughout time
I can see them having a wash after doing the work. No point in taking a bath if you get immediately dirty again, but also not nice to take the mid into the house.
Thank you. It's videos like this that help me to contextualize every day life in the past and think of these people as actual, real people, rather than vague abstractions :)
Also Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, specifically mentions that one of Charlemagne’s favourite activities was bathing Charlemagne, so Einhard says, “used to invite not only his sons to the bath, but also his leading men and friends and sometimes even a crowd of his attendants (satellites) and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more bathed together.”
And all the peasants (90% of the population) surely had the same means and conditions that nobles had in relation to baths and overall sanitary conditions
@Marcelo Henrique Soares da Silva people forget that during middle ages, earth was going through a minor ice age, it would've been horrible to bathe in the cold and even with heated water, that will only lasts some minutes warm and we have sometimes several members of a peasant family have to share a bath that was already used, transmitting even more diseases and dirt But yeah, they had soap at least
Man, I really like Metatrons videos. I have been turned on to so many different topics that I knew nothing about before seeing them highlighted on his channel. I sincerely hope he continues his channel for a long time to come
Probably but we hear less about their sucesses. Best history probably comes from eye witness accounts but even those can be wrong. People can lie or simply misremember.
i think that at least in some cases Victorian historians were getting things wrong deliberately. One example that happens to come to mind for me is the propagation of the info about medieval torture devices, especially those used during the Spanish Inquisition. It's come out somewhat recently that many of the purported historical devices in private and public collections alike were devised and built in the 19th Century. i went to a temporary exhibit of torture devices in San Diego about ten years ago and even those curators missed that probably most, if not all, the devices they borrowed for the show were inauthentic, and not what the description cards claimed them to be.
I recently read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and in it there is a chapter where a group of monks are forbidden to bathe. I had no idea this was an actual historical exaggeration.
NPCs in Kingdom Come deliverance when i do not take a bath: "you smell like a beggars armpit!" people in medieval movies: "i like the smell of shit in the morning"
I'm reminded of the series Tudor Farm where historian Ruth Goodman explained how Tudor era farmers would have kept themselves and their environment clean and sanitised in some cases (like the dairy).
It’s funny that in Lord of the Rings the characters are shown having clearly been groomed and washed. And they get dirty on the trail but when they find somewhere secure like an Inn or Rivendale, the next time you see them they appear bathed and groomed, and they actually take their armor off when not in battle. It’s funny that a fantasy series gets that right but something meant to be “historical” always shows people in disgusting cesspits of mud and filth, and knights who apparently sleep in their armor even when in peace time.
The point regarding how we today just throw out clothing due to minor issues such as small rips and the like is so true! That is something I think should be brought back. Teach it in schools how to sew and make repairs. Think how much waste could be cut down! As a society we so bloody wasteful lol
Hell Medieval France notoriously had a thing for bathhouses and the Church ended up stepping in because they didn't like men and women mingling like that so casually lol
I just found your channel and have been binge watching for hours. As a fellow life-long, amateur historian, I really like the rational, evidence based approach you take in your videos. Your conclusions are often the same as mine. I have been bothered for a long time that depictions of ancient peoples like bronze age Hebrews or Stone age Europeans in movies as dirty people walking around unkempt and wild haired. My personal belief is that people really haven't changed much in attitudes about daily living. Therefore ALL people would have had the desire to keep themselves neat and clean, although what that looks like would vary by culture and what resources were widely and easily available. So while a Cro-Magnon man might come home from a hunt covered in blood and mud, I am quite certain that he would have taken the time to wash up before presenting himself to his family unit at dinner. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Thank you so much for your fascinating and well documented content.
When I was a child in the fifties, it was common to take clothing to an artisan mender. These were usually women working from home, mending everything from nylon stockings to men's suits, jackets. They used to take these from the hem and work it over the hole. When they had completed their work, there was no way of telling where the mend was. I miss those menders.
8:39 in the academic book Medevil Prostitution, it's discussed that larger towns and the cities in Medevil France had many communal bath houses, some of which were actual bath houses and some of which had a dual purpose
"He who wishes to drink must first finish what is in his mouth", gosh I know some people who don't do this when they're eating and it makes my skin crawl.
Love this video! This stuff really needs to be said, as the misconceptions this video address are almost always commonplace in today's society. I very much appreciate this video and your work, keep it coming mate! :)
Video suggestion ~ Edo, Japan (now Tokyo) was once the biggest city in the world, with a massive water distribution system and not being a walled city, could grow indefinitely.
![Megan Thee Stallion - Neva Play (feat. RM) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpYTyAaTRts/mqdefault.jpg)
A Medieval Knight takes a bath in the river.
All historic documentary filmmakers: *I will pretend that never happened...*
anime/manga: got you fam.
A actor in "Vikings" is covered in ash and dirt several seasons of the show. "You know, water is a scarce resource in Scandinavia..."
@@cyberserk5614 I’ve read a while ago that Vikings, or more accurately Scandinavians, were actually cleaner and more hygenic than anglo-saxons.
@@cyberserk5614 which is quite funny when you consider that Saunas were very common in the Nordic countries as far back as the Bronze Age and while the word "Sauna" is Finnish, the ancient swedes, Norwegians or Danes would have had their equivalents and this is ignoring the fact that "Scandinavia" takes it name from a snow covered mountain range and there quite a few lakes in what is now Sweden.
@@De_Futura Scandinavians were probably pretty safe from plagues and diseases because of the cold weather
Alexander of Neckham, who lived in Paris in the 1170s, complained that he was often woken in the morning by street cries of, “The baths are hot!”
Paris had probably less than 10k inhabitants then. Unhygiene has somehow always been related to crowdedness.
