Kris Kennedy’s medieval historical novel made quite a splash on Twitter, particularly as it was hella-bargain at Books on Board. Jane and others had good things to say about it, and let’s face it – the medieval is not as frequently seen as it used to be.
While emailing with Kennedy last week, I asked her about the historical details that few really want to experience in the course of a narrative, and she was kind enough to write up a list of historical details we rarely see in medieval romances. Bring on the hilarity, and thank you to Kris Kennedy for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at historical research and details we might be better off not seeing in your nearest medieval romance.
There are just some things we don’t see much in historical romances. Not that we don’t need to know those things. We just, generally, don’t want to be thinking about them.
As an author, you’re constantly deciding what to leave out and what to put in. Historically accurate details often get left out for reasons other than ‘yuck’ factor. Storytelling takes precedence. You want to build the world, engage the reader, and propel the story forward. And not make the reader gag. Not gagging is good.
In my debut release last month, The Conqueror, a medieval romance, I was constantly making these decisions. I probably made mistakes , in part because every reader is different in this regard, the degree of realism she prefers. But here are a few of the things we rarely see in a medieval romance, and maybe some of the reasons why.
The Whole ‘Washing’ Issue, or; The Heroine Smells Like Lavender / Orange Blossom / You Pick The Scent
In the middle ages, they did not wash as much as we do. It’s a lot of work to haul water and, in the winter, heat it up. So the hero might have a hard time detecting the heroine’s pretty floral ‘perfume’ amid the general body aromas of the time. A faint, lingering scene of lavender might not measure up to hard-working B.O.
Then again, there were no processed foods, no pesticides/herbicides/antibiotics/etc being ingested by plant or beast, so I suspect the odors were much less . . . well, odoriferous. And those hard-working field hands were not eating much meat which would also make them stink less.
And the medieval person did wash, more than we might assume. You can find pictures in illustrated manuscripts of people bathing, even with little canopies over them. A man and a woman might bathe together, each in his/her own tub, toasting their good fortune in having servants to carry the heated water up the stairs. There were also public baths, a left-over custom from the days when those communal-bathing Romans played with their weapons in the cold, dark north. (Ques: Why *don’t* we see more public bath scenes in medieval romances? :hmmm….plotting ahead…: ) It could become a whole event.
But in the end, after six months, one month, or even a week of hard work and sweat, yeah, someone’s going to smell like . . . themselves. Unique and noticeable. Maybe pungent.
But the hero might not care too much. His heroine would be judged by the times, and everyone else around would have their own odors. He might not be thinking, “Jeez, she’s funny and smart and hot and all, but whoa, does she stink!”
I think we can expand this to almost all hygiene issues: people are judged by the customs of the times. But the contemporary romance reader doesn’t always want to be making those mental value adjustments as she reads. Such as . . . toothbrushing.
We probably won’t often see the heroine picking food out of her teeth with a twig. The villain? Sure. Give him an old stocking. The hero? Hmm…does it move the story forward? No? Ye-a-ah, I think I’ll leave it out. In The Conqueror, there are no toothbrushing scenes. Not a single reference.
‘Course, there isn’t an abundance of toothbrushing scenes in contemps either. But it’s an interesting factoid that I might want to include, but it tends to burn the bridges of identification enough that I leave it out. Don’t want the reader thinking, ‘There’s no WAY I’d let him kiss me.” Kind-of destroys the ‘romance’ piece of a romance.
Dig Your Privacy?
Too bad. In a romance, the hero and heroine usually get a lot of alone time. Their bedchamber is a place of privacy. But that was not always the case. Early on, privacy was considered rude, and even without the social strictures, these were usually cramped quarters, even in castles. Rooms were small—easier to heat—and people got together for almost everything. Often, even nobles had big old beds so that hero, heroine, their children could sleep together.
Hey, you’re thinking, some of us do that now. How true. But how about servants? A few key knights? In the dead of a freezing (literally) winter, that wasn’t uncommon. It could mean the difference between life and death.
Think of the possibilities. Yet I’ve never read a romance with four or five of them in bed together. (:begins more mental plotting:)
And in villages, huts were often shared with the farm animals. More fun. In The Conqueror, for example, there is such a scene, cows and people sharing a home, but it’s definitely not the hero’s house.
Dig meat?
Unless you were rich, too bad. Not much of that. The good news is, that’s a good beginning to a heart-healthy diet, all those grains and vegetables. But not raw. Raw vegetables were thought to be bad for the digestive system.
Dig your dog?
Let him sleep with you? Feed him off the table? Sure, why not? Well, then why make him go outside to relieve himself?
They didn’t back then. Thus, those rushes on the floor (and in winter, straw), scattered through with herbs and flowers to alleviate the stench.
