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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

"Regularly", but not as frequently as we do now, and to whatever extent this was true, it certainly didn't extend to conquistadors in the early modern period because American Indians all considered white people intolerably dirty by their standards.

The Internet seems to have amplified a certain contrarian tendency that goes too far. While it's true that the people of medieval Europe were not just a bunch of ignorant, filthy peasants, they were still more ignorant and probably more dirty than you and I are at the moment. While the early middle ages in western Europe were not "dark ages" completely bereft of human accomplishment, they were by many measures crappier than either the heyday of the Roman empire or the early modern era that would follow (or indeed even the late Middle Ages).

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The conquistadors and colonists were generally adventurers from impoverished regions of their home countries, engaged in extremely arduous military and quasi-military expeditions thousands of miles from home, so using them as a counter-example is a little odd; like using American soldiers stationed in a forward operating post in Afghanistan to judge the culture of hygiene in America.

I agree that the Internet has "amplified a certain contrarian tendency that goes too far", but I think that tendency is more evident in top-rated Hacker News comments than in the work of professional historians like the author of the article.

I've always found the chart of Rome's population [1] very thought-provoking. That's unimaginable collapse of cities, trade, arts...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/bVjPVPK.png

What a rebound. What happened to revive this city?

In 1870 It was annexed to the rest of Italy, the Pope lost his temporal power and it was made into the capital of the newly unified state. That meant moving all the administration and building a lot of new areas. That is on top of industrialization and a more general population boom.

The point is more how small it was just before that: a population of around 50k and much of the Roman ruins in the center used as a pasture.

Industrialization.

Keep in mind that a graph of Constantinople would probably show a symmetrical climb around the same time

You’re certainly misrepresenting something here.

The population of the world doesn’t follow this chart which simply implies Rome became irrelevant in history and people moved elsewhere.

I think that was their point

Their point was more akin to “all cities have been abandoned as civilisation ceased to exist”.

If that was the case we would observe a definite decline in population numbers across the world.

We don’t see that which either implies that the existence of civilisation wasn’t the prerequisite for our survival or that civilisation went elsewhere.

I am betting on the second one. By the time Rome become irrelevant we observe the raise of Paris and London.

Or the population dispersed into rural areas and returned to lives of subsistence farming.

Sure, but where? There wasn’t an equivalent of old Rome anywhere west of Constantinople.

The sudden downfall in the chart looked so strange, I thought they must have conflated the city of Rome with the Roman Empire. But no, people actually left the city proper in droves, as resources became unavailable and the city fell into overall disrepair:

"The decline of the city's population was caused by the loss of grain shipments from North Africa, from 440 onward, and the unwillingness of the senatorial class to maintain donations to support a population that was too large for the resources available. Even so, strenuous efforts were made to maintain the monumental centre, the palatine, and the largest baths, which continued to function until the Gothic siege of 537. The large baths of Constantine on the Quirinale were even repaired in 443; and the extent of the damage exaggerated and dramatized (according to "Rome, An Urban History from Antiquity to the Present", Rabun Taylor, Katherine W. Rinne and Spiro Kostof, 2016 pp. 160–179). However, the city gave an appearance overall of shabbiness and decay because of the large abandoned areas due to population decline. Population declined to 500,000 by 452 and 100,000 by 500 AD (perhaps larger, though no certain figure can be known). After the Gothic siege of 537, population dropped to 30,000, but had risen to 90,000 by the papacy of Gregory the Great."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Monarchy,_republic,_empir...

When Charlemagne went to Rome for his coronation, only maybe 20000 inhabitants remained. To reach the Pope's dwellings, you had to ride for miles across the immense ruins of a former million-people city, a sight that stroke deeply the Franks.

American Indians had never seen medieval Europeans as the Europeans that started going to America had been coming from Renaissance Europe.

I have read that for some reason during Renaissance Europeans started preferring natural body smell and bathing less.

Any reference for this? I'd be honestly interested.

Edit: This Wikipedia section seems like a mishmash of contradictory claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene#Hygiene_in_medieval_Eu...

The linked article has a section addressing this. It says that in later periods some doctors recommended not bathing.

Medieval Europe is several hundred years, a load of different societies at any given time, social strata within these societies. And even then, are sources reliable? If a lot of writers in a time period write that people don't bath enough, is that a sign that everyone is concerned about hygiene, or a sign that people aren't concerned about hygiene?

Indeed, all that is made more challenging given that "ordinary life" was often not considered a subject that should be written about any detail. I recall a description of medieval literature often involving "the acts of kings" written as just as a sequence of events.

I think in many societies, there often wasn't much effort put into "telling people what they already knew" and instead writing involved records of big events or accounting entries.

Some indirect evidence comes from historical perfume recipes. They really liked strong stuff back in the day.

