More period cleaning

[bunnyjadwiga]

Again, from the Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg, p. 63, describing St. Radegund's (6th c) biweekly spate of pauper-washing (the paupers were apparently in very poor health indeed). This was apparently from her medieval biographer, but you can see the paradigm of the modern translator:

Girding herself with a cloth, she washed the heads of the needy, scrubbing away whatever she found there. Not shrinking from scurf, scabs, lice, or pus, she plucked off the worms and scrubbed away the putrid flesh. Then she herself combed the hair on every head she had washed. As in the gospel, she applied oil to their ulcerous sores that had opened when the skin softened or that scratching had irritated, reducing the spread of infection. When women descended into the tub, she washed their limbs with soap from head to foot.

Ashenburg uses this to point out a conflict of two standards, "one a radical asceticism" and the other a more normal idea of body maintenance-- the saints pursed self-denial but assisted others to obtain cleanliness.