And while we’re at it, bring in the horses, and your prized hawk too. Because the lord of the castle was a bird-loving man. (Stop.) I mean a hawk-loving man. And he had a relationship with his hawk. (Stop that.) It was very common to have Hawk with him all the time. On a perch behind his seat (or on his shoulder) at meals. In the bedroom. Wherever. And birds definitely do not get potty-trained.
(Oh, and much as they loved and needed their animals, the average medieval person may not have been able to wrap his mind about the concept of animal shelters, but we sure can. Check out the charity fundraiser hosted by SB and Dear Author in Edith Layton’s memory, to support animal rescue efforts. Now, back to the regularly scheduled history tour.)
If You Were Cold…
Too bad. If you were in Northern Europe/England, we’re talking like, really cold. There was a what’s known as the Little Ice Age smack in the middle of the Middle Ages, but even without that, castle and village life was pretty cold.
Of course, they had really warm blankets. Furs. And rooms were small, to conserve heat. Rugs or tapestries covered the walls and helped a little. And, of course, there would be a lot of people there with you to help spread the heat. But still, it’d be cold. Really cold. Yet we rarely see the heroine performing her morning toiletry by plunging her hands through the layer of ice that’s formed in the water bucket overnight.
If You Were Sick…
Bring on the leeches.
I have never, ever seen a hero in a romance get ‘hung with leeches.’ (That’s what what they called it. Is that not bad enough?) I’ve never seen a romance heroine hung with leeches. It’s probably not going to happen much, at least not on-screen. (SB Sarah: And thank God for that. I’d start thinking about that scene in Stand By Me.)
Body Parts Strewn
Seriously. People would have a lot of missing body parts. Teeth, arms, ears. Malnutrition, battle, tournaments (especially the early ones) and a multitude of bad accidents with various implements of destruction/farming/milling, populated the medieval town or castle with a motley-looking crew. Still, we rarely see our heroes missing arms or eyes. Unless they’re a pirate, of course, with the patch and all.
The Frequent and Varied Uses of Urine
Urine was a very useful agent in the middle ages. It was used for everything from working wool to building plaster. They used it as a cleaning agent and to diagnose illnesses. And it keeps the hands nice and soft! Mmmm.
The ‘Facilities’
Not a pretty thing. When privy chambers were inside a castle, there was simply a chute that ran to the outside, and straight down the wall. Some of the refuse might make it into the moat or other defensive ditch surrounding the castle. Some would stick along the way. Even today, centuries later, many castle walls are still stained.
Only villains have these sort of walls.
And then there’s the accoutrements. We have toilet paper. They had . . . straw. Or moss. Or soft leaves. Sometimes in richer homes, there’s been a linen cloth. Or . . . your hand.
Okay, that is so not in my book.
Food was highly colorful and wildly spiced…
Often to disguise the fact that the meat was rancid. Fortunately, if you were a peasant, you wouldn’t be getting much meat.
The Good News:
Drinking ale was good for you.
The medieval person didn’t get a lot of vitamins, particularly A, C, and D, and in general, especially amid the lower classes, they didn’t get a whole lot of calories either. No, this isn’t the good news. The good news is that, as a result, drinking ale fortified you, especially with calories.
Yay, ale! Yay beer! (Fun note: it was called beer after they discovered it was much much better to add hops instead of bark or leaves, about mid-16th century). And this, we do see in romances. A lot of drinking. (Not water, for reasons related to the above, see: The ‘Facilities’.)
And I suppose, in the end, treated water or no, our relationship with wine and beer is something that hasn’t changed very much after all these centuries.
So, what about you? What sort of ‘history’ do you see/want to see/not want to see in your historical romances? Any other interesting historical realities we just don’t see much in a romance?
SB Sarah says: I happen to LOVE the fact that just about every heroine in historical times, whether in the description in the text or portrayed on the cover, has hairless legs. My theory: all the time-travel heroines secretly brought cases of Nair for the historical heroines.
Thanks to Kris for Fun with Rather Revolting History! What are your favorite historical facts that would never make it into romance?
Not medieval, but I was at the National History Museum in Washington DC this May and there was a fascinating display of finds including human bones, from the rediscovered Jamestown colony area. One of the skulls had teeth from which the enamal had been essentially scrubbed off the front teeth. The wear appeared to have gone down almost to the pulp.. One of the ways teeth were cleaned involved rubbing the teeth with tobacco ash. The silica in the ash would wear away the enamal. Considering the amount of pain the owner of the skull must have inflicted on herself, she had to have a problem with OCD.
This is a great exhibit and I urge anyone who has a chance to go see it. There was even a mystery skeleton that was discovered in the cellar of a house built by early settlers. They did a good job showing logically how conclusions were arrived at by the scientists who investigated the site.
