History Matters July 21, 2023
“Cleaning up our history”
WATER AS RELIGIOUS PURIFICATION
In almost every creation myth, it begins with dark primordial water. Water is the grave. And water is life. The person rinses away the old and is purified with the new. Dust comes clean. Though the ancients did not segment life into compartments the way moderns do; we would say that washing and bathing, before they were medicinal, or social, or political, or even recreational, were religious ritual.
Among most ancient cultures, a bath was a rite of passage. Temples and sanctuaries had fonts at their entrances. There was the first bath of a newborn in wine mixed with water, the immersion in water as a religious commitment or vow, the receiving of a guest by washing feet and offering a bath, the ceremonial bath of a bride and groom, the ritual bath after intercourse, the purification bath of a woman after menstruation, the ceremonial bath, the washing of hands as a prelude to prayer and libations, and the bathing of the dead. We find all of these, and more in Japanese cultures, Celtic cultures, and Jewish cultures to name a few. But the golden age of the ritual bath, at least in the West, was in Greco-Roman cul-ture.
And these water rituals continued with the regular use of religious washings as part of spir-ituality in Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. But early Christianity went a different path. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus’ disciples eat bread with unwashed hands (Mark 7:1-23) and in Luke, it is Jesus himself who eats without the religious ceremonial washing of hands (Luke 11:37-54).The early Christian Church seemed to follow suite, after separating herself from Juda-ism, as she lost any love for routine religious bathing, partly due to it’s pagan relationship with sexual debauchery, partly due to her understanding of disease transmission, and partly due to the fact that the Goths who took over Rome (537 AD) did not admire bathing and disabled the Roman aqueducts. One does find baptism by immersion only up until the 7th c.. This is a one-time ritual event. One also finds the “churching ceremony” of a mother coming back to the community 40 days after birth which is a vestige of the ritual purifica-tion bath of a Jewish woman after childbirth. And monks did practice the washing of hands and feet of visitors. But in terms of regular purification washings among the faithful, one finds only a small remnant in the Roman Catholic dipping of the finger in holy water before entering the service, and possibly in the washing of hands before a meal.
WATER AS THERAPEUTIC SCIENCE
The place Hippocrates (5th c. BC) and later Galen (2nd c. AD) play in our cultural history in the West cannot be overstated. The promulgation of the humoral theory of disease, and the role of water, will be the singular influence on Western medicine and the role of washing,— until the germ theory with Pasteur in 1862 and Robert Koch in the 1880’s, and even be-yond.
Hippocrates was a great champion of the bath, including a combination of hot water and cold water immersions to help balance the humours. The therapeutic bath often had added herbs, oils and perfumes thought to be medicinal. It would be inaccurate to view this as a non-religious “scientific view” since much of the water therapy was connected to Temples of Aesculapius and other gods. Later during the scientific revolution of the 17th & 18th cen-turies during a renaissance of Greek ideas, a science of bathing will develop called balneol-ogy.
In American, we will see the advent of a hygienic movement summarized by the slogan “cleanliness is next to godliness” and hydrotherapy and spas that take us up until our pre-sent moment. Even here, none of these therapies will lose their religious ancestry as “clean-liness is next to godliness” was preached first in a sermon by the minister John Wesley (1703- 1791); and hydrotherapy hit its heyday with the Seventh Day Adventist leaders such as Dr. John Kellogg (1852 - 1943). And today’s spas are wrapped and scented in New Age philosophy which is just another rebirth of Roman gods. Americans, even after the “germ theory” becomes firmly cemented and sterilized in empirical scientific medicine, still desires that “healing water” be delivered by men in cassocks and women in airy gowns. Our germs will never be distilled from our gods.
BATHING AS A POLITICAL STRATEGY
The peace of Rome (Pax Romana) was exemplified best in its approach toward baths. Whether rich or poor, male or female, slave or free, Rome provided you a bath. The great age of the Imperial baths began around 25 BC when Agrippa who succeeded Caesar Augus-tus opened the baths that bore his name. They were either free or had very low admission price. The Roman aqueducts provided massive amounts of water to be distributed through-out the public baths of Rome. The development of concrete allowed open structures to be built that could be heated from underneath. The early bathhouses were about 400 feet by 330 feet. The baths of Rome were attended by paid public servants (a bath man) who could assist you in pouring either warm or cold water for a shower, watch your clothes to pre-vent them from being stolen, and provide you with a towel. Soap had not made its way to Rome, rather everything was oiled and your skin was scraped with an instrument called a strigil which many brought from home. By the second century BC, the Roman bath had be-come an ordinary expected part of every day life by everyone.
