Hiya guys! Just a pre-emptive, friendly heads-up from the mod team :)

While this question certainly does have a very high count of upvotes and such, that doesn't relax our rules and standards for answers at all. If you've got something on the tip of your tongue that you read in a National Geographic about 8 years ago, but you're pretty sure that it's true....please think twice about posting. If you're here to relate a tale regarding your own personal hygiene, don't. If you're thinking of posting a one word/sentence or joke answer, don't. If you go on a soapboxing tangent against Christianity/Islam/monarchies/communism/capitalism/whatever, your post is also gonna get removed.

Thanks a mill!

Well I can provide one example from the 8th century.

During the reign of Charlemagne, who ruled over Frankia, Lombardy (Northern Italy), Northern Spain, large parts of Germany (mainly Saxony) and the Avars, we see interesting mentions of baths. Charlemagne lived from roughly 748 to 814.

For example, in Einhards work 'Life of Charlemagne,' written after his death though it is contested when - 820s or 830s, he states that Charlemagne constructed his palace at the city of Aachen because of its thermal Roman baths, in which even 100 nobles could swim. There is archaeological evidence of these baths present at Aachen, of course it is unlikely that this was the main reason, but still points to their use. Furthermore, Alcuin of York, who was a ecclesiastic from northern England, in his letters reveals that he would discuss certain questions about the gospel with Charlemagne whilst in the baths.

Thus these baths were used by Charlemagne as a means of interacting with his nobility and even the ecclesiastics. We also know that Popes Hadrian I and Leo III also constructed baths at this point in Rome. For Charlemagne these baths also served to remind people of the glory of the Roman Empire and how his kingdom/empire were in part continuing that.

It is not necessarily an answer you were looking for - but still people, at least those who were in the nobility/elites/magnates, were not dirty and covered in filth. These baths could also serve a much wider social purpose.

Happy to answer any questions about this.

Sources -

Einhard - Vita Karoli/The Life of Charlemagne - P.E. Dutton - The Complete Einhard

N. Christie, Charlemagne and the renewal of Rome

J. L. Nelson, Aachen as a place of power

I cannot answer all the parts of your question with sufficient replies so I shall only address the parts I can.

I dont see how you can go from bathouses in Rome to absolutely nothing in a century or two.

Medieval bath houses were actually relatively common throughout Europe during this period, although in the Early Middle Ages they would have largely been confined to the few Roman baths that were still functioning as the technological infrastructure to construct them had been lost. It is a modern misconception perpetrated by television, film, etc. that only the Ancients used public bath houses. It is the lack of bathing that is the exception throughout the era you are asking about.

The Black Death momentarily stymied the use of public bath houses in the middle of the 14th century but we have many manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries which illustrate scenes of private bathing (eg. Folio 46v of the Codex Manesse, ca.1304). This is not to say that the number of public baths didn't decrease following the decline of Rome as the demographics of Europe shifted further toward rural communities and away from the ancient urban centers.

Did the Church really tell people to stay dirty?

The idea of the filthy penitent Priest is a simplification of Christian ascetical theology. Excessive focus on the bodily-self would jeopardize the perfection of their spiritual-self. Asceticism became a prominent aspect of Late Antiquity Christianity and influenced religious practice during the Early Middle Ages. Someone with more knowledge about Late Antiquity Christianity can further elaborate on asceticism and its impact on cultural practices in relation to hygiene.

Not wiping dirt, mud, or shit from their bodies or clothes?

Humans have an instinctual revulsion to decay and excrement, so the short of it is no, they didn't walk around covered in mud and shit. However the connection between decay, excrement and disease was poorly understood. For example, It wasn't until John Snow discovered the source of London's cholera epidemic in 1854 that the need for clean water supplies and proper sewage were fully understood.

Source; Virginia Smith, Clean: a history of personal hygiene and purity, Oxford University Press, 2007

Ah, the old "People in the Middle Ages didn't bathe" trope is a personal pet peeve of mine. Yes, people bathe, not with the frequency that we see with the modern age, but then again, if we use the modern age cleanliness model, everyone in history was filthy.

Bathhouses were a thing in Europe too, between full baths, people had means of washing their hands, face, and crotch. They did not go to sleep caked in their filth. Access to rivers and other bodies of water were also used to bathe.

If you want to do some more reading: This article gives a good general answer to cleanliness in the Middle Ages.

Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity - Virginia Smith

Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the Middle Ages - Georges Vigarello

To add to the other examples mentioned already, I can add that in the Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Arab world there is no reason to think that members of the aristocracy were encrusted with dirt. Moreover, there are more than a few off-hand mentions of public baths here and there as well, which is enough to suggest that some average Joes had access to this sort of facilities too. It is true that the mass building of public baths declined, but that's due to an unrelated social trend - the Christian elite of the late-antique world often did not use their wealth to build baths (or other civic utilities) to demonstrate their wealth, but instead donated money to the Church. Bathing as a habit however obviously continued, since archaeology demonstrates the existence of smaller private baths in addition to the declining number of public baths. I don't know enough to contextualise the archaeological evidence properly, but allow me to present some of the literary evidence for this. To take just one example, according to the sixth-century Greek historian Procopius in his panegyric, On Buildings, the emperor Justinian restored a large number of public bath across the empire, even in fortresses on the Euphrates frontier. Procopius however also hated the regime he praised and in his Secret History he mentioned that:

One of the city aqueducts [in Constantinople] had broken, and a considerable portion of the water destined for the use of the inhabitants was lost. Justinian, however, took no notice of it, being unwilling to incur any expense for repairs, although a great crowd continually thronged round the fountains, and all the baths had been shut.

Though hostile to the emperor, this is nonetheless evidence that many Constantinopolitans were still able to use the public baths. Around the same time in Rome, the habit to bathe was also entrenched. According to Procopius, when the city was under siege during the Gothic War;

They [citizens of Rome] began to be distressed by their inability to bathe and the scarcity of provisions.

Bathing was also seemingly fairly popular with the Frankish elite in Gaul, as the historian Gregory of Tours in the late sixth century recorded that one of the complaints from a group of aristocratic nuns was this:

They asserted that they could not endure any longer the risk of starvation, nakedness, and above all of beating; and they added also that several men had bathed in their bath contrary to decency.

The Umayyad Caliphs in the eighth century continued this pattern, as they built a number of very impressive desert palaces that naturally included baths. A beautiful example is Qusayr Amra, which featured not only a bath, but also mosaics of people bathing. The caliphate was a product of the late-antique world, a milieu that valued cleanliness, so naturally this sort of behaviour continued.

Another way to look at this is to think about the sheer number of people who were murdered in a bath. An Ostrogothic queen, Amalasuntha, was murdered in her bath in 535. The same thing happened again in the seventh century, as the Roman/Byzantine emperor Constans II was murdered in a bath in Syracuse in 668; five years earlier he had also bathed and dined in the Basilica of Vigilius in Rome. A few centuries later, the Roman/Byzantine emperor Romanos III was also (probably) murdered in a bath in the imperial palace in Constantinople in 1034, an act that was helpfully illustrated by a later scribe.

At the risk of repeating from a previous thread on a similar topic:

Here is a very nice reference on the evolution of the concept of "clean" vs "dirty":

• Georges Vigarello, Le Propre et le Sale : L'hygiène du corps depuis le Moyen Âge, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, coll. « L'univers historique », 1987, 288 p. (ISBN 978-2-02-008634-9)

• In english: Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 2008

TL;DR of the book: the notion of "clean" has evolved along the ages. In the Roman times, you'd take baths and keep clean more for getting a sense of well-being and relaxation. With the middle-ages, "clean" was about "keeping a wealthy/impressive appearance", like having well-styled hair, no dirt on your clothes. Then came the enlightment and the hygienist movement, that being "clean" was about being healthy. And finally, the modern times, where it's kind of a mix of hygienism and the Roman perspective.

This is of course a very coarse depiction. Over the course of the middle ages, and depending on the locations, you had varying levels of hygiene. For instance, the crusades and a certain level of regained affluence in the XIIth century did raise the standards of hygiene across France, while the Black plague was certainly boosted by overcrowded cities and failing infrastructures in the XIVth.

Don't have time to re-write it all out, but here are some links to similar questions asked (mostly 1600-1800):

Were People Really that Nasty during the 1600-1700s?

How did people in the Medieval times wash their hair?

Benjamin Franklins standards of cleanliness

Follow on question out of curiosity. What did people do about periods and toothbrushing? Those seem to be the biggest common cleanliness issues that could turn bad (ie medically bad) without proper attention, whereas just smelling bad (and needing a bath) doesn't seem to be as big a deal. I see a lot of comments about the latter, rather than the former.

According to The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, in 14th century England full baths were infrequent, but washing was daily. People of all classes would wash hands and face on getting up, and hands before and after every meal.

Bathing varied more. Villeins might bathe rarely, monks would have 2-4 full baths per year, some towns had public baths, rich people could bathe when they wanted (the king even had running water), gongfermiers (shit collectors) would bathe in a river after every work day. Bathing in rivers during summer was common.

I get the impression that people liked being clean, but had the limiting factor that in cold weather, bathing is just too painful unless you're very dirty or rich enough to afford hot water.