Let me 3rd or 4th Roberta Gellis. One book that I reread often is MASQUES OF GOLD— The title has nothing to do with the book other than the fact that the heroine is the widow of a recently murdered goldsmith. The hero is a knight of a minor family—2nd or 3rd son, who has been hired by the Mayor of London to try to keep peace between various factions on the streets—early 1200’s. There’s a murder mystery, King John, politics, lots of history and a pretty good love story with a HEA ending.
Unfortunately out of print.
When talking about what could kill ya in the Middle Ages though, I think we often forget that the lack of antibiotics means that someone has probably developed antibodies to a lot of bugs just to survive to adulthood.
If you don’t mind a really, really depressing story, Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book is a great time travel/sf story.
(my emphasis)
Absolutely. Onions, garlic, parsley and many, many other herbs were grown and used, both in medicinal and culinary contexts, in medieval Europe. Even saffron was grown in England.
However, black pepper and long pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg, cloves, ginger and probably other pungent spices did not grow in Europe. They had to be imported from India and the Middle East, a journey that ensured that they were classed as luxury items.
Food that was highly seasoned and spiced in a complex way was considered sophisticated and desirable, just as it had been in the Classical world. There is no need to introduce the red herring of spoilage to account for its popularity in medieval cuisine. People simply liked spicy dishes (and sweet ones, too). I like hot curries just because I like hot curries, the interwoven flavours and the zing of chillies, not because I hope that the complex flavours will disguise the fact that the meat is off!
🙂
I have not encountered this information, and I have read Pliny (the most likely source) on dental matters, so I remain to be convinced. Of course, as others have said, urine certainly has many practical uses, the most obvious one being in the bleaching and dying of cloth.
It is perfectly possible to clean the surface of the teeth pretty efficiently using a cloth over one’s finger. For the interstices between the teeth, of course one uses a toothpick, made of wood, feather quill or metal (there are numerous silver and bronze examples surviving from the Roman period, many of them very decorative items). In many cultures various types of twig have been used as toothbrushes, sometimes from plants that had, or were believed to have, cleansing properties; tooth powders or pastes are merely optional extras. Pliny does mention a tooth-powder made of ground burnt bone and herbs, but the implication is that it is good for treating gum disease rather than everyday cleaning.
Another aside: while many industrial activities were sited well away from settlement sites because of smoke, noise and other undesirable factors, tanneries were always notorious for their bad smell, in part due to the use of faeces in the processing. I am thinking of the Roman period again, but this applies both before that era, in prehistory, and afterwards, right through the medieval and early modern periods, as well.
Excuse typo above – dying for dyeing! I seem to have lost the ‘edit’ function that used to be there immediately after posting. Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?
i am irreverently (and probably irrelevantly) reminded of that scene in the movie “idiocracy” where the protagonist is laughed to high heaven by everyone because he wants to save the dying plants using “water, like from the toilets”.
W/regards to the longbow/plate armor debate:
Medievals do tend to be overwhelmingly English/Scottish (Why is that, by the way? I would love to see some things set in Poland, which was quite cultured at the time…) so I suppose that’s where longbow information comes in. But I always thought that outside of Agincourt, a knight wasn’t really likely to run into a longbow: no other battles that I know of involved the English yeomanry in significant numbers. And even there, I remember reading, the high casualties that are traditionally attributed to the longbow may have resulted from the French knights and horses getting swamped down and even drowning in mudpits. Part of the logic for that, I think, was that shooting the French knights made much less sense than taking them for ransom, so historians thought many of the deaths must have been accidental.
Anyway, yes. I guess what I’m speculating is that if you only had one major battle in several centuries with longbows, AND if as a medieval romance hero, the longbows were probably on your side, then I guess it didn’t make much sense to design your wardrobe around its ability to resist a longbow.
Wow, very educational thread.
But… do not read while eating dinner.
Blergh….
@ Kris Kennedy –
As you know, clothes were expensive and fancy clothes were really expensive. Motheaten is not just a term for shabby – moth larvae can go through woolens like butter, and will also eat velvet and furs and pretty much any kind of keratin based material.
The ammonia from the garderobe was used as a form of deterrent for expensive clothes that were not worn daily.
@ Kalen Hughes –
You mentioned seaweed used as sanitary protection – this is anecdotal, but my great granny came from the outer, outer Hebrides, and apparently her mother used it, and also herself although less so, since she went to follow the herring fleet and out in the wider world there was easier access to rags for use.
