William Watts shared his photo. Disgusting hygeine of medieval European royals (1/1) Heba: Who is the Dirtiest of them ALL? Most of us have an idea how royals looked like, but what did they smell like? Which royals hardly ever bathed? Here’s a whiff into some royal tubs. Despite the opulence of the palaces of France uptil the 18th century showing all those paintings, pomp, grandeur and romance, they lacked indoor plumbing and most palace dwellers smelled pretty bad. It was not uncommon to find human excrement in the elegant carpeted stairways of the great palaces and castles. Piles could be found in hallways and corridors. Bathing was a rarity. Marie Antionette, last queen of France Though shes surrounded with fantasty tales in many history books, the truth is very different. Marie Antoinette bathed infrequently, seldom changed clothes, and was around palace people who were even less hygeinic than she was. Marie Antoinettes once a month baths were like a glamouous ritual. The water in the bathtub was scented and filled with sweet pine nuts, blanched sweet almonds, marsh mallow root, lilly bulbs and a candy paste of rare plants. As expected, she probably smelled like fresh with some floral undertones for the first couple of days. But such elaborate baths with natural ingredients could not be made available frequently. Thus, the body odor would begin from the third or the fourth day, and a fortnight later she would literally stink. Queen Elizabeth I Shes said to have taken a bath once a month “whether she needed it or not even though she had access to sunken bath built by her father. Anne of Cleves The Germans had long shocked the rest of Europe by not washing their hands before eating and bathing infrequently. Henry VIII’s forth wife, Anne of Cleves was no different. Before she was presented to Henry, her advisors worked hard to get the stinky German princess to take a refreshing bath. Not that Henry VIII himself was any role model of cleanliness! King Henry VIII He bathed at Hampton Court (one of his palaces in England) with actual heated water pumped in from a stove in the adjoining room. To ease the pain in his sore leg, he soaked it in a mixture of herbs, musk and civet . Civet is a small carnivorous cat that supposedly gives off a very distinctive musk. Not sure what cat musk smells like but it definitely isnt pleasant. Henry also went to bed with a piece of fur so that fleas and lice would jump on it and not on his royal skin. This begs the question, wouldnt the fleas be confused if you smelled like a dead cat? Furthermore, how could fleas and lice be found in a place like the royal bedchamber unless the royal himself was filthy? Hair was even dirtier than the body The elaborate hairstyles of the aristocratic ladies, queens and princesses looked elegant. But there was a catch. Behind that elegance they often carried lice in those huge hairdos. The combs and picks seen in pictures sticking out were used to stab and scratch at the lice. Washing the hair was even more infrequent than washing the body, particularly among women. Hardly anyone washed their hair until the 19th Century. Hair was maintained by excessive use of hair powders and perfumed ointments to groom the hair. One can imagine the gooey mess it must have been. Peter the Czar of Russia This man was supposed to be widely travelled, educated and cultured .. but probably in his own way. Good and proper hygiene was a practice he never understood nor followed. He found nothing wrong with urinating on the glittering palace walls. He washed occasionally using natural mineral spring bath. Regular bathing never became his habit. Charity sometimes began in the tub While suffering from a distressing malady Countess Platen Hanover bathed in milk and then generously donated the diseased milk to the poor. Totally disgusting! Queen Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t help in the quest toward cleanliness either. This may sound too crazy to believe, but in Spain the Christian doctrine saw bathing to be a corrupt practice that could only lead to nakedness. It was considered a form of hedonism and something unreligous. Religious Christians often walked from England or France to Jerusalem as a ritual without washing or changing their clothes. After the conquest of Granada by the Christians, the Muslims (Moors) not only had to give up their religion to survive the Inquisition, they also had to give up bathing. Isabella and Ferdinand ordered the Moorish baths to be destroyed and bathing was strictly forbidden. When Columbus mentioned about the daily bathing habits of the natives of the Bahamas and the Caribeans, Isabella was horrified and commanded her new subjects to stop this blasphemous bathing practice at once. Isabella boasted that she herself had only bathed twice in her life and every historian takes her word for it. Phillip II and his Daughter Isabella Continuing along with the Spanish love for dirt, Phillip II banned the remaining bath houses in 1576. His daughter Isabella became a national martyr to germs when she vowed in 1601 that she would not change her undergarments until the siege of Ostend ended. Unfortunately, the siege lasted over three years! That’s an awfully long time to be wearing the same underwear!! After three years, her white shift had turned a lovely shade of brown. Henry IV Henry’s first wife, Marguerite de Valois complained bitterly about Henry’s lack of bathing worsened by his constant desire to eat large amounts of raw garlic. Cleaning the teeth in medieval Europe was another infrequent practice. Since most of them were frequent drinkers and eaters of half raw foods, bad breath was a common problem too. King and his tub One king that always gets accused of being dirty (in more ways than one) is Louis XIV. Numerous books contain the rumor that Louis XIV bathed “only three or two times in his life”. The ruling theory of the time was that simply changing your linen would soak up sweat and dirt. The rich wore tightly woven fabrics like linen and taffeta because it was believed to keep the crawlies away from skin. Loose garments were believed to be far less effective in staying clean. The king’s morning ritual consisted of his hands and face being wiped down with spirits and then his sweat-drenched linen was changed (Louis reportedly sweat a lot). His courtiers then sent him on his way to go to mass, his council meeting, hunt, chase the ladies and work up some more sweat. His linen was then changed a couple of more times throughout the course of the day. But no bathing! Europes bath phobia The Crusaders brought back the culture of public baths borrowed from the Turks whose Turkish public baths were famous venues for daily washings and considered a must by the Turks. In medieval Europe people had a strange mentality. With diseases like plague and other communicable illnesses being rampant from the 14th to 18th centuries, and from kings down to the peasants, all were fearful of dipping their bodies in water thinking that it made their bodies vulnerable to germs. Thus, they avoided water in favor of linen cloth, which could be changed regularly, in lieu of bathing. Fear of immersing the body in water continued into the 20th century. And of course, the long cold winters of the West with no central heating made bathing a lot more cumbersome, even frightening. People feared they would catch the cold and die. Children belonging to well-to-do aristocratic homes screaming with horror while being taken for their first warm bath was no uncommon sight. Americans (writes author Katherine Ashenburg), were as filthy as their European cousins before the Civil War, but the Unions success in controlling disease through hygeine convinced its citizens that cleanliness was progressive and patriotic. Total immersion bathing as we know it did not come into use until the 19th Century. It was simply too much work to heat the water, fill the tub, and then empty it. But occasionally in inns, a visitor would order a bath drawn which was considered quite a luxury. People generally took what we would call a sponge bath every day, using basins and pitchers that are still around today with plants in them. People also carried around pomanders to sniff in case they ran into bad odors. Also, bed linens and cotton garments were frequently washed, however cotton garments were rarely worn by the royals and aristocrats. But satins, velvets, and wools were never washed. So one can imagine the stench.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 23:55:50 +0000