So while the average medieval peasant might not match up to our modern ideals of personal hygiene, they probably weren't rolling in filth. I've posted before about the uses of parish rolls, the record of births, marriages and deaths maintained by every Church. In many cases these still exist dating back as far as the early medieval period and can often be found at your local records office. During the medieval period, a regular cause of accidental death is from drowning while bathing. While this doesn't mean that people were drowning all over the place, it does suggest that bathing was a relatively common enough occurrence that the occasional accident was bound to happen, similar to how we might imagine a death in a traffic accident today: broadly speaking unlikely but not specifically unusual.

While daily bathing might not have occurred, evidence suggests that cleanliness and tidyness was still relatively important to people. I spoke a little bit here about the perceptions of gender in accounts of the Battle of Hastings, but taking from that, it's worth noting that both Guy of Amiens in his Carmen de Hastingæ Proelio and William of Jumieges in his Gesta Normanorum Ducum remark on the Anglo-Saxon proclivity for hair-care, stating that their long hair and beards are usually finely combed and washed, and freshly oiled. At the other end of the spectrum, Norman fashion called for hair to be clipped particularly short.

While they might not have necessarily understood the science behind it, early medieval medicine also understood the importance of cleanliness, at least of the wound if not of the doctor. Many of the treatments for wounds listed in the 9th Century Bald's Leechbook note that the first step in treating an injury is to wash the wound in hot wine and wrap it in poultices and clean bandages to prevent infection setting in.