Unwashed Europe

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Do you know how False Dmitry was caught in the fact that he was not Russian, and therefore an impostor? Very simple: he did not go to the bathhouse. For Russians, this was the first sign of a "German", "Latin", "Pole", "Vlakha", etc. The sign, alas, is quite solid.

The bathhouse, inherited by Europe from ancient Rome, died at least twice in it. It is even difficult for us to imagine such a thing, but regression is not such a miracle in human history, for it there is also a special term, "secondary savagery". [It is believed that the Maya did not know the wheels, but during the excavation of their cities, children's toys are found - carts on four wheels made of baked clay. The peoples of Congo and Angola had their own written language, and then lost it. The same happened with the Incas.]

The first time the bathhouse in Europe disappeared during the "dark ages" (as the period between the 5th and 12th centuries is sometimes called). The crusaders, who broke into the Middle East, amazed the Arabs with their savagery and filth: "The Franks are wild. Glorifying their god Jesus, they drink without measure, fall where they drink and eat, allowing the dogs to lick their lips, spewing abuse and food eaten."

Nevertheless, it was the Franks (crusaders) who, appreciating the baths of the East, returned in the XIII century. this institution to Europe. Baths gradually began to spread again there, especially in Germany. However, by the time of the Reformation, through the efforts of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, the baths in Europe were once again eradicated as centers of debauchery and infection.

And this attitude persisted for a long time.

Ladies at the court of Louis the Sun (contemporary of Alexei Mikhailovich and Peter I) were constantly scratching themselves not only because of bugs and fleas. However, even at the end of the 18th century, the century of the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedists, the French Abbot Chappe still mocked, poor fellow, at the Russian bathhouse! [That same Chappe (Jean Chappe d'Auteroche), in refutation of whose poisonous nonsense Catherine II published her work "Antidote" (ie "Antidote") in Amsterdam in 1771 - an understandable act, but unnecessary]

The baths returned to Europe for the third time only in the 19th century. It is generally accepted that the impetus for their revival here was given by those marching baths with which the Russian army reached Paris in 1814, but it cannot be said that this revival was going on quickly.

For example, in Berlin the first Russian bathhouse was opened back in 1818 [IA Bogdanov. "Three centuries of the Petersburg baths", St. Petersburg, 2000, p.22.], But only many years later, in 1889, it came to the establishment of the "German Society of People's Baths", which expressed its goal in the following motto: "Every German has a bath every week ". By the beginning of the First World War, this goal had clearly not been achieved yet, tk. there were 224 baths in the whole of Germany. [A. Fischer, Grundriss der sozialen Hygiene (chapter "Volksbadwesen"), Karlsruhe, 1925.] Vladimir Nabokov recalls in "Other Shores" that his salvation was in England, Germany, and France in the 20s and 30s. -ies there was a collapsible rubber tub that he carried with him everywhere.

The ubiquitous bathroom in Western Europe is largely a post-war achievement.

But turning our gaze to our own fatherland, we will notice that our bathhouse is even older than our historical memory: as long as Russia remembers itself, it remembers its bathhouse as much, and third-party evidence about it is even more ancient. So, Herodotus (5th century BC) mentions the inhabitants of the steppes [Eastern Europe], who steamed in huts, pouring water on hot stones.

The legends included in the Russian chronicles speak of the presence of baths in the Novgorodians during the legendary journey of the Apostle Andrew to the Slavs in the 1st century A. D. The amazed stories of Arab travelers of the 8th-11th centuries on the same topic are well known. The mention of the baths of Kievan Rus looks quite plausible, starting from the time of Princess Olga (who orders the Drevlyan ambassadors to prepare a bath), i.e.from the X century, onwards, until the death of Kievan Rus in the XIII century.