@@PewPewPlasmagun Paris was a 80k city at the beginning of the 13th century
@@PewPewPlasmagun By the 12th cent, Paris boasted a population of around 200k, much larger than other European capitals, as well as a booming economic and civic center. It is far from a Medieval village.
@Kev Ting: Maybe he lived next door to a bathhouse?
@@kevting4512 I love how we went from 10k to 80k and then to 200k. Perhaps a good idea to cite sources my fellow noble ones.
Monty python & the holy grail was directed by Terry Jones, an historian. He parodied screen depictions, mostly Hollywood's, of filthy peasants in drab clothing.
He Is On Your Side Metatron!
Yeah, Monty Python was mocking this trop (among many others).
❤ Terry Jones ~ I've seen some of his history videos.
Monty is a legend, and when mankind is gone, Aliens will see his work as the pinnacle of all comedy for the rest of time.
'We are an Anarchosyndicalist Commune.'
yep, i also loved the communist element, that kind of ridicules the notion of opression of the lower classes, the socialist/communist something peasents just utterly iriitated the knights/the King, because their conception was basicly a god imposed order and they were used to the people around them seeing it the same
My grandfather born in a pre industrial era. His Father was a pessant in 19th century. He allays told me that his father considered extremaly rude to sit down to the table and not to wash hand and face, and change clothes if was with dirt or mud when they came from the field from work. Probably was the case most part of human history.
Intersting!!!
That goes to show, if people were concerned with sanitation during a pre- industrial and industrial society i.e one of the dirtiest times in human history, why do we default to saying that medieval peasants were dirty?
@@10THPROPHET Really dirty people was probably more a result of overpopulation and thus strained resources for hygiene. Victorian London was huge but the sanitation system just could not keep up. As such it is more an urban then rural problem.
@Tim Matt There were regions (even in Europe) where industrialization really took off only towards the end of XIX century.
That is very much true
I remember as a child in Glasgow the communal washhouse, where the women from six houses would do a weekly wash, copper boiler, big sinks, mangles, the lot. I am 75 now, my Granny always said, cleanliness is to godliness. Well done young sir, love your channel.
this is wholesome
We did that in Afghanistan. Mind you where we were it was essentially changing dirty dirt for clean dirt in your clothes, but when they didn't stand up from sweat they were a lot more comfortable.
My father is from Coatbridge originally
My father's mother did that in her kitchen in Queens, New York City, during the 1930s. Women must thanked God when modern washing machines became affordable.
@@stewartmeetball3417 small world. That's where I am from. Cliftonhill
I really like how fundamentally you grounded this video with the biology, anthropology, pre-history, historiography and just general comparative history. Too often historical phenomenas are explored in a vacuum, I feel like.
I really appreciate your comment. When I teach I try and instill the idea that events are rarely discrete chunks and they are rather interconnected.
Venice port soup from Muslim world.
The thing is Europe lacked managment of waste especially in big cities. Like for example Paris where perfume was developed to so people coup with the smile. Due to the fact it was 500k+ in the city. Russia too was poor.
YES! Great practice. People too often get isolated data without it connecting to the bigger picture.
this is something i agree with wholeheartedly, the idea that sociological phenomena can only be explained sociological is a bad poisen that effects the humanist sciences
@@ailediablo79 pretty sure that forms of perfumes existed in antiquity
also yes big citys had problems with waste and water management because it's wet in europe it raines a lot in the sommer it is relatively warm, but in the winter rather cold, which makes it very hard to build fitting infrastructure as you have to balance several problems, actualy medieval citys almost all had some form of drainage system and people were usualy banned from using it for waste disposal, because that could lead to a clogging of the system and then to the collage of whole buildings this problem persisted in various forms up into the 19th century.
europe also had rather lots of smaller towns instead of few mega citys like other regions.
"Must be king."
"How do you know?"
"He hasn't got sh*t all over him."
You beat me to it!
Prepare for a lot of likes, sir
Look Dennis there is some lovely filth over here.
"Help! Help! Im being repressed!"
and 1000 people came here to make this comment, saw this and though "damn!".
Speaking of city baths -- medieval guilds often obligated their members to bathe a given minimum number of times per week/month (one could take more baths if he wanted). For example, a lawyer in medieval Cracow had to bathe at least twice a week. Less prestigious professions, like stonemasons, had lower requirements (2-3 times a month).
Also, the clergy sometimes did speak out against public baths, but not so much against the "bath" part but the "public" part (and the public nudity involved).
To the second point, yes, public bathhouses frequently doubled as brothels and this is mainly what clergy were against.
The misinterpretation is also largely political: progressive politics was gaining ground during Victorian times in the wake of the Enlightenment and thus is became necessary to cast all of history as a progressive march from ignorance, dirt and violence to wisdom, cleanliness and peace
renaissance propoganda also plays a huge part into all these 'barbaric, dull, gloomy era'
Ironically they did this by introducing into the social imaginary the idea that the Middle Ages were a massive regression compared to classical times, which automatically refuted their view of history as constant progress. Not that this cognitive dissonance bothered them
@@hrotha Easy enough to blame that all on the evil repressive Church.
"Peace" that is.
"I used to be a slave like you but then I took a Middle Ages to the knee." - a peasant speaking to roman slave.
"Well I used to be a slave like him--! Oh, no I never have been." - a Roman slave speaking point at an enlightenment-contemporary chatel slave.
There has never been anything as disgusting as London during the Victorian period, so for sure there is some heavy irony there...
Horse shit ftw
True
@@badfoody No, swollen carcasses of all sorts of animals all over the River Thames. Personally, I would have preferred sleeping in horse manure for a year over taking one sip of Thames water in that time.
It has even got a name: it's called the Great Stink of 1858.
@@TiberentenTV In terms of disease, the water must've been like poison.
London during a pride parade is more disgusting. Glad it has become Londonistan now. Just a matter of time until the liberals lose their imaginary rights.