BATHING AS A SOCIAL LUBRICANT
Baths, wine, and sex —and all in civic honor of the gods. The bath was the epitome of the civilized life. It is difficult for a modern to understand the centrality and enormity of the so-cial life surrounding the public baths. Consider eating out at a restaurant. It is the place of relationship, of business deals, or the exchange of ideas, or romance, or mental restoration, or just getting drunk. And like restaurants today, some were private high-class establish-ments (privately owned) and some were glorified bars to pick up some action. An opening line in ancient Rome might be “Do you bathe here regularly?” The baths were all of that complete with snacks, wine, games of dice, lectures on philosophy, and lots of oily mixed
bathing. Some baths separated the men and women; and some had different times of day for men and woman, or servants and businessmen. And some were closer to brothels.
Now visualize a mall, or the largest YMCA fitness club you have ever seen. The bathhouse of early Rome developed into a colossal social open exercise gathering called a thermae. When not at home, you were at the thermae with gardens, pools, libraries, snack bars, meeting rooms, and exercise yards for men to wrestle and work out in the nude. If you needed a haircut, or medical treatment, or sex—it was all there. You could wind down after a busy day, or talk politics and philosophy, or flirt. You could run into famous politicians, singers, or athletes. The sweat, dirt and oil that was scraped off the skin of favorite gladiators or athletes was put into bottles and sold. Some young woman used their idol’s bottled sweat as facial cream! (like bathing with The Beatles). Some thermae had individual half-baths which came up to your waist and could seat 3,000 individual bathers!
And if you could afford it, you had a private bath in your own home. Again, much like home exercise equipment that you use when you don’t make it up to the gym. Or a pool in your back yard, when you are not hanging out with your friends at the water park. You could use your private home bath; or you could go out on the town to the social “hydrodome”.
THE DARK AGES OF THE BATH
So, what happened to this golden age of bathing—which sounds strangely similar to ours today? When did the idea of bathing go down the drain? Some have blamed the Christian Church, but there was a considerable variety of belief among early Christian leaders.
･ Saint Tertullian (155 - 240 AD) writes that Christians are not a danger to Rome. “We live with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, market, nor bath.”
･ Saint Cyprian (200 - 258 AD) writes to a young woman who goes to a mixed bathing bathhouse and pleads her case that she is not affected negatively by mixed baths; Cyp-rian responds “in delighting others, you yourself are corrupted”.
･ Saint Jerome (340-420 AD) responding to the popular humoral idea that a hot bath stim-ulated sexual passions, forbid virgins to take hot baths; and was concerned that looking at yourself naked might provoke undo interest in your own appearance. His teachings lead to the idea, particularly in Western Christianity that a clean body led to an unclean soul.
･ Saint John Chrysostom (344-407 AD) who was a very powerful figure in eastern Christi-anity, responded to the emperor Theodosius closing the bathhouses in 387 AD, protested against the closing of the baths—stating that is was “too great a hardship on the sick, old, children and nursing mothers.” For his outspoken obstinance, Theodosius sent Chrysos-tom into exile. The many priests loyal to Chrysostom staged a public protest in the public baths which were also the sites of baptism during the midnight Pascha (Easter) service.
Perhaps the most powerful theologian ever in Eastern Christianity was exiled not over his theological views, but over his outspokenness to keep the public baths open.
Over the next 100-200 years, after the Goths sacked Rome, and the Holy Roman empire had lived through the plague under Justinian; thoughts on bathing continued to turn negative. Under the rule of St. Benedict (528 AD), monks were forbidden to take warm or hot baths, and were limited to no more than three cold baths a year on Christmas, Easter and Pente-cost. They continued to wash the hands and feet of visitors, and advocated for warm baths for the sick (based upon humoral theory). In European Christianity, dirt was viewed with a humility, and there are many lives of the saints who had never taken off their clothes or had a bath during their entire adult life.
Eastern Christians particularly around Syria, Judea, Egypt and Arabia continued bathing us-ing the haman, a Turkish bath, that was a Roman-Islamic hybrid. Jews continued bathing, particularly young women who would take no less than 12 baths a year before the ceremo-nial mikveh, if they were menstruating. The Talmud scholar was not allowed to live in a city that did not have a public bath and public toilets. During the Inquisition, Jews and Muslims are known by the moniker “those known to bathe” as a type of obvious public shaming.
