section_path: History/Europe/Middle Ages
section_name: Middle Ages
paragraph_text: Middle Ages
  
  Contrary to popular belief, bathing and sanitation were not lost in Europe with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Starting in the early Middle Ages, popes situated baths within church basilicas and monasteries. Pope Gregory the Great promoted bathing as a bodily need. The use of water in many Christian countries is partly due to Biblical toilet etiquette which encourages washing after all instances of defecation. Bidet and bidet showers were used in regions where water was considered essential for anal cleansing. Public bathhouses were common in medieval Christendom larger towns and cities such as Constantinople, Paris, Regensburg, Rome and Naples. Great bathhouses were built in Byzantine centers such as Constantinople and Antioch.
  
  In the 11th and 12th centuries, bathing was essential to the Western European upper class: the Cluniac monasteries (popular centers for resorting and retiring) were always equipped with bathhouses. These baths were also used ritually when the monks took full immersion baths at the two Christian festivals of renewal. The rules of the Augustinians and Benedictines contained references to ritual purification, and, inspired by Benedict of Nursia, encouraged the practice of therapeutic bathing. Benedictine monks also played a role in the development and promotion of spas.
  
  On the other hand, bathing also sparked erotic phantasies, played upon by the writers of romances intended for the upper class; in the tale of Melusine the bath was a crucial element of the plot.
  
  Bathing and grooming were regarded with suspicion by moralists, however, because they unveiled the attractiveness of the body. Bathing was said to be a prelude to sin, and in the penitential of Burchard of Worms we find a full catalogue of the sins that ensued when men and women bathed together.
  
  Cities regulated public bathing – the 26 public baths of Paris in the late 13th century were strictly overseen by the civil authorities and guild laws banned prostitutes from bathhouse admission.
  
  In 14th century Tuscany, newlywed couples commonly took a bath together and we find an illustration of this custom in a fresco in the town hall of San Gimignano. As evident in Hans Folz ' Bath Booklet (a late 15th century guide on European baths) and various artistic depictions such as Albrecht Dürer 's Women's Bath, public bathing continued to be a popular past time in the Renaissance. In Britain, the rise of Protestantism also played a prominent role in the development of spa culture.