2023-12-01 14:56:34
It is eight in the morning in the center of Madrid and the two authors – the historian Javier Treaty and the entomologist Consuelo Sanz de Bremond– they are willing to unravel the secrets of the most remote past. The meeting exudes a certain aroma of machine coffee, that hard-working floor scrubber that you spend minutes before opening the bar counter, and a recent shower. Nothing to do with what we would have aspired to a thousand years ago. «What did the Middle Ages smell like? Well, especially wood smoke, which was used for cooking and heating in all the houses,” says the first. His colleague adds that “it would also smell a lot like a farm animal.” Profane aromas today for urbanites, although still common in rural Spain. “It wouldn’t seem so strange to us,” they explain almost in chorus.
What they are clear about is that medieval Europe would not give off those pestilent effluvia that movies and novels have repeated to us until we are hoarse. «At that time they were not imbeciles; “They wanted to survive and, to do so, they knew that cleanliness was key,” reveals Traité. That is one of the maxims of his new historical essay: ‘The smell of the Middle Ages (Book Attic). A huge work in which they investigate, analyze and disseminate a thousand years of history of hygiene in the old continent: from the decline of the Western Roman Empire to the 15th century. A thousand pages, no more, no less; and they have had to cut back. «We have left things out. Cosmetics, for example, although we talk a little about hair removal and deodorants,” explains Sanz.
Efficient and clean
It is forgiven because there is reading for a while; four years of research that begins with the fall of imperial Rome and the movement of the population from the late ancient and early medieval cities to the countryside. In that new environment, a basic smell became widespread: that of manure. A compound that Sanz describes as fundamental: «It was black gold. They used it to fertilize the land, as fuel for the fire in the chimneys…». It was so important that acquiring one or the other was synonymous with status: class difference even in shit. “The gentlemen kept the beef, which was the best, and the poor, the poorest quality, such as goose or pork,” adds Traité.
We are not going to deny that the aroma of manure made the nose twitch. However, the authors insist that we always ignore that medieval society took advantage of every last bit of the waste it generated. And what an example that happened during the new rise of cities. “In Valencia The sewage was redirected towards the orchards. They arrived with a load of urine and excrement that fertilized the crops,” explains the author. To do this, the latrines were located at specific points. It did not consist, as Traité somewhat sarcastically explains, of “we shit here and that’s it”, but rather “they were aware that they had to do it at specific points to encourage their exploitation.
Those “points” that Traité talks about were the latrines, to which they also dedicate many pages. Normal, since the myth surrounds them that they were scarce and pestilent. Nothing to do with reality. “There were plenty of them and the city itself paid for them to promote cleanliness,” insists Sanz. And he is even more surprised that they were not built by chance. «They were very well located. The ones on London Bridge were fantastic because they fell directly underneath, you didn’t have to pick anything up afterwards,” he adds. Today is one of those days when you are grateful for having had breakfast a long time ago. But, as the interviewees explain well, history is linked to excrement. Eating things.
Sanitary landscaping
But the basis of the work is to demolish myths, and there are plenty of those. That of the streets muddy with vats of excrement thrown from the windows is the most recurrent; the popular ‘water goes’. Traité affirms that it must be put in context: “At first it did not happen because medieval cities were a kind of walled orchards in which each house had its cesspool in the patio.” Things changed when the cities grew and two and three-story homes began to be built. From then on, and despite the fact that there were facilities to promote hygiene, this practice was allowed, although only at specific times. «It was not usual. There were dirty people who did it, but it used to be the water that was used to clean the house,” adds Sanz.
The more data, the smaller the myth of the stinking medieval city becomes. The authors review the water sources, built by the dozens to wash clothes and collect the liquid element, or a concept as revolutionary as it is unknown to the layman: ‘sanitary landscaping’. Traité cracks a smile when we meet him. He loves it. “It is a theory that refers to the set of attitudes, investments and infrastructures of medieval authorities to keep the environment clean and healthy for everyone,” he says. A medieval health policy? The yes is resounding. “We have found regulations from the 13th and 14th centuries in which it is ordered to clean the streets and not throw garbage in order to ‘do business in peace’ and ‘live well’.”
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There are examples in mountains. Sanz looks for and remembers one: the practice, institutionalized in Italy, of pigs passing through the markets eating the garbage generated by the sales stalls. His colleague also has hers: “I really liked a regulation according to which, if a neighbor saw someone throwing garbage out of the window, he could report them and keep half of the fine.” And that, not to mention the exorbitant fines that were given in some cities for contaminating a source. “They even built them with separate basins for drinking, washing meat or cleaning clothes,” says the historian. The clear example that they were trying to fight for hygiene.
and other myths
The topics don’t stop. We ask each author to choose one, and Sanz is clear: “Despite what is often believed, there were methods for women to solve the problem of menstruation.” Among them was “folding a linen cloth many times and attaching it to the waist with a kind of panty” to absorb the blood. If they didn’t have one, they could also use a very specific type of moss. Although he leaves room to charge against the idea that soap was not known in medieval Europe: «It is not, by any means, a current invention. Since the time of Mesopotamia they were already using substances such as castor oil and halophyte plants.
Traité doesn’t take long to choose his either. At lightning speed, he attacks the idea that men and women in medieval society did not brush their teeth: “I have always thought that they had terrible teeth, but that was from the 19th century onwards.” In the Middle Ages, he explains, they also cared about tartar: «In the sources you find that they chewed roots and branches of young hazel to keep their mouth clean. They bit them a lot and, when they had been there for a while, they brushed themselves with it. Sanz adds that they were also very concerned about the issue of halitosis: “There is talk of using fennel, parsley and celery to have fresh breath.”
The authors, during the interview Isabel Permuy
The last question is obligatory, although also recurring: “Is it true that Isabel la Católica promised not to change her shirt until she took Granada?” Sanz takes the floor: he has done a lot of research on the topic, but it has been impossible for him to find the original source that spread the hoax. “And boy, have I looked in the archives,” he says. The same thing happens with the fallacy that he only bathed twice in his life. «It is likely that several concepts were mixed. There are data that Isabel of Portugal was an ascetic woman and that she did not change her clothes much. And the bishop of Malaga confirmed that Juana I of Castile did not wash her face or the rest of her body. “I think she comes from there,” he concludes.
Time is running out and it is impossible to cover the entirety of a book that weighs a kilo and a half. “I feel proud that it is the heaviest that the publisher has published,” jokes Traité. In its pages there are topics such as public bathrooms, underwear or medicine. That, and the sympathetic threat of an equally great second part. We promise to read it.
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