Jokes aside, I despise how the Greco-Roman eras were highly romanticized and Medieval Europe was demonized.
I think because Medieval Europe had to pay to get into heaven (or so they were told). And generally wasn't as rock'n'roll as Rome was at parties.
Not me. I much prefer the former. Pre-Christianity.
100 BC - 100 AD = My dream period of time to have lived. 🙂👌🏻
Blame the renessaince.
@@johnnydi2231 It would have been a glorious 21 years.
@@johnnydi2231 the first century ad isn’t pre Christianity it’s the beginning of Christianity
It honestly is REALLY unfair how the medieval period is viewed because of myths and misconceptions....insulting even.
definitely. Everyone loves to view eastern culture as being clean and sophisticated, and western medieval culture as backwards and brutish. This is just wrong. European martial arts are just as good if not better than eastern martial arts. The only reason Europeans were deemed as being filthy compared to the Asians and Japanese, is because they only met sailors, which spent months or even years at sea, where you physically can't bathe properly.
It's a bit of a political agenda as someone mentioned. Medieval Europe is often smeared as being filthy and brutish where as it could be further from the truth. In all honesty, it's anti-european sentiment. That is my 2 cents as an American of European descent
@@10THPROPHET exactly, the educational system is also to blame. All my history/humanities teachers pushed that western medieval Europe= ALWAYS STUPID AND DIRTY, Islamic world=ALWAYS ENLIGHTENED crap. When I studied history on my own in my late teens It was a mild shock learning that crusaders could be in the right, and their foes whether Byzantine, Seljuk or Arab sometimes were in the wrong. Teachers also give the same lie about the Reconquista, even though if you actually read the history the Muslims most definitely had it coming and them some, for the pogroms they subjected conquered Christians to.
Europe went through its sorta dark age but the Islamic world made LEAPS and BOUNDS.
Blame Darwin's people in part since his ideology is that the past is primitive, and the latest thing is more likely to be superior. Atheists: "The Bible was written by BRONZE AGE SHEPHERDS!"
AD NOVITATEM fallacy. Atheists and logic never get along.
ONe time an atheist fanatic even said that the ancient Hebrews lived in the middle of the desert, so they wouldn't know anything about marine life.... so I pointed to the Mediterranean Sea which is right next to the Holy Land. :-)
I know a girl who grew up in a jungle village in Vietnam. She was obsessive about keeping the apartment clean because that's how you keep the bugs out of a grass hut. I cannot imagine it being any different at any point in history.
I think that Hygiene got worse in the early modern times (especially thinking of wigs). Also, access to sugar left a visible impact on teeth...
Excess fruit, sugarcane, and molasses led to a lot of dental problems.
Not just that, many, many health problems.
I also feel the bad hygiene stereotype has its origins in the early modern era just like how witch hunts are associated with the medieval era even though they nearly all happened during the 16th and 17th century.
Bathing became more unpopular during the renaissance because of the spread of syphilis caused people to fear public bathing. Also for Samuel Pepys, the fact that his wife took a bath in 1665 was worthy of note in his diary, although he doubted the occasion would be repeated. “She now pretends,” he wrote dubiously, “to a resolution of being hereafter clean. How long it will hold I can guess.”
before the introduction of sugar, people lost their teeth anyway from all the brawling. okay, I'm going to stop these jokes...
I guess more and more impoverished folks from the countryside crowding into the cities during industrialisation would pose a greater challenge to cleanliness than living in a village in the country during the middle ages. Also working in factories with coalpowered engines would give ample opportunity to get covered in grime.
“The plebs were clean.”
- Metatron I
I think the "recent" misconception might be associated with the europeans expansions through the americas and other continents, you see, here in Brazil we have documents from the portuguese detailing how the natives bathed frequently and praise their hygine, and there's also the same type of documents detailing this when they met the japanese who in turn found the portuguese "stinky" (I just heard this from a history teacher might be speculation). So the idea of a "filthy european" might be associated with sailers who spent mouths traveling on ships and did not represent the norm, but were falsely labbed as the usual culture.
edit: sorry for my grammar, english is not my main language.
Bathing became more unpopular during the renaissance because of the spread of syphilis caused people to fear public bathing. Also for Samuel Pepys, the fact that his wife took a bath in 1665 was worthy of note in his diary, although he doubted the occasion would be repeated. “She now pretends,” he wrote dubiously, “to a resolution of being hereafter clean. How long it will hold I can guess.”
But maybe I’m wrong and I’m also just generalising like people do about the Middle Ages.
I watched a video on Japanese culture and even smelling of soap (perfume, deodorant) etc, is all seen as unsocial. The aim is to not smell of anything.
@@timokaaarp7779 Not smelling of anything is ok. I work in construction and some of my coworkers never take a shower a put on a ton of perfume, dirty motherfuckers, and they get offended if you say something. It was like in the army, we had to bring by force some soldiers under the shower after 2 weeks without washing. It's a question of education, my girlfriend will kill me if I don't take a shower after work, and she forces our daughters to take a shower everyday, and that's good.
Water on ships were the number one concern! It was more precious than food. There is no way to maintain hygiene with sweet water in a ship. You could wash with salt water, but that raised other problems as well. At the end of a long voyage you would smell pretty bad. Made for bad first contact...
@@swissmilitischristilxxii3691 You don't need to shower **every** day if you haven't done anything physically taxing. Daily showers dry out skin and deprive hair of natural healthy oils if you didn't already received these positive benefits from perspiration. Limiting oneself to a few showers per week is ideal if you're not doing activities that cause a lot of perspiration.
This is a good topic to talk about. People often and sadly look down on medieval people, but they were far more sophisticated than most people would think. Though, in my opinion, it would also be interesting to talk about public hygiene, just like personal hygiene, such as trash and defecation on the roads in cities, the presence of vermin and ways these were dealt with, public latrines, hygiene in case of medical procedures or, as you mentioned, burials/graveyards etc.