So fun Kris!!!! Fabulous post 🙂
Re: stink. I remember reading somewhere, sometime that families involved in using woad tended to be inbred because of the stench involved in the dying process. People from outside the woad families wouldn’t marry in because they couldn’t take it. I’m thinking that what I read was a reference to pre-medieval (maybe bronze age?) Europe, but I’m open to being wrong. (Not being an historian at all, I didn’t feel the need to make note of my source.)
Elizabeth Hoyt’s “To Seduce a Sinner” mentions the heroine’s extremely painful cramps during her period (setting is mid-18th century). The hero, while a bachelor was quite the rake about town, had no idea about the length of a woman’s period, the discomfort, etc. He ends up questioning his wife about it, much to her dismay and embarrassment, and comes away with a greater respect for what women go through once a month.
BTW, this is a very enjoyable series—The Four Horsemen.
In one of the Clan of the Cave Bear sequels (and in a couple of Native American novels I’ve read) urine was collected and used to bleach deer skin white or near-white. So I would expect that it was tanneries who had urine collection vats at the door.
As far as personal/body odor—there are many period recipes for perfumes and “sweet waters,” as well as formulae for sweetening the breath and cleaning the teeth, so it’s clear they were conscious of how they smelled and wished to smell better (even if they didn’t necessarily understand or have access to the most direct way to accomplish that). One good introductory source is at
http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/oil&water;.html
Re: The Hawk.
Modern day falconers do this as well, keeping the hawk or falcon inside with you is a good way to socialize (ie ‘man’) them during the training process. It is not unusual to walk into a modern falconer’s home and see a falcon on a bow perch or block in the middle of the living room floor (this also teaches the dogs to respect the bird, get too annoying and they get footed in the face). Modern falconers put down a layer of newspaper of course, which works great with falcons who poop straight down, but not so well with hawks who can shoot their’s six feet out horizontally.
And honestly, it’s no worse then owning a parrot, most of them aren’t potty trained either. Bird poop is very high in uric acid which makes it close to sterile, so it’s not like it’s unhealthy to have it in the house.
For another perspective on menstruation – Japanese women in the pre-modern era didn’t usually wear underwear as such, so that it was easy to lift the kimono and go to the toilet. When a woman had a period, however, she would take a long cloth and wrap it around her hips and between her legs, sometimes putting extra rags in if needed. The best colour for this cloth was red, because red is considered to relieve menstrual pain.
Hmm, so much to talk about! Gosh.
Concerning mentruation – Yes, I agree, there’s no evidence of pads! But I seem to recall in Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked by Janet Arnold (massive tome, and I don’t want to drag it out) there is a few references in her wardrobe accounts of a kind belt/strap, which isn’t elaborated on much, but is assummed to be holder for cloth clouts during menstruation.
Also in the medieval Herjolfsnes Greenland finds, something that looked like a sanitary belt was found on a female corpse.
Pre-1600, there’s extensive discussion in medieval textx, secular and religious, concerning menstruation but none about the actual items used for hygiene. It’s reasonable to believe that cloths of some kind were used, and would be referred to as menstrual clouts. A Muslim text, the Muthir al-Ghiram (circa 1351) mentions menstrual clouts allegedly being placed on a dung heap at a Muslim sacred site: “the Christain women were wont to throw their menstrual cloths and clouts in the place so that there was a pile of them there.”
Isaiah 64:6 was usually translated as “all our righteousness are as filthy menstrual clouts” in the Middle Ages.
Tampons? No evidence. They had medicinal ‘pessaries” to be inserted for female complaints, as seen from the text Trotula:
‘But if the womb becomes so indurated that with these aids the menses are not able to be drawn out, take gall of a bull….and let them be mixed with juice of wild celery or hyssop. And let carded wool be dipped therein, and then let it be pressed to that it is hard and rigid…and let it be inserted.
OR let there be made another pessary in the shape of a male member, and let it be hollow, and inside there let the medecine be placed and let it be inserted.”
Now then…the idea that a medicine should be shaped like a man’s member makes me giggle, and the ingredients don’t include urine (boys urine being very prized for its purity) or any nasty stuff. So provided you don’t leave it there a long time, you are likely to avoid Toxic shock syndrome.
Baths – I think the Christians rebelling against decadent Rome did us wrong – they took bathing as sign of sinfulness and the Church continued to maintain that view. Sin! Decadence! No wonder I loves me a bath. But depending on the place and season, bathing was probably done more frequently than our notions of medieval life would believe. I’ve often run across medieval manuscripts with illuminations of bathers, and it actually looked quite convivial – food was being served, men and women in seperate tubs were talking and laughing. Looked like fun, actually.
I also ran across that sage tooth scrub! I have a nice redaction for it as well. There’s another using pepper, peppermint and salt.
For sweetening the breath confits were popular if you could afford the spices – just like modern confits, they are seeds of fennel, caraway and anise, coated with sugar.
