Personal body tenants

From Clean by Virginia Smith
( cut for the squeamish-- it's about lice )

Quote from the Treasure of the City of Ladies

by Christian Pizan, quoted in Clean, by Virginia Smith:

... fine white cloth, tablecloths, napkins, and other linen made... she will have very fine linen-- delicate, generously embroidered and well made... will keep it white and sweet-smelling; neatly folded into a chest.

(sarah lawson translation, 148)

Charlemagne bathing

quoted in Clean by Virginia Smith

He took delight in steam-baths at the thermal springs, and loved to exercise himself in the water whenever he could. He was an extremely strong swimmer and in this sport no-one could surpass him. It was for this reason he built his palace at Aachen and remained continuously in residence there during the last years of his life and indeed until the moment of his death. He would invite not only his sons to bathe with him, but his nobles and friends as well, occassionally even a crowd of his attendants and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more would be in the water together.

Einhard, Two Lives of Charlemagne...

apparently Charlemagne also complained of short waist-length cloaks then in fashion, "What is the use of these little napkins? I can't cover myself with them in bed. When I am on horseback I can't cover myself from the winds and the rain. When I go off to empty my bowels, I catch cold because my backside is frozen."

Seventeenth-century bath customs in Basel, Switzerland

In the morning the bath-keeper gives a horn blow, that everything is ready. Then the members of the lower classes [and] polite citizens undressed in the house and walked naked across the public road to the bath-house... Yes, how often the father runs naked from the house with a single shirt together with his equally naked wife and naked children to the bath. How often can I see (that is why I do not go through the town) little girls of 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 years, completely undressed, except for a short linen bath-coat (badehr) often torn. . . They run along the roads at lunchtime, to the baths. And beside them the totally naked 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 year old boys, accompanying these respectable young women.

--Guarinonius, 1610 quoted in Virginia Smith, Clean, p. 172