A Curious History of Sex

by Kate Lister

  When it comes to sexy time, we unconsciously use our sense of smell to assess how healthy our partner is. In 2013, Michael N. Pham theorised humans perform oral sex on each other to secure mating privileges and to try and detect infidelity. He suggested when a man goes down on a woman he is using smell and taste to try and detect foreign sperm.4 Yum.

  In 1989, David Strachan proposed what became known as the ‘hygiene hypothesis’.5 Strachan suggested that in an effort to do away with anything that could trigger our disgust response, we have now killed off bugs we need to develop a resistance to, and collectively weakened our immunity. Strachan’s work suggested we need a little muck to be at our best; or as a wise woman once said, if you’re not dirty, then you are not here to party. The hygiene hypothesis has been challenged over recent years, but one thing is true: despite Ms Aguilera’s protestations, we have never been less dirty, and more aware of cleanliness, hygiene and bacteria than we are today.*

  From face wash for faces to special soaps for your ‘special places’, almost every part of our bodies has its own specialist cleaning product. Our homes are scrubbed, our clothes are washed, our streets are swept, our air is ‘freshened’, our odours are eaten, and our food and drink are manufactured within government-specified guidelines. A 2014 UK study conducted by researchers at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, Lancaster and Southampton showed that three-quarters of respondents had at least one shower or bath a day.6 Even if you are reading this sat in the same clothes you’ve worn for the last two days, with cornflakes in your hair and spaghetti stains on your tits, rest assured: as a society, we have never been so clean.

  Which is why if I could transport you back to medieval Europe, the first thing that you would notice would be the smell. The Middle Ages have something of a reputation for being filthy, and this is not without merit. Take almost any fourteenth-century European city at random and you would have to sniff your way through an olfactory assault course of open sewers, mud, animal waste, stagnant water, rotting food, refuse, unwashed bodies and collected filth. In 1332, King Edward III wrote a letter to the mayor of York demanding the city be thoroughly cleaned before he held a parliament meeting there.

  The king, detesting the abominable smell abounding in the said city more than in any other city of the realm from dung and manure and other filth and dirt wherewith the streets and lanes are tilled and obstructed, and wishing to provide for the protection of the health of the inhabitants and of those coming to the present parliament, orders them to cause all the streets and lanes of the city to be cleansed from such filth.7

  It is true that the medieval world was far less sanitised than our own, but its people were not unaware of bad smells. Of course, they would have grown accustomed to niffs that would strip the enamel off our teeth, but they feared bad smells. Medieval medicine taught that disease was spread through foul-smelling airs, or ‘miasma’. Miasmic theorists were right about the source of bad smells often being a threat to health, but they also believed sweet smells could cure or ward off disease. Comparatively pungent they may have been, but medieval people were just as self-conscious of smelling bad as we are today.‡‡‡‡‡‡

  In his Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century, Chaucer gives us visceral portraits of his characters and smell is a key indicator of a pilgrim’s moral state. Like many medieval authors, Chaucer links physical ugliness with spiritual ugliness, and he uses foul smells to signify a wrong ’un. The morally bankrupt Summoner’s breath smells of onions, garlic and leeks; and Chaucer’s cook, a lazy, corrupt thief, is described as a ‘stynkyng swyn’ whose breath and festering sores are revolting.8 The hapless fop and forerunner of the metrosexual, Absolon, is heavily perfumed, ‘squeamish’ about farting, and chews cardamom and liquorice to keep his breath sweet.9 Absolon souses himself in the medieval equivalent of Lynx Africa because smelling good was a sign of a higher social status. In Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), the poor Sir Gareth is cruelly told to ‘stay out of the wind’ by the Lady Lynette because he smells of kitchens and ‘bawdy clothes’.10 However, being aware of smelling like the privy on a tuna boat is quite a different thing from being able to do something about it. Bathing requires, at the very least, a river, but, more often than not, it requires bathing facilities and the means to clean yourself and your clothes regularly.