But if any would-be medieval authors are looking for that trace of authenticity and need a good overview of hygiene and hair care/colouring, de-lousing, bathing, toothcare, scents, I’d recommend The Compleat Anachronist, Issue no. 136, 2007. Well documented, if you need go go back to original sources, and had recipes for items.
Gods forgive me for posting hugely on this already long discussion!
And forgive me again!
That’d be a strygil. They bathed, yes, and the strygil was kinda the pumice or loofah alternative for Roman, Greeks AND Egyptians.
Someone mentioned about having ‘dirty’ sex without washing hands, and who knew where they’d been? But hand washing evidence for meals at least is quite common – the protocol for Henry VIII’s meals can be found in “All the King’s Cooks”. Quite the procedure for towel and basin being brought round to guests.
Platina’s De Honesta Voluotatae et Valetundine (circa 1470) has a list of what to do upon getting up in the morning – wash your hands and face, blow your nose, spit, brush your hair. There’s three other sources of treatises on manners from pre-1600’s I could mention, but they are all about the same.
Maybe whole body washing wasn’t as common as in modern times, but there was hygiene of a sort. There are some lovely ewers in museums, which were used at feast.
Hairy legs! In time periods where we know there was female depilitation going on (those high foreheads! Those thin brows) there’s not much about that. There’s a scary recipe for a chemical hair removal using arsenic sulfide and quicklime in the Trotula (circa 1180-1200). Shaving was popular for women in Roman times – in medieval, there’s not much written down. Implements like medieval tweezers, earscoops and toothpicks as personal hygiene items are common enough in museum collections, so we know they at least plucked…something. And scooped. And picked.
The process for which urine was chiefly collected in Roman cities was the fulling of woollen cloth. The ammonia in the urine dissolves natural greases, and thickens and plumps up the fabric. As I mentioned, urine was also used in many other textile processes, not only in Classical Antiquity but up till very recent times. Healthy, fresh, urine is not at all disgusting; like so many other things, it becomes noxious only when stale (excuse another inadvertent pun).
Depilation: razors were made as early as the Bronze Age; we assume that then, as later, their principal use was for the shaving of male facial hair.
Well, yes and no. The removal of body hair, specifically pubic hair, was common during the Roman Imperial period, but it was done by plucking with tweezers rather than shaving. Tweezers, along with ear-scoops, nail-cleaners and toothpicks, were part of the standard grooming kit of any Roman, even in remote provinces such as Britannia, and hundreds of thousands of them survive.
Ooh what a great thread. Some of my favourite subjects, and stuff I researched when I was a teenager for my A level History. But I’ve forgotten a lot of sources, so here goes with what I can remember (I’ve been making notes as I read through. Yep, I have no life). I wrote this big huge long answer, so I’m going to split it up a bit.
Sword weight is a common fallacy—yes these guys were strong but not that strong! However I have seen cavalry swords which are huge—about seven or eight feet long—designed to be used on horseback. There’s one hanging in the chapel at Windsor, and I asked the priest about it. Unfortunately I can’t remember which king it belonged to.
I’ve seen a man turn a full cartwheel in a suit of armour. You had to be able to move. It’s not like the Batsuit. But hot? My god yes. I went to a jousting exhibition a few years ago on the hottest day of the year (around 100F) and saw the knights later in the bar, armourless, dripping with sweat and downing pint after pint of water. I think they’d have preferred beer, but it’s harder to joust when you’re drunk…
Health, infections, bladder problems etc: firstly that medieval medicine was based on the four humours and their associated temperaments (sanguine—hot and moist, choleric—hot and dry, melancholic—cold and dry and plegmatic—cold and moist). Correcting an imbalance in these humours was the aim of medicine. To cure a fever, which would be hot, lettuce was often prescribed, as it was cold. I remember using that in one of the very early (and very crap) books I wrote.
And cranberries weren’t widely known in Europe at the time. So not likely to be used for bladder infections even if they did have the right humour.
MF
Washing: it’s a little out of the period, but James I regarded washing as very unhealthy and would only dab at the tips of his fingers with a damp cloth. He was considered to be pretty disgusting, though. The old line about Elizabeth I bathing four times a year ‘whether she needed it or not!’ really refers to her filling up a bathtub and having a good soak. She’d have washed pretty regularly—or perhaps had someone wash her! It’s what we’d call a sponge bath. Although I’ve just read that Henry VIII had plumbed-in bathrooms at Whitehall and Hampton Court.
My bible on Tudor life, Alison Sim’s The Tudor Housewife
, explains all about cleanliness, and offers the example that Henry VIII understood how cleanliness and health were positively linked: he ordered that everything that went near his precious son was scrupulously clean, washed with soap daily, the whole apartment swept every day, all clothing and toys to be very clean. Didn’t help the poor kid much, but I don’t think hygiene was the problem.