Yup. Video on sewer systems and street maintenance in cities would be nice. Hope Metatron will see your comment and research this topic, i'd love to have good video on hand to show people who spread that misinfo on the internet. Sadly i seem to encounter them pretty often.
Head to California, you can see what it was like. :D
History is a game of telephone, with each person relaying the message adding some sort of bias along the way
Yes, he mentioned for example about depending on individual, but I hoped to see more detail on who and how frequently people had access to water for cleaning, being able to pay for clothing, etc
If someone today thinks they're so much smarter than their Medieval ancestors, try measuring out distances by Sun sight and string and doing basic math using Roman Numerals.
Excellent video as always! Sadly, those "10 DISGUSTING THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE MIDDLE AGES!!!" always have tons of views, while videos with a lot of effort on research and sources pass unnoticed by the masses.
breaking wind was considered a form of high art! (hence the origin of the term "artsy fartsy") the king hired someone to pick his nose for him until Henry VIII broke with tradition to save money! (hence the origin of the phrase "You really know how to pick 'em!" )
The people in the Middle Ages sound like they were cleaner than many people I know in the modern day.
Easily.
Yet Bubonic Plague killed Millions of them
"There's some lovely filth
over here!"
"Help, I'm being repressed!"
#FilthyLivesMatter lol
"Bloody peasant!"
now you see the violence inherent in the system!
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony
Wasn't the miasma theory commonplace during medieval times? Which means that bad odors were thought to be related to sickness and the spread of it. If everybody smelled bad by default, such theory wouldn't have any grounds back in that time. In spanish we call the Plague "la Peste" and we use that same noun for strong odors.
Infected wounds can indeed smell and a sick person may be physically unable to bathe for a few days. And the potty under the bed may go unemptied for a few days. In a really bad case bed ridden people may end up soiling themselves. So yes, diesese can indeed smell.
@@michaelpettersson4919 right hygiene was crucial for life and health then
@@michaelpettersson4919 There is a difference between just dirty person, who smells like dirty person, and someone who is literary breaking down, rotting alive and etc. who produce the stench that is absolutely unbearable.
I came across a reference to miasma in regards to Socrate's death.The Hellenes were reluctant to judicially execute someone as it was believed it caused a miasma in the area where it happened and convicted criminals were kept under very loose guard giving them the opportunity to self Exile with the help of friends. Malaria or "bad air" was associate with areas areas like swamps and fens which were breeding grounds for mosquitos. They were astute enough to recognise the connection but didn't have the knowledge of "animicules" or virii.Herb lore was much more advanced than present knowledge though and used a lot.
I like that the lord of the rings movies didn't show a medieval setting that wasn't dirty, gross, and gray. The people of Gondor in one of the movies were well clean and kept, even the soldiers of Gondor looked like they kept up in hygiene.
Aren't the Bree people less clean. Granted it was a Pub.
*walks into Bed Bath and Beyond*
"Ah yes! I'll take a bath and a woman!"
*police sirens*
The thought of a public bathhouse that also offers happy end massages doesn't seem too bad.
I did a couple of tours in Afghanistan. The thing is when nobody is bathing and everyone smells bad you don't actually notice.
Didn't you feel sticky or itchy?
@@rwatertree Not at all, you get used to it fast.
Well, that’s just military field service. Doubt that has changed ever. As long as you get to change/wash your underwear at least few times a week, everything is golden. :D
I've read similar stories from men who got used to living in the ww1 trenches. they got used to the lice and general smell of the situation pretty quick once they settled in
Humans can adapt pretty quickly to such conditions
My arts major was heavily invested in reinassance and medieval art and history, she used to tell me, that we have these misconceptions about medieval period not because Hollywood or modern media but because the Renaissance, you see, people back then needed to convince the masses that the "dark ages" where the worst of the worst that man kind had ever seen so they could "convince" them to abandon their old ideologies that were hevaly influenced by religious fervor, so they started to represent medieval times like this so people wouldn't want to live like that anymore, even if they never did.
There are two German fairy tales: Bearskin and The Devil's Sooty Brother. In those stories soldiers made a deal with the Devil forbidding them to bathe for 7 years. Therefore the people were repulsed.
That wouldn't work, if people were dirty all the time.
Another thing a lot of people don't realize is that there was deodorant in the medieval period. People were known to take a crystal of alum, moisten it, and rub it in their armpits. I've personally tested it and can say that it works quite well, though in very hot weather while camping I did develop a rash that cleared up in about 2 days of using regular deodorant instead of alum.
Also toothpaste, tooth brushes and even mouth wash made from spearmint and lavender
I always imagine the peasent farmer, after working his field all day, being sweaty and smelly, just jumps into the nearby river or creek. Surely to cool down, but also to get rid of the smell.
Or, at least washes themselves with a wet cloth.
"Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here…"
Funny how when you went over the hygiene habits of older civilizations you decided to skip completely over the hygiene habits of pre-Roman Western Europeans, whose medieval descendants would be the ones to face the brunt of these medieval bathing myths.
“The word sapo, Latin for soap, likely was borrowed from an early Germanic language and is cognate with Latin sebum, "tallow". It first appears in Pliny the Elder's account,[17] Historia Naturalis, which discusses the manufacture of soap from tallow and ashes. There he mentions its use in the treatment of scrofulous sores, as well as among the Gauls as a dye to redden hair which the men in Germania were more likely to use than women.[18] The Romans avoided washing with harsh soaps before encountering the milder soaps used by the Gauls around 58 BC.[19] Aretaeus of Cappadocia, writing in the 2nd century AD, observes among "Celts, which are men called Gauls, those alkaline substances that are made into balls [...] called soap".[20] The Romans' preferred method of cleaning the body was to massage oil into the skin and then scrape away both the oil and any dirt with a strigil.
