The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [22]
Giving her considerable money and real estate to Chrysostom so that he could dispense it to the needy and the Church, Olympias founded a monastery for women and became its deaconess. Her clothing was “contemptible,” as her biographer records admiringly: “For there could be found nothing cheaper than her clothing; the most ragged items were coverings unworthy of her manly courage.” (To call a woman manly, or virile, was a significant compliment.) At the same time, “her whole intolerable life was spent in penitence and in a great flood of tears”—nothing was more unlikely than that the virile Olympias, “always gazing on Christ, [would] leave off crying for a while.”
Predictably, this paragon ate no meat and “for the most part she went without bathing. And if a need for a bath arose through sickness (for she suffered constantly in her stomach), she came down to the waters with her shift on, out of modesty even for herself.” Olympias took care not to scandalize anyone, including herself. Most tellingly, her biographer praises her for her “immaterial body”—not literally true, but an accurate statement of her wish to disregard her physical being.
With their denial of normal bodily wants, saints such as Olympias represented one extreme of the Christian continuum. At the same time, while they remained heroically dirty themselves, saints frequently washed other people. The biblical precedent was Christ, who washed the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper and commanded them to do likewise. One who obeyed this order was St. Radegund, a sixth-century queen of the Franks and the founder of a convent at Poitiers. She had resumed a celibate life after separating from her husband, Clotaire, the king of France—an understandable decision, since he had murdered her parents and her brother. When lepers arrived at her convent, St. Radegund set a table for them, washed their hands and faces with warm water, and kissed them. To her attendant, who asked, “Most holy lady, when you have embraced lepers, who will kiss you?” she answered that this did not worry her. Every Thursday and Saturday, Radegund bathed paupers. Her medieval biographer describes the scene:
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.
Two standards were operating here, one a radical asceticism and the other a more normal understanding that we live in bodies that require a certain amount of care and tending. Self-punishing as they were about their own bodies, Olympias, Radegund and other early saints recognized that their choices were not for everyone. For ordinary Christians, cleanliness was a good, bringing comfort, a sense of well-being and a measure of healthfulness. Humility and charity demanded that the most scrupulously filthy saints help others to be clean.
The Roman bath culture died slowly, fizzling out at various times and places in the waning empire. Ironically, as political and economic troubles made it difficult to maintain the great thermae where the people bathed, bishops, popes and emperors continued to build and enlarge lavish baths in their residences. From being a resource for all, the baths declined into an aristocratic preserve. In the sixth century, Bishop Victor of Ravenna renovated the baths that adjoined his episcopal palace with mosaics and marbles. On Tuesday and Friday, he graciously allowed the lesser clergy to bathe there. As late as the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV redecorated