The Tudors washed their hands before each meal as they ate with their hands (a knife, and sometimes a spoon, but no forks of course). Between courses they’d wash their hands again (of course we’re talking people rich enough to have several courses).
And a little more on hygeine:
According to Sim
, “everyone, whether rich or poor, wore a linen garment called a chemise or shirt,” and that “anyone who could possibly manage it would have a clean chemise every day.” And yes, urine was used in cleaning, up until the seventeenth century when lime was used instead to bleach fabrics.
Since laundry was quite a trial, I sincerely dispute the idea that women bled onto their clothes at that time of the month. A discussion on one of my author loops turned up the unfortunate evidence stated above that there’s not much reference to what was used—rags seem most likely.
Anne Laurence in WOMEN IN ENGLAND, 1500-1760
disputes the idea that women rarely menstruated, although she believes the average age of menarche was later than it is now—probably closer to 17. Since all births were recorded, it’s easy to see that they were usually 2-3 years apart—so hardly a perpetual cycle of childbirth (although there are records of noblewomen giving birth in nearly every one of their childbearing years. You had to beat the odds of child mortality. Queen Anne had fourteen children, and survived them all—that’s why we had to get some German cousins in to run the country in 1714).
Finally, marriage didn’t take place as early as is believed for most women. The average age was 27. Nobles married younger, sometimes when they were still children, but it would have been a political alliance and the new bride and groom wouldn’t be expected to sleep together until they were of age (specifically, until she’d begun her periods).
Okay, I’ve been sitting here about an hour now, and it’s lunchtime. Here endeth the lesson.
A bit of more ‘recent’ history with the story behind it;
My fathers parents, grandparents and great grandparents came here from Cornwall in the late 1800’s. They settled in the upper peninsula of MI. His father mined coal.
They had no running water, no indoor toilets, an old wood stove, pretty much the same living conditions they’d left behind. All their water came from the nearby creek.
They all sponge bathed. Every one of them. And his greatgrandparents were born between 1800 and 1810. My dad sponge bathed too, right up until he died at 93 (I was a late baby, he was almost 50 when I came along). The aides at the assisted facility kept trying to shove him in the shower all the time, he kept trying to tell them he’d already ‘bathed’. lol
I never thought anything of it and just always considered it another way to stay clean. Every one of his family for 5 generations at least lived to be over 90 so I can’t see it was detrimental in any way.
Ooh! I’ve just remembered reading that men didn’t, or more to the point couldn’t, shave as closely as they do today. The first clean shaves as we’d recognise them came in with the Regency era.
The thing is, I can’t remember where I read it—I’m pretty sure it was somewhere reputable. And I can’t remember why they couldn’t shave closely. You could get a pretty keen edge on a blade in any era—was it more to do with lather or softening skin to open the pores and get a closer shave?
Can anyone verify this?
Having recently finished the lovely For My Lady’s Heart by Laura Kinsale, I just wanted to mention the hero’s immunity to bubonic plague, and point out that his descendants would be immune to HIV/AIDS. It has to do with lacking a certain type of cell that the virus “sticks” to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/011025_ccr5.shtml
Re: Armor and Weapons
Mostly, it was the English Longbow.
Seriously, those English archers were scary. Shooting arrows was a hobby for them, as was seeing who could make the bow with the heaviest draw. Pulling a hundred pounds was nothing to them. I wouldn’t even want to guess what the upper limit was.
Also, yeah, armor is heavy…but if you spend extensive time wearing it, you’ll adapt. And probably put on some pounds of muscle.
It’s sort of like the people who work their way up to smashing cinderblocks and bricks. You start off by pounding on hard objects repeatedly, which hurts because you’re actually crunching your own bones so they’ll compress and become denser when your body freaks and tries to repair itself. It’s painful and time intensive, but by the time you NEED to break a block, or pull a bow that’d make Odysseus go “DAYUM” or whatever, you’re up to the task.
And life back then was hard. Working manual labor (and what labor wasn’t, back then? Even plowing behind a horse means you have to pay attention to what you’re doing) all day, every day, will definitely toughen you up. Same goes for practicing with weapons in full armor.
Cat: I don’t know about the ‘close shave’ question, but it is certainly true that you can get a fine sharp edge on iron and bronze, as well as steel. I would be quite surprised if a professional barber could not achieve a really smooth, close shave on a man using the equivalent of what we now call a cut-throat razor— that is, an open blade— at any period, even in antiquity. However, if a man were shaving himself, it seems more than possible that he might, out of cautiousness, not try to get too close. The need to put the skin under tension, and all the awkward angles of skin and blade, make it rather skilled process.
