Talk:Benedict of Aniane's Rosary/@comment-5782071-20170630020740/@comment-1674153-20170630054933

I got this one.

So WAY back, Roman bath houses were not only the public's way to get clean, they also served as a site for sexual encounters, because that's how humans do. Early Christians considered this immoral, of course - there's a lot of saints who talk about how the only bath you need is the "bath of Christ" - a baptism, in other words, and perhaps the occasional foot bath. This is predominantly why the stereotype of the Middle Ages is characterized by people who stink to high heaven, actually.

Benedict of Aniane was one of the predominant figureheads of the no-bathing movement, spreading the message that bathing gave way for the sins of the flesh to occur in the 8th century, an idea which lasted until about the 18th. He had an in with the Emperor Louis the Pious, and was a feverant believer in the more stricter observance of the monastic tradition, so naturally his views on the faith were able to sway more people, and thus the more people who were pious who began to skip their bathtimes.