The 2nd-century AD physician Galen describes soap-making using lye and prescribes washing to carry away impurities from the body and clothes. The use of soap for personal cleanliness became increasingly common in this period. According to Galen, the best soaps were Germanic, and soaps from Gaul were second best.[21] Zosimos of Panopolis, circa 300 AD, describes soap and soapmaking.[21]”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap
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“The moment they rise from sleep, which they generally prolong till late in the day, they bathe, most frequently in warm water; as in a country where the winter is very long and severe.”
(Tacitus on Germany)
www.gutenberg.org/files/2995/2995-h/2995-h.htm
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“The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they make it their practice to increase the distinguishing color by which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater, and they pull it back from their forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck... Some of them shave their beards, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the mustache grow until it covers the mouth.”
(Diodorus Siculus)
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“The voices of most sound alarming and menacing, whether they are angry or the reverse, but all alike are clean and neat, and throughout the whole region, and especially in Aquitaine, you will hardly find a man or woman, however poor, who is dirty and in rags, as you would elsewhere>:
(Ammianus Marcellinus, The Character of the Gauls)
So we see hygiene was not new to Western Europeans before or during Roman occupation, so why the hell would they suddenly give it up after the Romans left?
Thank you for the well referenced information. I love that history videos always teach me more in the comments section
Omg! That’s the best thumbnail I have EVER seen! 😂😂 loved the video too babes!
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the education. My dad was from a poor farm family in the US and he did not have indoor plumbing until he joined the military in 1968, yet their family of 10 were bathed, clean clothes, my dad always tells stories of how his mom had the cleanest house.
Excellent video. This is what real historical study looks like.
Henry VIII closed the bath houses. He didn't like the idea of shared bathing. Bloody protestant.His manky sprog bathed twice a year.
He also closed down the monastic poor houses and schools, thus contributing to the perception of the medieval era replete with illiteracy and poverty
Part of that was the common misconception that bathing made one vulnerable to the plague.
he didn't live in the medieval period though.....so irrelevant
@@AverageAlien It's relevant because he closed them down after the end of the "dark ages." They were closed down due to "enlightenment" attitudes, and not medieval attitudes. It was a good point
@@senecavermeulen8110 it wasn't enlightenment attitudes either, it was in the 1500s, not 1700s, dude just wanted to break the power of the church and set up one under his control
thank you for this! It's one of my pet peeves, next to the misconception that people only expected to live till 30 or something, so a 40-year-old person would be considered to be ancient (could you please do a clip on the average age vs the predicted life span?).
Yeah, that's a common misconception. But of course, most adult people still got to become 60 or 70, the expected life span was only so low because so many children died in the first days or months of their lives. And of course, if many die very young, that lowers the life expectancy (which is calculated from the average age people die) considerably.
The modern world and its teaching of history dehumanizes our ancestors
Yeah the arrogance people display is astounding. They think just because they have smartphones they are different species from people who lived before.
@@nenadmilovanovic5271 What's even funnier is they think we're still evolving when man is defined partially by technology: something that is made to suit our needs as to make adaptation unnecessary
@@account2871 we are still evolving, only it's not directed by natural selection as much. Evolving for humans and even other animals is now based solely on what we want to see and accomplish.
@@account2871 what's even funnier than that is we're trying to undergo some new weird technological & information revolution when we haven't even adapted as a species to the last several industrial revolutions yet and also that we've essentially created societies & systems requiring a certain minimum IQ threshold to operate at and this minimum already exceeds the value of the general population's IQ in most places. we've really created a world where the
It's not "the modern world's teachings of history", it's ignorance and reliance on hearsay and myth. Real historians know their shit. All you need to do is seek out that information in well documented examples and not trust movies or social media posts. I've watched enough documentaries about life in the past to understand that, if people made soap and washed their clothing, they definitely took care of themselves. My granny, a poor peasant all her life who didn't even own a TV until the 80s, didn't know about shampoo for most of her existence, but she knew about soap and she used it, both on clothing and on herself.
In England we're often told that Queen Elizabeth took 2 baths a year and was considered clean. Is this true?
“All peasants are filthy” easy now, this isn’t Stirland
Its worse in bretonnia which is a reality. The Imperial provinces are better off though it varies per province
So, no
WELCOME TO ESTALIA GENTLEMEN
@@ravenguard0098
God I dislike Bretonnia. I used to think they were cool. Medieval knights fighting for the goddess of virtue, honor, and purity and protecting the common man against monsters, heretics, and evil nobles.
Then I found out the memes weren't just memes. They are LEGITIMATELY a bunch of idiots who got tricked by an elf god to give up technology and they treat the peasants like garbage... not even metaphorically. They literally treat them like garbage. But it's all okay because one day they get to be the slave soldiers of the elves in heaven... yey.
I mean it gets worse when you get into the lore of norsca, halflings, and especially the dark elves.
XD sorry if I sound like I'm shitting on WHFB, but that's just why I can't get into it.
@@spiffygonzales5160 that's a lot of words to say "I never sipped from ze lady tub water chalice"
I think some of the points highlighted in this video can also be applied to our drawings of prehistoric "cave people," who are always shown with dirt smeared on their faces and long, scraggly hair that's full of knots and not combed at all. The idea there is that "life was too brutal and short to bother with taking care of your appearance." Meanwhile, modern hunter-gatherer groups who basically live like it's still the stone age all have beautiful face paints and all sorts of fascinating headdresses and hair styles, from the Hadza to the Papua New Guineans to the various tribes of the Amazon. Even the great apes groom one another constantly for bugs and have fairly uniform, neatly kept fur (especially gorillas, it would seem). There's also a rare find of a carved bust of a woman in a cave dated at 27,000 years old who was wearing some kind of elaborate headscarf with cross patterns all over it. Certainly not what we might first think when we think "cave woman."
