I've heard very contradictory things about medieval cleanliness, and of course thing will have varied depending on era and location, but I seem to consistently heard that, for a time at least, Europeans didn't really bathe. The explanations I've heard include bathhouses being considered sinful due to nudity or due to association with Islam, bathing being considered unhealthy by quack medieval medicine, and the Christian faith itself being considered cleansing enough.
What is the truth here? Was being a dirty slob an eccentricity of a few notable monarchs or was this really a widespread issue? And if so, why?
Hello, this question seems to come up quite a bit. I answered that question in a bit more detail before here. There's a link in that answer which goes into more detail about Early Medieval hygiene.
The tl:dr of that post is that, while most people didn't tend to bathe and the Church may have disproved of bath houses, this categorically doesn't mean that people didn't wash. It's largely a modern vernacular that the two terms have been conflated, and while they might not have matched our modern germaphobic standards of cleanliness, medieval people still tried to be clean and presentable, and still washed on a regular basis. The Church was right to be suspicious of bath houses; bathing dipped in and out of fashion during the Roman period anyway, and prominent Romans like Marcus Aurelius are known for their disapproval of bath houses; after all they are essentially giant infection vectors for disease. They also either required natural hot springs or vast amounts of labour to maintain. Most Medieval people just used rivers, which were far more hygienic, with bath houses being relegated to larger urban contexts.
TL;DR(tl;dr): Bathing =/= washing.