  The Romans were famous for bathing. They established lavish bathhouses across the empire, as well as the infrastructure to support them. Public bathing remained popular across Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire (c. AD 476). But the early Christian Church quickly pulled the plug on the communal soak. As the Christian faith clamped down on sexual freedoms, attitudes to bathing in the buff changed considerably. Not only did public bathing involve nudity, but heat was believed to inflame lustful senses. Theologians like St Jerome (c.340–420) had anti-sex agendas that would make the pontiff himself look like a member of Guns N’ Roses. Jerome advocated virginity as the supreme moral state, and urged women (in particular) to cultivate ‘deliberate squalor’ to ‘spoil her natural good looks’.11

  Erotic scenes fresco, Memmo di Filippuccio, c.1300.

  Many monks, hermits and saints saw washing as a sign of vanity and sexual corruption; filth was synonymous with piety and humility. Early Christian militants emphasised spiritual cleanliness over physical cleanliness, even viewing the two as inversely proportional; you could literally stink to high heaven. St Godric (c.1065–1170), for example, walked from England to Jerusalem without ever washing or changing his clothes. Benedictine monks were only permitted to bathe three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc (1005–1089), laid down very precise instructions for monks when bathing. The monks had to gather in the cloister, where a senior monk would guide them one by one to the bathhouse. The monks had to bathe in silence, and on their own. ‘When he has sufficiently washed, he shall not stay for pleasure, but shall rise, dress and return to the cloister.’12 Of course, just because a saintly squad of hardcore soap dodgers shunned the shower, does not mean that every medieval citizen felt the same; but whatever the early medieval washing rota was, by the ninth century, the Roman bath infrastructure had fallen to rack and ruin throughout Christendom.

  While the Christians were busy working up a stench that could be weaponised, bathing rituals were widely practised among Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, who believed a holy body was a clean body. Medieval Arab doctors were far more advanced than those in the West and understood the importance of cleanliness and hygiene. The medieval cities of Mecca, Marrakech, Cairo and Istanbul all had their water and bathhouses supplied by well-maintained aqueducts. The Kitab at-Tasrif (c.1000) by Al-Zahrawi is a medical encyclopaedia that devotes entire chapters to cosmetics and cleanliness; Al-Zahrawi gives recipes for soap, deodorants, facial creams and hair dyes.13 In the Muslim world, it was important to smell good and they had the skills to produce perfumes, scented oils and incense. The first recorded perfumer is a woman named Tapputi who lived in Mesopotamia in the second century BC. A cuneiform tablet records that Tapputi made scented oils from flowers, calamus and aromatic spices.14

  Bathing for ceremonial purposes was widely practised throughout medieval India, especially in sacred rivers that were believed to have healing powers. Buddhist cleansing rituals soon spread to Tibet, Turkestan, China and Japan. The ancient Chinese text Liji (Record of Rites) believed to have been originally composed by Confucius (551–479 BC), contained detailed bathing instructions:

  Outer cooling room of a Turkish bathhouse. Wood engraving from Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor, 1838.

  1. A son living with his parents washes his hands and mouth each cockerow.

  2. A woman living with her husband’s family does likewise.

  3. Sons and daughters-in-law attend their parents each morning with hand-washing materials.

  4. All children wash hands and mouth at sunup.

  5. Household servants do likewise.


  6. Children prepare hot water bath for their parents each fifth day, and a hair wash for them every third day.

  7. Children heat water to wash their parents’ face or feet at any time when they have become dirty.15

  Yoshitora Utagawa, Japanese Men and Women Washing in a Traditional Bath House, 1860.

  It was the crusaders who brought the habit of bathing back to medieval Europe. Conversely, for all their ‘spiritual purity’, the crusaders stank. The medieval Arabian author of A Thousand and One Nights was one of many writers appalled at Christian hygiene: ‘They never wash, for, at their birth, ugly men in black garments pour water over their heads, and this ablution, accompanied by strange gestures, frees them from the obligation of washing for the rest of their lives.’16 Happily, the Muslim habit of regular bathing seemed to rub off on the marauding crusaders, and as bathhouses became popular again in medieval Europe once more, bathing became a serious business.