Safety razors, by tensioning the skin and keeping the blade at the right angle, probably made it easier for the do-it-yourself shaver.
🙂
/delurk
This is an incredibly interesting discussion! There’s such a wealth of knowledge in the Bitchery…
Re: shaving, I remember that somewhere in Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of the Ninth series, set in the later days of Roman Britain, one Roman hero (a legionary?) lets his beard grow when he can’t “shave” with a pumice stone, because shaving himself the British way – an open razor and cold goose grease – is a pain in the ass.
Captcha: began55. I wonder when men began shaving themselves in Western Europe? The silky-smooth shave you give yourself at home must be a fairly modern innovation…
@AgTigress on supposed Roman toothbrushing with urine: Catullus 37 and 39 both mention a Spanish man named Egnatius who does this and claims it is a common Spanish custom. Given the derisive tone of the poem, though, it’s hard to imagine contemporary Italians cleaned their teeth with urine. It is supposed to have made Egnatius’s smile exceptionally shiny and white, though!
In re the weight of armour …
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=510691
I’m not knowledgeable myself, but the arguments that plate armour, at 60 or so pounds, was comparable to the full pack of modern soldiers is interesting.
Hmmm … seems to me a fully-dressed Victorian matron was carrying something like 40 pounds of clothing ….
Actually, prior to Agincourt the French knights ran into the English longbow men at Crecy and Poitier, which is why they knew to fear them at Agincourt. Part of the reason that the French ended up drowning in the muck during the battle was they were keeping their visors closed as a defense against the archers.
Bernard Cornwell’s new(ish) book Agincourt is a very accurate, entertaining and gritty depiction of the battle and the era.
Cass, thank you so much for the Catullus reference. The context indicates to me that this is an example of the regrettably common Roman habit of making fun of the weird habits of funny foreigners.
😀
Had the custom been at all widespread, I doubt if Pliny would have missed it. I think we may assume that, if it was done at all, it was an individual idiosyncrasy rather than a cultural norm. It might well have bleached the teeth over time, but on the whole, I think I’d rather have less-than-dazzling teeth.
What an interesting discussion!
I just finished reading the first 3 books of Leo Frankowski’s “Conrad Stargard” time-travel series set in medieval Poland. (The 1500’s, I think). Lots of interesting details about medieval life including sleeping together, menses, clothing, bathing. I don’t know how accurate they are, but the details ‘felt right’ to me.
There is also a wealth of information about medieval life in T.H. White’s “The Sword in the Stone”…one of my all-time favorite books.
Diana Gabaldon’s books, although set later in time, have an authentic ‘feel’ as well.
Betina Krahn’s “The Wife Test” has some really interesting details about medieval cooking and spices. The other ‘Test’ books are fun and interesting.
And I definitely second the recommendation of Connie Willi’s “Doomsday Book” set during the Black Plague.
I’ll second the Gellis, Willis and Gabaldon recs and add Dunnett and Madeline Hunter to the list of those authentic in their time period.
Security word is ‘doing98’. Not recommended, akshully.
I admit I haven’t read many medieval romances but wondered how often burnings—of heretics and witches—appears. Seems like that would be a real mood killer, the smell of burning human flesh.
Urine, especially that of pregnant women, was used to help indigo dye fast. It still is. I remember one Pennsic when the word went out “If you’re pregnant, come piss in the dye vat!”
Still on urine, it gets really pungent if several people use the same clump of weeds (or patch of asphalt). Any trip through the truck parking of a truck stop will quickly school you in this odor.
Even a single hot day with heavy perspiration leaves a person pungent. (I know several fighters who don’t bathe for the whole of Lilies War)
I don’t mind body hair, if it’s appropriate. Your ancient Egyptians shaved everything with those half-moon bronze razors. From the War of the Roses on, women shaved their heads way back. The typical 12th century Saxon haircut was a bowl that sat above the ears and the rest shaved. Body hair could be shaved, pubic hair frequently was (resulting in a need for merkins).
Just some randomness foillows:
“There’s no other way to be King, alive and fifty all at once!”
King John reigned 16 years and died at the age of 48, a old, tired man. He was the fourth son and never expected to be king.
MB~
I haven’t heard of Leo Frankowski or his “Conrad Stargard,” time-travel set in medieval Poland. Good reading? I too loved Sword in the Stone when I was a kid—haven’t thought of it for years. Think I’ll hunt it down.
Angelia~
LOL on the shout-out to pregnant women to ‘come piss in a dye vat!” That’s actually an element in my next book. And imo, John brought on much that stress himself. Likely fed by threads of mental illness and excess that did not help his mood or immune system. 🙂 But his son, Henry III, an unremarkable king, ruled for over 55 years. And John’s grandson, Edward I, a more remarkable king, ruled for 35 years. So, John could bred ‘em, if he couldn’t join them.