For all of Europe and European Christianity, the dark ages became the “dirt ages” which was often satirized by modern historians as “a thousand years without a bath.” And the pri-mary reason for this might have been syphilis in which the infectious pathogenesis was un-known but presumed to be connected with public baths. Public baths did continue to be on again/off again, as was mixed bathing, in various parts of Europe. But the public bath was more of a brothel or stewhouse as it was called. (think of a massage parlor rather than a nice restaurant). There was some truth that bathhouses were connected with syphilis epidemics but it was not the warm waters that imbalanced your humours—it was what was happen-ing in the warm waters. And while we clearly think of syphilis, bubonic plague, and cholera as separate diseases—among the masses before such thing as a germ theory existed, all dis-eases were “plagues” of the body.
Phillip VI in 1348 convened the finest physicians in Paris to investigate the scientific ori-gins of such plagues. The brightest scholars of the time concluded that is was the alignment of the planets, the bad miasma (foul smells of city life) and the pores in the skin opened by hot water. Various kings throughout many countries in Europe closed the baths periodi-cally as a public health measure.
Gentlemen and ladies wore daily fresh white linen clothes thought to absorb the “putrefica-tion” of the body. Bathing was still avoided so that the accumulated dirt and filth would stop up all the pores and prevent the miasma from affecting your humours. Showing a little white ruffle of linen was a social badge of proper hygiene and social class. But everyone, rich or poor, was wretchedly filthy, and wrecked of their own excrement. The most expen-sive medical opinion of the day held that bodily secretions furnished a layer of protection, like a tree with mossy layers of bark. The only difference was that the wealthy had on cleaner shirts. Water was now viewed not as a cure of illness; but rather the gate by which disease entered.
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
After “a thousand years without a bath”, ideas began to change. The Romantic period was an age in which nature was embraced and the sublime became attractive. The sea which had been forever avoided by those cultured due to its turbulent murky forces with sea monsters and chaos was now viewed as a lovely, dark beautiful mystery and the beach be-came a place of travel. Water in all of its forms was something to fall in love with and fall in love by. To perspire was the body “raining” its natural substances. On must “sweat out the poison.” One must throw the pores open to let out putrefaction and let sunlight in. Hygiene was nature’s medicine contrasted with the technological barbarism of bloodletting and purgatives. Proper hygiene was not a science, but rather a moral virtue.
WASHED UPON AMERICAN SHORES
This was the era in which John Wesley preaches his “cleanliness is next to godli-ness”(1791). And this is the era in which Napoleon and his wife Josephine make the private steam bath and the bidet, fashionable and “romantic”. Opulent bathing was no longer the activity of women of ill repute. The average woman could now bathe but only if she kept on all her clothes. This is where we get the term “bathing suits” as well as “bathrobes”. And with running water piped in, the bidet which used to be the chamber pot kept beside the bed, or in a closet next to the dining table, was now placed in the “bathroom” which the English call “the water closet.” It was in fact the invention of plumbing and all the newly built housing in America that allowed for plumbing, that turned Americans from looking like the “dirty” Europeans into being known for their obsession with bathing. Cleanliness was wrapped in the towel of patriotism, purity, and health. Being sanitary took on an Amer-ican messianic tenor. Booker T. Washington became the Apostle of Sanctity with the gospel of the toothbrush to the black slave. He loaded the Ark and helped the Negro stay afloat among the storm of an ivory white civilization.
One Sunday morning, Harley Proctor heard a sermon as the minister preached from Psalm 45 : “All thy garments smell like myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” And so was the birth of “Ivory Soap” made by Proctor & Gamble.
By 1940, more than half of every American home had a complete indoor “bathroom.” By 2005, one in four American homes had 3 or more bathrooms. And by then, entire bedrooms were sacrificed to create a master bath that even the Romans would have been proud of. While the progression of the humoral theory took us from a divination of water to a villian-ization of water and back again, it has not been completely linear—but like water and a tide, it has ebbed and flowed, until the landscape has completely changed in one direction, and then later back again.
One thing is certain—today, the bathroom of America has rivaled anything out of Athens. The germ theory rather than de-mystifying the washing rituals of purification, have ampli-fied the glory of hygienic worship. The shower is a sanctuary, the commode her throne. Any unclean odor emanating from the mouth, the armpits, or the nethermost regions of glandu-lar activity, are immediately wiped, sprayed, waxed, and scented with a ritualized proces-sion of pads, tissues, scents, oils, lotions, and pastes. Germs have only magnified the holy laws of disinfection. The preparation of purification for the rites of passage to either allure others to your body or God-forbid to not offend someone with even a hint of stench—the punctilious details of this modern adornment would make Jewish Talmudic scholars of the Law appear careless.
Religious fervor, medicinal healing, political ramifications, social gathering —if ever there was any doubt of how history can repeat itself, just say the words “social distancing, mask, and wash your hands with soap for 20 seconds…