By the way, the fact that Little Russians did not know the bath ["The bath is typical for the North Russians; South Russians and Belarusians wash themselves not in baths, but in stoves; Ukrainians are generally not particularly prone to washing" (D. K. Zelenin, East Slavic ethnography, M., 1991, p. 283). It is superfluous to add that the conclusions of the classic of Russian ethnography are based on research almost a century ago. The cultural revolution of the twentieth century in the USSR equalized almost everything and everyone], reinforces the confidence of those who consider them to be newcomers, immigrants from the Carpathians, who gradually settled the lands of Kievan Rus that had been depopulated after the Horde pogrom.

In Europe, even during the "small bath renaissance" of the XIII-XVI centuries. the common people remained unwashed, and this cost the continent dearly. The worst plague that Europe has known in its history is the "Black Death" of 1347-53. Because of her, England and France even had to stop hostilities and conclude a truce in the so-called Hundred Years War (which they fought with bulldog stubbornness among themselves for not even a hundred, but 116 years).

France lost a third of its population from the plague, England and Italy - up to half, the losses of other countries were about the same grievous. Historians state that the great plague, having come from China and India and bypassed all of Western and Central Europe to the most remote places, stopped "somewhere in Poland." Not "somewhere", but on the border of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (whose population consisted of 90% Russians, in connection with which it is also called Lithuanian Rus), that is, on the border of the spread of the bath. And even more precisely: at the junction of lack and availability of hygiene.

Echoes of the Black Death then penetrated into some Russian cities, especially those visited by foreigners, but the scale of the disaster among the Russians (and also among the Finns, another "bath" people) was incomparable with what their western neighbors experienced. Even the most severe plague plagues of Russian history, especially in 1603, 1655 and 1770, have never caused any tangible demographic damage to the country. The Swedish diplomat Petrei Erlesund noted in his work on the "Muscovy" that the "pestilence" appears more often on its borders than in the interior regions.

According to the English physician Samuel Collins, who lived in Russia for nine years, when in 1655 a "pestilence" appeared in Smolensk, "everyone was amazed, especially since no one remembered anything like it." [WITH. Collins. The current state of Russia, as outlined in a letter to a friend living in London. M., 1846.]

Summing up two centuries of ethnographic observations in Russia, DK Zelenin stated that of all the Eastern Slavs "the North Russians are distinguished by the greatest and even painful cleanliness [we are talking not only about bodily cleanliness, but also about the cleanliness of the dwelling]" [D. K. Zelenin, decree. cit., p. 280.] - i.e. the owners of the okay dialect (as opposed to the akaye "South Russian"). If the quality of life is correlated with cleanliness, the conclusion suggests itself that it has been the highest in the autochthonous Great Russian regions since ancient times, gradually decreasing to the south, to the places of later Russian settlement.

But let's go further. For some reason, everyone agreed that Russia-Russia was far behind its western neighbors in the improvement of life. We have read more than once that medieval European cities were, firstly, the vanguards of freedom, and secondly, it was in them that it was easier to live thanks to their greater improvement and many inventions that made life more tolerant and more pleasant. We will return to freedoms later, while we get down to everyday life.

Among the inventions of medieval Europe, one cannot fail to mention the canopy. Why did canopies appear in the homes of wealthy people? It was a way to keep out bugs and other cute insects that fell from the ceiling. Unsanitary conditions greatly contributed to their reproduction. The canopies did not help much, for the bugs wonderfully arranged themselves in the folds. At the other end of the world - the same thing: "Fleas are disgusting creatures. They jump under a dress so that it seems to be shaking," writes a noble Japanese woman of the 11th century.[Sei-Shonagon, "Notes at the head", M., 1975, p. 51.]

We have already talked about the fact that the ladies of the court of Louis-Sun were constantly scratching themselves. But to this it must be added that since they, being lush in body, could not reach everywhere, long combers were invented. They can be seen in museums, they are made of ivory, often of marvelous work. Cunning flea traps, also often highly artistic, were in great use.

True, every cloud has a silver lining - we owe all this horror to the appearance of spirits. This is indeed a very important European invention.