It is much harder question than you think. Since there were no "cave people" as well as no "modern people". The standards of life were very different from time to time and place to place. There were a lot of examples of people literary living in own dirt until it became too unbearable to stay. Even among much more modern populations of the 1900s there were plenty of examples of people successfully living in what we will call a pig den. The difference was - when there are not that much humans, and contact is limited - disease either kill entire local population, or they will develop immunity to it (so below certain numbers - mass spread of epidemics was impossible).
I appreciate that you take the time to differentiate between hygiene practices of social groups too. Instead of just mentioning sources regarding hifg society, you mention the practices of peasants and common folk as well.
I always loved how in the Très riches heures du duc de Berry for example, you can see the peasants wearing old, worn clothes over their normal garments while working to protect them from wear and dirt.
Bathhouses are seen around the world and throughout history in almost every culture. Even to modern times now. These aren’t talked about. These bathhouses and water as a resource would be constricted during wars and sieges. So there could be a misconception of siege/war necessity and common practice.
Exactly. You might not have running water at your home, because the infrastructure is just to expensive. But a public bathhouse means just one place that needs water.
It's quite scary and sad that misconceptions like this are so deep in the general understanding of the topic to a point that teachers are relaying this to children in schools. In secondary school our literature teacher told us that the medieval people were extremely dirty because the layer of dirt on their skin worked as a shield from germs and diseases.
I remember from high school one exam, often later used for preparing, that had sources about local customs of washing - it told one story about somthing similar to saunas descibred as a way Slavic population cleaned itself (with some colorful description about how "steam made all scabies and eschar to go off") and then another story about how Queen Hedwig sent one of the most honorable knight to check candidate for husband Jogaila of Lithuania and he came back with "positive review" describing that he has been invided to bathhouse (actually sauna).
banya is the word you are looking for maybe ?but yes just like sauna pretty much
@@larrywave I'm not an expert, word "banya" (or "bania" in Polish transliteration) is used sometimes, but wiki tells me this specific type came to Poland later on with some Russian immigrants. The word typically used (and as far as I remember used in this exam) was "łaźnia" which just means bathhouse, sometimes with addition "parowa" which means "steam".
But considering that it all happened close and to people who constantly exchanged ideas - yeah, probably the construction was similar. And maybe in English "banya" is the proper name for any similar construction from Eastern Europe.
I remember in Elementary school (in the US) they taught us the Puritans saw bathing as unhealthy, and I feel a lot of people just applied that to all history beforehand.
They were also very saucy when it came to marital sex. Very strict about no sex before marriage but then apparently a lot after!!
@@viviennedunbar3374 Pretty saucy before marriage too lol. Very few children born out of wedlock but there were plenty of "miracle" babies that just happened to pop out about 6-7 months after vows were took.
In certain medieval Slavic (including but not limited) countries (after Christianity was adopted) the lice were considered as "bearers of Christian blood" and not something to be removed and preferably burned to the ground.
Well when popular media has characters to use words like "unwashed peasants" or "unwashed masses" that sort imagery is going to get into people's heads.
“Look, Henry has come to see us!”
Let's be honest here, hollywood has been the biggest contributor of historical myths
Yeah thats white people smearing their own history
@@Daniel-ll2cl haha my good man hollywood is not run by white people ;)
@@hazzmati u don't think Jews are white?
@@Daniel-ll2cl no
@@Daniel-ll2cl the real question you should be asking is that do jews view themselves as white? most do not.
Amazing how many misconceptions regarding the medieval period can be traced back to propaganda. It makes sense. The easiest way to prevent someone from taking pride in their heritage is to portray their ancestors as barbaric/ignorant/dirty etc.
Kind of like what leftists and mondialists do today in most western countries
Also, certain types of filth causes actual discomfort. Decomposing blood itches the skin, and so do dried genital fluids and urine, not to mention it would have attracted insects which sometimes would try to enter the nose and eyes. So even if they were not disgusted by the smell, they would certainly feel a certain amount of physical discomfort.
A quick wash would have solved the issues, so they could focus on doing their work instead of preventing flies from getting into their airways or nursing their burning crotches.
Also, certain bright colors could be obtained extremely cheaply. For example, marigold could be obtained with the lichen that grows on fire wood and onion peels. You know, things that would have been thrown in the fire anyways, so you know, the medieval peasant could have decided to keep it either so his wife could wear a pretty yellowish ribbon or to sell it the next time he comes to the market. The barks of certain trees can give a purplish or pinkish hue, which again, a wood crafter would have access to them as a by-product of his labor. Basically, a lot of strong natural dyes could be obtained rather cheaply and give beautiful colors. So again, it would have been pretty strange for people to systematically pick the dullest, ugliest colors if they could get a nicer one for just as cheaply.
It's common sense they washed and had a level of hygiene. You'd have to be a fool to assume people didn't know how to wash their asses 😂.
about Kufis yeah try eating LEFT HANDED and see what happens
@@diegogatjens3023 *he says on a video explaining why people back then weren't smelly hobos*
@@diegogatjens3023 Did... did you not watch the video or something? It literally explains why your comment about medieval people and hygiene are absolutely incorrect
@@diegogatjens3023 common sense: only a naive fool would think any human being would live in their own filth gladly without doing anything whatsoever to combat said filth. I suppose you think the plebs were to dumb to smell? Too stupid to figure out that In order to smell better and look cleaner all you needed was water and friction?
@@diegogatjens3023 He addressed that in the video, in short he said standards of course varied from person to person in the era, but generally speaking they still washed themselves, their clothes, and their linens frequently.....
Metatron forgot the weekly saunabath. Practised in Finland (for instace) since times immemorial.