  But it wasn’t just the habit of social soaking the crusaders brought back from the Holy Lands, they had also learned about the art of perfume. The medieval Europeans had always valued a nice-smelling plant, but oils, soap, colognes and exotic bases for perfume, like civet and musk, were wholly new. Medieval perfumes weren’t alcohol-based like modern perfume but were made from oils infused with ingredients such as violet, rose, lavender, rosemary, ambergris, amber or camphor.17 Rose water, in particular, was the Chanel No. 5 of the Middle Ages. It was regarded as a sacred scent in the Muslim world: it has been argued that mosques were built with rose water mixed into their mortar.18 In Europe, wealthy hosts would offer guests a bowl of rose water to wash their hands before dinner. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy was reported to have owned a statue of a child that peed rose water.19

  By the thirteenth century there were thirty-two bathhouses in Paris and eighteen in London; even the smaller towns had bathhouses. ‘Medicinal’ baths were regarded as being very beneficial to health. John Russell’s fifteenth-century Book of Nurture advises scenting a bath with ‘flowers and sweet green herbs’, breweswort, chamomile, mallow, fennel and (of course) rose water, to cure all manner of ailments.20 If you had the money, you could pay for servants to heat water and fill a wooden tub for one, but most people used the public baths.

  Historically, wherever you have had public bathing, sex has been working up a lather at the soapy heart of it. This is still the case today, and although all-night saunas can be found in most cities a quick Google of the venue is advised before turning up clutching your soap on a rope. So closely associated are sex and bathing, numerous slang phrases for sex and sex work are derived from bathing: ‘lather’, as in ‘to lather up’ was sixteenth-century slang for ejaculation. The word ‘bagnio’, meaning a brothel, derives from the Latin balneum, meaning ‘bath’. Likewise, a medieval word for a brothel was a ‘stew’, which also derives from the bathhouses, where you could literally stew yourself in the hot water and steam. Sex work and saunas were closely associated, and the word ‘stew’ became synonymous with both.

  In the fifteenth century, the city of London officially recognised the Southwark area as a red-light district; it was no coincidence that this was also the area of the city with the highest concentration of bathhouses. One bathhouse in fifteenth-century Avignon was so concerned it might be mistaken for a brothel that they felt it necessary to announce their opening with a clear statement defining themselves as an ‘honest’ establishment:

  Let everyone of whatever rank be aware that Genin de Geline or de Helme, otherwise known as de la Cerveleria, has established behind his house at Helme good and honest stews for bathing by good and honest women and that these are quite separate from the men’s bath of de la Cerveleria.21

  Sebald Benham, Woman’s Bath House, sixteenth century.

  Sanitation was patchy, and Beyoncé’s Heat may have been a few centuries off, but the Middle Ages were quite discerning about a sexy smell. In the fourteenth-century Decameron, for example, Boccaccio clearly links sex and smell together.

  Without permitting anyone else to lay a hand on him, the lady herself washed Salabaetto all over with soap scented with musk and cloves. She then had herself washed and rubbed down by the slaves. This done, the slaves brought two fine and very white sheets, so scented with roses that they seemed like roses; the slaves wrapped Salabaetto in one and the lady in the other and then carried them both on their shoulders to the bed … They then took from the basket silver vases of great beauty, some of which were filled with rose water, some with orange water, some with jasmine water, and some with lemon water, which they sprinkled upon them.22

  The medieval guidebook Le Ménagier de Paris (1393) is full of helpful advice on smelling attractive: sage water is recommended, along with ‘chamomile, marjoram, or rosemary boiled with orange peel’.23 William Langham’s Garden of Health (1579) recommends adding rosemary to a bath: ‘Seethe much Rosemary, and bathe therein to make thee lusty, lively, joyfull, likeing and youngly.’24 Delights for Ladies (1609) suggests distilling water with cloves, orris powder, nutmeg and cinnamon. And in a medieval forerunner of the Lynx effect, the civet effect meant musk harvested from the glands of the civet cat became highly desirable, along with castor from the anal glands of a beaver and whale vomit (ambergris), but these were luxury items. If you really want to know the smell of illicit medieval sex, it’s lavender.

