We often think about the Middle Ages as the period when people swam in squalor and filth. Those may have been influenced by historical events like the Black Death and depictions of that time in movies or TV shows. However, contrary to popular belief, the people of the Middle Ages actually took pains to keep themselves clean.
Literature such as the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, a collection of 360 Latin poems alluded to various hygiene habits such as washing one's hands and face with cold water in the morning and keeping warm after a bath. Peter of Eboli's De Balneis Puteolanis actually speaks exclusively about bathing.
Monarchs like Charlemagne, Wenceslaus IV of Luxembourg, and Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, are some great examples of medieval people's obsession with bathing. Charlemagne's palace had pool-sized baths where he, his sons, members of court, and even his soldiers were invited to bathe.
Wenceslaus enjoyed bathing so much that he was said to have given his mistress a bathhouse. And Jagiełło invited his fiancée Jadwiga's knight to take a bath with him to convince her of his own hygiene and cleanliness.
Even ordinary people during the Middle Ages went to bathhouses regularly to the point that bathhouses offered auxiliary services like haircuts, massages, and even medical procedures such as wound dressing and bloodletting. Other establishments often accused bathhouse owners of stealing their clients, to which bathhouse owners responded by doubling down and further providing food and live performances.
However, the reason why many people associate the medieval period with filth and grime is due to the Renaissance period completely abandoning bathing, because of an outbreak of syphilis. Naturally, people became scared to go to public bathhouses and stopped bathing altogether. -via Atlas Obscura
(Image credit: Denghiù/Wikimedia Commons)