The Culture of Bathing in Outremer
One of the most persistent myths about the Middle Ages is that people did not bathe regularly and went around dirty and stinking. This is demonstratively not true. The Medievalists.net have published a good and lengthy post on the topic ( Bathing in the Middle Ages ), which provides a great deal of documentation and detail. This entry is not intended to recou nt or compete with that or other sources, but rather focus on the unique traditions of "Outremer" or the Crusader States . All the Crusader States established in the course and subsequent to the First and Third C rusades were in locations that had been under Greek influence at the latest since Alexander the Great. They had also been part of the Ancient Roman and Eastern Roman ( Byzantine) Empires before coming under Arab and Turkish influence from the 7th to 11th centuries AD. This means that for the native population the predominant traditions with respect to personal hygiene came not from the Germanic tribes, Viking...