  The word lavender comes from the latin word lavare, which means to wash. It has been used for thousands of years for its sweet smell. Unlike the more exotic and expensive perfumes, lavender grows all over Europe and is both cheap and readily available. Lavender was widely used in washing clothes, and washerwomen became known as ‘lavenders’; in fact, the word ‘launder’ derives from lavender. As historian Ruth Mazo Karras identified, one medieval profession that was especially connected to sex work was the washerwoman.25 Medieval laundresses were very poor, and had a reputation for making ends meet by ‘dollymopping’ (1859) (subsidising their income with sex work). Chaucer translates Dante’s meretrice (harlot) as ‘lavender’ in The Legend of the Good Woman (c.1380), metaphorically drawing on the double meaning of being at once both dirty and clean.

  Envye (I prey to god yeve hir mischaunce!)

  Is lavender in the grete court I.

  For she ne parteth, neither night ne day.26

  Walter of Hemingburgh tells a story of King John, who thought he was seducing a married noblewoman, but instead had been sent ‘a horrid whore and laundress’.27 The sixteenth-century poem ‘Ship of Fools’ includes the following lines:

  Thou shalt be my lavender Laundress

  To wash and keep clean all my gear,

  Our two beds together shall be set

  Without any let.28

  Given lavender’s rather conservative and somewhat old-fashioned reputation today, I take great delight in knowing that elderly women and aromatherapists the world over actually smell like a medieval strumpet.

  But the fun was not to last. Public bathhouses went into steep decline across Europe in the sixteenth century. New medical advice suggested bathing weakened the body, and that cleaning the skin left it open to infection. Periodic outbreaks of plague and the arrival of syphilis in the fifteenth century certainly burst the bath bubble. As people became cautious about bathing, washing the body was replaced with washing your shirt instead. Linen, in particular, was thought to draw out and absorb sweat. Therefore, one only needed to swap shirts to be clean. This method of ‘bathing’ became so popular that French mansions were designed without bathrooms. Bathing would not come back into vogue in Europe until the eighteenth century, with the rise of the spa.

  When Monty Python sent up preconceptions about the Middle Ages in Holy Grail (1975), the dead collector correctly identifies Arthur as the king, because he is the one who ‘hasn’t got shit all over him’.29 In 2004, beloved Python Terry Jones published his Medieval Lives, where he set about redeeming the Middle Ages from unjust stigmas such as smelling of shit. Far from living in a ditch, eating
twigs and rubbing themselves with sewage, the citizens of the Middle Ages actually smelled quite good; certainly better than the people of the Renaissance, who believed bathing would make them ill. Medieval lovers valued clean bodies, sweet breath, regular scrubbing and an array of perfumes. They also knew the aphrodisiacal qualities of various scents, oils and plants. They enjoyed mixed-sex communal bathing and invested in bathing infrastructure. Sex was very much a part of the culture of communal bathing: at worst it was tolerated, at best it was fully embraced and enjoyed. The medieval period was undeniably grubbier than our own, but they embraced cleanliness as fully as they could, and their harlots smelled of lavender.

  * * *

  * It should be acknowledged that access to clean water, sewage infrastructures and cheap cleaning products is a privilege that people living in urban slums around the world do not enjoy. Inadequate sanitation remains a leading cause of diarrhoeal disease and mortality among children in developing countries, particularly in urban slums. Alison M. Buttenheim, ‘The Sanitation Environment in Urban Slums: Implications for Child Health’, Population and Environment, 30.1-2 (2008), pp. 26–47 .

  ** The best book on the history of washing is Katherine Ashenburg, An Unsanitised History of Washing (London: Profile, 2009).

  1 Megan Oaten, Richard J. Stevenson and Trevor I. Case, ‘Disgust as a Disease-Avoidance Mechanism’, Psychological Bulletin, 135.2 (2009), 303–21