I think a lot of people mistake that for Victorian England. Especially since the Native Americans bathed frequently and complained that their new visitors were smelly and almost never bathed. Bathing was probably considered something of a necessity until it was determined that for a short time that "all the cool kids in Europe don't bathe" 😎
Please include management of bone fractures and joint dislocations in medieval period.
For the record: Monty Python was a satire, not a documentary 🤣
What?!
Incorrect, it is documentary and prophecy.
Sadly we now live in an era when many people cannot grasp the concept of satire.
Dammit. I need to go back and restudy then. Lol
no dude I pass a history exam without learning , just Monty
The presence and recurring plague in those times also leads people to believe that conditions were unsanitary.
How ever evidence shows that it was no unsanitary conditions, but a malnourished populace that made plague so devastating. The Middle Ages were a period of global cooling, crop yields were low, rain and muggy condition were the norm leading to spoiling a of stored grains and even more disease from fungus that grew in food stores.
I was born in 1947 and I can tell you from experience that even with all the advantages of then 'modern civilization', by the standards of today, most people were filthy. Because open fires were virtually the only form of heating, we were all covered in a fine layer of soot. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes or a pipe, every public room was wreathed in smoke that sometimes obscured one end from the other, shirts, underclothes and bedding were washed at best once a week and heavier clothing like trousers and jackets, very rarely indeed. Poorer households didn't bother since they often only had one set of clothes. Workmen worked in their everyday clothes, whatever the job and would be stained and crusted with whatever the filth of choice was for their profession.
Children literally played in the gutters or ran wild in the surrounding woods and fields where they would inevitably cover themselves in dirt sitting to play marbles or 'scrapping' with each other, even the girls. And when it came to bathing, once a week was something of a luxury and the bath water would end up with a floating scum on the surface that stuck to the bath sides and required vigorous application of abrasive powders containing bleach to remove it.
I won't turn your stomachs with some of the more revolting bodily consequences of such a life - but I promise you, I could make you barf for the Olympics. In the middle ages I can only guess how it must have been. At least we didn't have to share the house with livestock just to keep warm.
I did my first tour tour in Afghanistan and we all thought we were clean until we left the country. The we got to the UAE and realized we were filthy and had a shower. Then we got to Cyprus and realized we were still filthy and had another shower.
Cleanliness is definitely relative.
The funny thing is that the nobility were the stinky and dirty ones- not only was the water considered unhealthy but also it also was fashionable in France (and thus pretty much in rest of Europe) to hide the stench with massive amounts of perfume. Most of the peasants in northern part of Europe had a small bathhouse just besides the house and it was a custom to take a bath at least every Saturday. Bathhouses were actually considered so clean, that peasant women would give birth in them till early 20th century.
Thanks a lot, Metatron.
Now I can't justify calling others "unwashed peasants" anymore.
Gotta find me another mildly insulting phrase now.
Unwashed Victorian factory worker?
KARENS
Illiterate plebs
How about "you peasant, mildly stinking of piss, 'cause you washed your clothes in a bowl suplemented with it and forgot to rince them!" ... Okay, I can see how that won't work.
washed peasants
I remember learning somewhere that people of the medieval era believed that bad smells carried diseases, so they took hygiene very seriously, that trope of emptying your chamber pot by tossing its contents out the window into the streets would have had you get fined or arrested
I was under the impression "the dark ages" referred to the time in between the collapse of the western Roman Empire and Charlemagne/ before widespread christianisation
I live in Portsmouth and went to see the "Mary Rose" - Henry VIII's flagship, which sank in the Solent. The number of flea combs recovered from the wreck outnumbered the men in the crew. And there I was, thinking they just scratched their heads and lived with it.
I think most misconceptions were brought in during the Victorian time, cause the people wanted to feel like they had a better life than their ancestors, and sadly those „rumors“ survived till today…
You're right about how we've forgotten how to FIX our clothes instead of just throwing them away for minor holes. I recently started repairing minor rips and it really does make a difference. Which reminds me, my favorite nightshirt is due for a repair...
Regarding clothes: I'd guess that people back then would rather wear rugged or damaged old clothes for labour where said clothes were in risk of getting damaged or stained and wear their clean, good-looking and newer clothes for their free time, going to the market, meeting others etc.
I mean ... I do that too ^^
Yes, that shirt is washed out and it's got holes under the armpits and somesuch. Throw it away? No?! It's still perfectly comfy for when I need to clean my home, paint the walls, put together something from IKEA, or doing sports.
I love when history youtubers include sources! Always more sources! It helps a lot if we the viewers want to read more ourselves and learn more detail than a video can cover. It also makes you the content creator look way better when you present your point and can prove it.
The reason why the teeth in the medieval times were so bad is because we usually imagine the medieval ages with the British :P
It was the introduction of sugar that caused teeth to go bad.
@@monalisadavinci7076 Yes, prior to that honey was the sweetener avalible and that was expensive.
From a historical clothing POV, it would not be out of the ordinary for a peasant or lower-middle class individual to have one garment - maybe a nicer garment for special events - and two or three undergarments. The linen undergarment is a miraculous thing - it soaks up the sweat and grime the body accumulates and protects the outer garment so it doesn't need to be repeatedly washed. A bit of sponging at spots before going to bed, and then ready to go in the morning!
I remember a story about a French king who didn't bathe for some bizarre reason and just used tons of perfume instead. And of course, no one dared to tell him the truth. But that happened after the middle ages.
A marvellous presentation, well grounded in research.
I always just assumed they were as dirty as most farmers are now. People don't like being covered in dirt and sweaty,pretty sure that's consistent throughout time
I can see them having a wash after doing the work. No point in taking a bath if you get immediately dirty again, but also not nice to take the mid into the house.
