The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [19]
Jesus’ indifference to ritual purity accorded with what became a wider Christian distrust or neglect of the body. Somewhat paradoxically, the Jewish purity laws, especially at the time of Christ, emphasized the body’s importance: the purity or impurity of the body at any given moment was a significant matter. Within a few hundred years of Christ’s death, Christianity had gone in a different direction. It discounted the body as much as possible, devaluing the flesh so as to concentrate on the spirit.
By the end of the first century, the Christians began to pull away from distinctive Jewish laws about forbidden foods, circumcision and the keeping of the Sabbath. Gradually, too, they distanced themselves from the Jewish laws of purification. Some of the Jewish obligations survived longer than others in Christian communities. Early Christian brides continued to take a ceremonial bath before the wedding, as did Jewish women, but this particular custom has a psychological, worldwide appeal. As late as the third century, Christians in Palestine and Syria had to be told that a ritual bath was unnecessary after intercourse—an indication that the Talmudic law was still being followed in those places. The Christian “churching” ceremony, in which a woman received a special blessing some weeks after childbirth, was an option in the Catholic church until the 1960s, and is a vestige of the ritual purification bath Jewish women took after childbirth. Similarly, Greek Orthodox women do not receive communion when they are menstruating, another remnant of the Jewish belief that menstruation renders a woman impure.
As the Arab gardener wryly noted, baptism is a ritual washing—the most thorough one that Christians undergo, which until the seventh century involved a full immersion (as it still does for some denominations). The Catholic custom of dipping the fingers in holy water on entering a church and blessing oneself echoes purificatory handwashing, as does the priest’s ceremonial handwashing during the mass. Aside from that, Jewish ritual purification left few lasting echoes in Christianity.
YET MORE MURDER IN THE BATH
Fausta, the wife of Constantine, was accused of having an affair with a slave. On Constantine’s orders, she was suffocated by the extraordinarily hot steam of her bath in about A.D. 326.
The early Christians lived under the rule of the Romans, whose baths presented a more obvious dilemma for the early Church. The Roman bath had nothing to do with ritual purity and much to do with hedonism, if not downright sin. And yet it was woven so firmly into everyday life that it seemed impossible to do without it. When the second-century theologian Tertullian wanted to persuade the pagans in Carthage how normal and unthreatening the Christians were, he began with their participation in three central Roman institutions. “We live with you in the world,” he wrote, “abjuring neither forum nor shambles [market] nor bath.” Before and after his conversion to Christianity, the baths were a routine part of St. Augustine’s life in fourth-century North Africa. In its first centuries, depending on local conditions and the beliefs of the current bishop or pope, Christianity negotiated a tentative coexistence with the Roman custom.
Naturally enough, mixed nude bathing was forbidden, although this was not immediately clear to everyone. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, scolded a devout Christian woman who patronized a mixed bath, which was apparently an unremarkable practice in third-century Carthage. The woman, who had taken a vow of chastity, responded