King Lear: "Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee"

Now, Civet here is a by-product of anal glands of a civet cat (not really a cat) and it smells pretty much like you'd imagine: extremely fecal, pungent and long lasting.

Modern perfumes still use this ingredient sometimes in minuscule amounts, but one ounce of civet is a lot for a modern nose. it would stink up the entire king's palace for days or even weeks.

Off-time but not off-topic, an exceptionally good story is narrated in Perfume by Patrick Süskind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Süskind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel)

What many people forget today is that we are now (with the obvious exception of smog/pollution and related) mostly living in odourless environments whilst the air in a city, at least until the 18th or 19th century was full of very strong smells.

Only think of:

1) open gutters/sewers

2) "side effects" of ubiquitous animal traction

3) small shops/industries (using fires, chemicals, etc., one example for all tanneries) were often side by side with homes

> American Indians had never seen medieval Europeans as the Europeans that started going to America had been coming from Renaissance Europe.

That’s what I was referring to as “the early modern period”.

> American Indians all considered white people intolerably dirty by their standards.

So American Indians were around during medieval times and bathed regularly. Post title upheld!

> not as frequently as we do now

Evidence? (I'm legitimately curious; the OP seems well researched.)

The OP has references but not concrete references or scientific evidence. It's narrative or fairly tenuous relations (soap makers became a guild at some point, etc).

its narrative

"its narrative" - what does that even mean?

They managed to abolish slavery, which is quite an achievement improving life significantly for a large part of the population.

The Medieval Ages ended in the 15th century[1], and slavery didn't really start to end until the 19th century [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism

I'm pretty sure they're referring to the end of Roman slavery. Slavery was the foundation of the Roman economy, which wasn't true of Europe's economy again until the colonial period.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe

Sure, but the end of Roman slavery was just the collapse of the economy. No one bought slaves any more so slaves became serfs - no longer sellable people but people tied to the land and coerced to work. That's hardly a sign of marvelous progress.

While still being a horrible situation serfs had significantly more freedoms than Roman slaves. Serfs were able to hold possessions, work for themselves, and did not have an owner that had complete freedom over them including killing them.

I'm unfortunately ignorant on history of serfdom in Western Europe, but serfs in Russia were effectively owned by landowners. Killings, corporal punishment, family separation were routine practices.

Roman slaves could own property including other slaves. They could be doctors, architects, teachers & other occupations that would be considered middle class today.

I would be really interested to read about the transition of slaves to serfs after the fall of Rome. Is this your own hypothesis or something that has been written about?

I think it was meant very much in the figurative way. In continental Europe, Roman society never really stopped, it just changed a lot. Even Goths and Lombards would try to "become Romans" as much as replace them, happily adopting titles and structures (with varying levels of success).

A big hindrance to seeing continuity is that popular knowledge of "romanness" is so focused on the late republican/early imperial era and there is surely not much visibly continuity between early medieval and a snapshot of the Roman state outdated by several hundred years.

Serfdom is just a mortgage by anyther name. Unless you own your house you are a serf too.

The start of European colonialism marks the end of the Middle Ages. Abolitionism was about abolition in the Americas, not Europe where it was largely replaced by serfdom in the Middle Ages. Slavery continues to exist in some forms today.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

Also following the end of slavery the British Empire used “Coolies” from India and Asia in various transportation and labour roles which were basically a transitionary role between slavery and free paid workers. So job-wise was somewhat similar to slavery, in practice, but largely voluntary at the source and paid in some form to their families or community rather than ‘stolen’ by slave traders. While also less constrained from leaving back to their home countries, which was still difficult and they were not compensated nearly enough.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolie

References?

The hey day of African chattel slavery followed medieval period, a project of horrific proportions carried out by the society that followed medieval Europe.

As I recall Slavery was legal in medieval Europe but not as widely practiced as serfdom at the time but both were forms of coerced labor (serfs were "slaves of the land" - couldn't leave and had to provide labor or goods). I mean sure, the particular institution of chattel slavery was dying out but this more a matter of "we need something simpler" than any impulse to improvement or any actual improvement.

Slavery was not abolished in the middle ages though. It did become less important relative to serfdom, and in many places in Europe it became illegal to sell Christians as slaves, which meant it was mostly Muslim slaves (and vice-versa in the Muslim states). Since slavery was never abolished it could grow in importance again in the age of colonialism.

Slavery was abolished in France in 1315 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_X_of_France#Readmittance... (it's a little short but there are much more details on the french wikipedia)

This article provides no evidence of frequency.

It says daily

With no evidence.

While people claim they bath 3 times a day but I've not found this to be true in practise.

I've had girlfriends who bathed 3 times a week or sometimes once a week.

Now that's ofc my personal data and it's not from some third world country but Germany where I lived in Europe and I also found this to be true in China.

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