🤣 the thumbnail with a filthy peasant Metatron at the center is hilarious
Thank you. It's videos like this that help me to contextualize every day life in the past and think of these people as actual, real people, rather than vague abstractions :)
"People always instinctively tried to keep clean."
The most important thing you could have said.
But how do you use the three seashells?
I'm reading Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey. There are multiple mentions of bathing and grooming.
Roman arenas had public toilet. One such facility built of stone is preserved in ruins of Salona, near modern town Split.
Hahaha! The thumbnail is pretty funny. And the vid is super informative and interesting too. Thanks for making historical topics fun
Also Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, specifically mentions that one of Charlemagne’s favourite activities was bathing
Charlemagne, so Einhard says, “used to invite not only his sons to the bath, but also his leading men and friends and sometimes even a crowd of his attendants (satellites) and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more bathed together.”
and let's not forget the warlords who were so fond of bathing "in their blood and tears of my enemies" :D
And don't forget old Barbarossa, who just couldn't wait to get into the water... oh, wait... he supposedly died doing that. ;D
And all the peasants (90% of the population) surely had the same means and conditions that nobles had in relation to baths and overall sanitary conditions
@@HeroQuestFans
As Einhard himself reports, there was a Greek proverb: “If a Frank is your friend, he is clearly not your neighbour.”
@Marcelo Henrique Soares da Silva people forget that during middle ages, earth was going through a minor ice age, it would've been horrible to bathe in the cold and even with heated water, that will only lasts some minutes warm and we have sometimes several members of a peasant family have to share a bath that was already used, transmitting even more diseases and dirt
But yeah, they had soap at least
Man, I really like Metatrons videos. I have been turned on to so many different topics that I knew nothing about before seeing them highlighted on his channel. I sincerely hope he continues his channel for a long time to come
Did Victorian historians get _anything_ right?
This here might be the answer.
Not really
IMHO NO, the Victorians saw the universe through sexist, racist, classiest lens.
Probably but we hear less about their sucesses. Best history probably comes from eye witness accounts but even those can be wrong. People can lie or simply misremember.
i think that at least in some cases Victorian historians were getting things wrong deliberately. One example that happens to come to mind for me is the propagation of the info about medieval torture devices, especially those used during the Spanish Inquisition. It's come out somewhat recently that many of the purported historical devices in private and public collections alike were devised and built in the 19th Century. i went to a temporary exhibit of torture devices in San Diego about ten years ago and even those curators missed that probably most, if not all, the devices they borrowed for the show were inauthentic, and not what the description cards claimed them to be.
I recently read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and in it there is a chapter where a group of monks are forbidden to bathe. I had no idea this was an actual historical exaggeration.
NPCs in Kingdom Come deliverance when i do not take a bath: "you smell like a beggars armpit!"
people in medieval movies: "i like the smell of shit in the morning"
Now we have a precise and general reference to point at to debunk that annoying myth. Thank you as always, dear Metatron.
I've felt disconnected with your content for a while, really enjoyed this one though
Dragonheart got it right. Peasants are not filthy, but they are revolting, and now, they're rebelling
The thumbnail confirms that Metatron would fit perfectly into the background of Life of Brian.
I'm reminded of the series Tudor Farm where historian Ruth Goodman explained how Tudor era farmers would have kept themselves and their environment clean and sanitised in some cases (like the dairy).
It’s funny that in Lord of the Rings the characters are shown having clearly been groomed and washed. And they get dirty on the trail but when they find somewhere secure like an Inn or Rivendale, the next time you see them they appear bathed and groomed, and they actually take their armor off when not in battle.
It’s funny that a fantasy series gets that right but something meant to be “historical” always shows people in disgusting cesspits of mud and filth, and knights who apparently sleep in their armor even when in peace time.
The point regarding how we today just throw out clothing due to minor issues such as small rips and the like is so true! That is something I think should be brought back. Teach it in schools how to sew and make repairs. Think how much waste could be cut down! As a society we so bloody wasteful lol
Hell Medieval France notoriously had a thing for bathhouses and the Church ended up stepping in because they didn't like men and women mingling like that so casually lol
I just found your channel and have been binge watching for hours. As a fellow life-long, amateur historian, I really like the rational, evidence based approach you take in your videos. Your conclusions are often the same as mine. I have been bothered for a long time that depictions of ancient peoples like bronze age Hebrews or Stone age Europeans in movies as dirty people walking around unkempt and wild haired. My personal belief is that people really haven't changed much in attitudes about daily living. Therefore ALL people would have had the desire to keep themselves neat and clean, although what that looks like would vary by culture and what resources were widely and easily available. So while a Cro-Magnon man might come home from a hunt covered in blood and mud, I am quite certain that he would have taken the time to wash up before presenting himself to his family unit at dinner. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Thank you so much for your fascinating and well documented content.
This is finally covered
When I was a child in the fifties, it was common to take clothing to an artisan mender. These were usually women working from home, mending everything from nylon stockings to men's suits, jackets. They used to take these from the hem and work it over the hole. When they had completed their work, there was no way of telling where the mend was. I miss those menders.
Ser Duncan the Tall, a character created by George R. R. Martin, is fond of having baths or make do with a river. A very clean knight!
8:39 in the academic book Medevil Prostitution, it's discussed that larger towns and the cities in Medevil France had many communal bath houses, some of which were actual bath houses and some of which had a dual purpose
Dennis! There's some lovely filth over here!
"He who wishes to drink must first finish what is in his mouth", gosh I know some people who don't do this when they're eating and it makes my skin crawl.
Love this video! This stuff really needs to be said, as the misconceptions this video address are almost always commonplace in today's society. I very much appreciate this video and your work, keep it coming mate! :)
Video suggestion ~
Edo, Japan (now Tokyo) was once the biggest city in the world, with a massive water distribution system and not being a walled city, could grow indefinitely.