Permalinking this blog for beginning future research . . .
Great conversations, all!
Hi Kris Kennedy 🙂
Yes, the Frankowski books were pretty good—I enjoyed them. They are kind of a male fantasy what with the inequal gender roles, so don’t read them for romance! I’m only 3 books down on the 7-book series, so some romance may come in there down the road. They are kind of like “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” by Mark Twain only modernized (of course) and set in medieval Poland. The premise is that an engineer is plopped down unsuspectingly in that era and must industrialize and organize Poland quickly since he knows that the Mongols are set to invade in 5 years and wreak havoc and destruction. So he must survive in a hostile environment and he brings the industrial revolution and socialism to that ancient era. It’s really an interesting and odd concept.
I forgot to mention Gordon R. Dickson’s “Dragon Knight” series which are also (sort-of) time-travel with a fantasy rather than a sci-fi look at living in the middle ages. Some interesting thoughts about a modern character being forced to live that life although more light-hearted and maybe not quite so scholarly in nature?
I remember a Roberta Gellis novel, whose title escapes me at this moment, where a newlywed couple got the bed to themselves for the wedding night, but knew they were going to have to share from then on, and after that they did their foolin’ around in the barn and sundry Other Locations (at least in the book. One recalls reading about Marie de Medici and how she used to entertain her lovers while her young son, the three year old who would grow up to be Louis XIII, was still in it. Well, that explains a lot about _him_). Makes the barn look better, save for the stray cow pat.
Back to the spices for a moment.
According to a paper I read in college, there’s an evolutionary reason for a cultural taste for spices. It’s not to hide the taste of the spoiled meat; rather, it’s that the herbs and spices in question included chemicals that were rather bad for some of the bacteria that made meat a little past its expiry a bad idea. Add spices, decrease chance of getting sick. It also explained why we get greater strength and frequency of spices in hot and/or humid parts of the world; the meat there spoiled faster, meaning you’d need more to balance out the microbes. Of course, this wasn’t a conscious thing, just the fact that people who liked their food hotter were less likely to be left belly-up by their meals, and over time this spread.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Erika, I don’t really understand the argument you are quoting. It sounds as though, to make sense, the seasonings would have had to be added before cooking to avert spoilage, rather than during the process, to add flavour.
But as has already been said, game can be acquired fresh at any time of year (and hung to whatever precise point the users required), and that the meat of domestic livestock and of fish and game was being effectively preserved by salting and smoking from very early times, probably since the Neolithic. The mining, and presumably trading, of salt was the evident source of wealth of at least one important European Iron Age community, a fact reflected in the ‘salt’ place-names in the region (e.g. Hallein, Hallstatt).
The medicinal uses of herbs and spices were well known in antiquity, and undoubtedly well back into prehistory, when, of course, we have no documentary evidence, only the inferences drawn from material culture. Pungent Asian spices such as pepper and ginger were first imported into the Mediterranean world to be used as medications before they began to be employed in cooking.
I am not arguing against the basic point that spices and herbs may help to counter bacterial infection (alcohol may help, too, which is a whole different story), but against the notion that our ancestors in the highly sophisticated cultures of the Classical and Medieval world were prepared to consume rotten, spoiled food in any form. Only those who were starving would have been willing to do so, and, to repeat myself, they certainly would not have had access to spices.
One final point: all of us develop the digestive enzymes required for the particular type of diet that is customary in our own culture. This is one of the main reasons for tourists suffering digestive upsets when they first visit a foreign country (the other main reason is the intake of too much booze…). In nine cases out of ten, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the food at all, but the tourist’s gut says, ‘argh, what I do do with this lot?’ because it isn’t used to it, and can’t digest it properly. In the 1950s, the rare British middle-class tourist who went to southern Europe on holiday would often get the runs from eating food prepared with olive oil (which at that time was never used in cooking in Britain—it was an expensive import used medicinally), yet it is an extremely healthful oil. On the other hand, they could eat food fried in lard (rendered pig-fat) with impunity. These days, the reverse would probably be the case.
Remember that just because a person lived a long time ago does not mean that he or she was stupid. Our ancestors in recent periods like the Middle Ages, and in remote periods like the Bronze Age were not fools. We know many things unknown to them, but that is not because we are any cleverer: we simply have the advantage of a few more centuries and millennia of experience.
🙂
AgTigress,
I have to say that was a really condescending and dismissive comment.
You are according to your own claims a classicist and not a biologist and just because you haven’t come across the information that Erika shared doesn’t mean it’s not valid.
As anybody would know who has taken any microbiology classes…