[tlogan]

Here are some contra points:

- Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented)

- The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden

- the pope instructed all public bath to be closed

- The monks order clearly said to bath only once a year

- general decline of the cities caused that a lot of public baths to be closed. Rome had none in medieval time.

- Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were

My understanding was that bathing was strongly discouraged by church and in places where church did not have a lot on influence or they become Christian latter like Skandinavia bathing was still considered important.

[nemo]

>The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden

There's no "The Cristian Church," I think you're referring to a modern misconception on a Catholic ban on mixed bath houses. They still had bath houses, they just banned men and women being naked in them together. These bath houses were often also brothels, which makes the ban perhaps still prudish, but nothing extraordinary.

Monks did bathe rarely, which is discussed in the article.

While most of the great old public baths of the Roman era closed, there are illustrations and archaeological evidence of bathhouses in the Middle Ages. They're wooden and much smaller affairs, but they still exist.

I recognize a few other common misconceptions of in the rest of your list, and there's a number of issues with "Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were." There were certainly cases where "Westerners" thought "Muslims" and "Byzantines" were dirty too, that's a standard way to otherize other cultures. Cross-cultural judgments of hygiene are not a thing one should take at face value. But also all three of the labels "Western" "Muslim" and "Byzantine" are broad generalizations. To generalize about their attitudes towards others or bathing is to be in error, as these were neither constants nor universals nor even truly discrete groups.

[edmundsauto]

> - Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented)

The conquistadors spent months packed on a boat together with pigs and other livestock, then were basically camping out as they traveled. And the Triple Alliance* were extremely clean people, so this might not be the fairest comparison. I smell pretty unpleasant after a single day on a roadtrip, kids can confirm.

* I think this is a more accurate term than Aztec, based on my rereads of 1491.

[goto11]

> Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented)

The article specifically mention that people tend to confuse medieval and early modern periods when it comes to things like this. But conquistadors was early modern.

[webmobdev]

> The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden ... the pope instructed all public bath to be closed ... The monks order clearly said to bath only once a year ... My understanding was that bathing was strongly discouraged by church ...

The article does highlight and bring some context to this:

... Well the idea that medieval people didn’t bathe is a persistent myth ... Why is that? Well part of it is a modern misunderstanding of the idea of bathing. It’s true that we have medieval sources which warn against “excessive” bathing. But here’s the thing, that wasn’t really about being clean, it was about hanging out naked in bathhouses with the opposite sex. They didn’t want you to not be clean, they wanted you to not be going down the bath house and getting your fuck on.

... And yeah, some holy people didn’t bathe, notably saints who would forego bathing themselves but bathe sick or poor people ... But if you bring that up you are missing the point. Medieval people thought that bathing and being clean was really nice, so giving it up and living with your stank was a sign that you had given up on the corporeal world and only thought of heaven. It was holy because it was uncomfortable, like wearing a hair shirt, or eating vegan, and hitting your chest with rocks and sitting in the desert trying not to wank. You know, standard saint stuff. It is mentioned because it is uncommon and uncomfortable ... These things, while they make sense in context are often taken by people who have never learned a damn thing about the middle ages and read in the worst possible light.

> Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were

That may have been probably true from the perspective of muslims because in Islam personal hygiene is part of the religious obligations of muslims. Religious muslims are supposed to pray 3/5 times a day, but before they do so they are supposed to clean themselves as per a prescribed ritual called wudu ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu ). So a religious muslim, even in the medieval times, would be cleaning himself atleast 3/5 times a day (and that's apart from regular bathing). Thus, in comparison to that, some non-muslims could have been perceived as "dirty". It would have been even more so for them if they also learnt of christian saints and / or leaders promoting not bathing as a path to salvation, when their religion tells the exact opposite.

[happyopossum]

Addressed in the article - the church’s opposition to bathing came much later than the medieval period according to the author.

[tlogan]

Later?

Pope Gregory I declared baths should be only used to cure the sick. Of couse, we read his words different today (like he allowed it) but bathing was considered sinful. There was a belief that bathing invited demonic possession and that the dirt, sweqt, etc. actually repelled demonic forces.

In my part of the world, there are still stories how church was telling people that you should take a bath only on Đurđevdan (and joke is that only Gypsies followed that).

You do know that the devil is lurking from the water don’t you? I guess folk tales cannot be used as proof since they are no written records.

[zigzag312]

Can you provide source? I find such claims fascinating, so I did a quick google search, but what I found doesn't support your statements.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_in_Christianity:

  Early Christian clergy condemned the practice of mixed bathing as practiced by the Romans ...

  The Church also built public bathing facilities that were separate for both sexes near monasteries and pilgrimage sites ...

  ... baths were normally considered therapeutic until the days of Gregory the Great, who understood virtuous bathing to be bathing "on account of the needs of body" ...

> You do know that the devil is lurking from the water don’t you? I guess folk tales cannot be used as proof since they are no written records.

As far as I know, these tales were meant for children to stay away from bodies of water to prevent drowning of kids.