loading . . . The great Medieval water myth _This is one of several posts on drink in the Middle Ages. The others are:_
* Early Medieval French wine
* Stumbling through history towards beer
* Getting drunk in Medieval France
* Beyond wine, water and beer: what else they drank in Medieval France
_For looks at later water myths, see_ Old Regime water after the Middle Ages and Early America.
The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason:_it's not true_.
Not only are there specific – and very casual – mentions of people drinking water all through the Medieval era, but there seems to be no evidence that they thought of it as unhealthy except when (as today) it overtly appeared so. Doctors had slightly more nuanced views, but certainly neither recommended against drinking water in general nor using alcohol to avoid it.
Paolo Squatriti is a rare writer (in _Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000)_ to look at this question. He writes of both Italy and Gaul:
> Once they had ascertained that it was pure (clear, without odor, and cold) people in postclassical Italy did, in the end, drink water. Willingness to drink water was expressed in late antiquity by writers as dissimilar as Paulinus of Nola, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Peter Chrysologus, who all extolled the cup of water.
In _Misconceptions About the Middle Ages_ , Stephen Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby write: "The myth of constant beer drinking is also false; water was available to drink in many forms (rivers, rain water, melted snow) and was often used to dilute wine." Steven Solomon's _Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization_ examines uses of water, including for drinking, going back to Sumeria.
**UPDATE 10/28/2014** - A new article in _Eä – Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology _examines Greek and Roman ideas of drinkable water, showing that these groups too regularly drank water.
Otherwise, modern examinations of the issue are rare. In the period itself, however, there are numerous, and always uncritical, mentions of people drinking water. When Fortunatus (sixth c.) says that Radegund drank water mixed with honey, there is no suggestion at all that the water itself might be dangerous.
Gregory of Tours (sixth c.) writes that when one man "arrived at a village by the road, he went into a small habitation and asked there for water." He even favorably mentions a pond – that is, still water – as a source of drink: "In the middle is a large pond with water that is very agreeable to drink". And in one tale a merchant uses river water from the Saone to dilute wine. Gregory also tells of a crowd finding the marks where a hermit had knelt to drink water from the river. St. Lupicin is said to have drunk the water of a local stream. When a child restored to life miraculously speaks, he tells his mother "Run quickly and bring me a cup of water."
When Gregory mentions miraculous cures using water associated with a holy figure, the water has more power because of that association, but he never implies that it would have been undrinkable otherwise: "Since then a great number of the sick, after having drunk water or wine into which this gem had been plunged, were immediately restored to health.”; "Water left there by the rains is sought by the sick, who recover their health when they have drunk it.”; "Often the possessed, the feverish and other sick people recover their health in drinking water from this well".
It was not unusual in speaking of the devout or the saintly to say that they drank mainly water. Gregory says of a boy who received religious training that he became "so abstemious that he ate barley instead of wheat, drank water instead of wine, used an ass instead of a horse, and wore the meanest garments." Patroclus, a hermit in Bourges, drank only water “a little sweetened with honey” Other writers share similar incidents. St. Paul Aurelian dipped his bread in water. A life of St. Clothilde tells how she brought a cup of spring water for builders at Les Andelys (only to have it changed to wine).
The thirteenth century doctor Arnaud de Villeneuve said that water was better for quenching thirst than wine but recommended drinking it from a vessel with a small opening or a narrow neck in order not to drink too much. In the fourteenth century, Maino De Mainer (Magninus Mediolanensis) wrote the "Natural [drinks] are twofold, that is, wine and water. These drinks are in use among us."
In 1389, writes Jean Juvenal des Ursins, when Paris welcomed the Queen, "there were at each crossroad.... fountains pouring water, wine and milk." (Was the unpasteurized milk safe? That's a separate question.)
**UPDATE 2/10/2014:** A fourteenth century monk in Liège not only listed water as one of the preferred drinks, but recommended it over ale and beer.
It was also standard throughout the period to punish monks by putting them on a diet of bread and water – something that would have been frankly sadistic if in fact people of the time had believed water was likely to cause disease. Rather, the idea was clearly, as with prisoners later, to limit them to the minimum required to sustain Life.
People in the time certainly knew the difference between bad and good water. Pliny, in discussing drinking water, says: "It is a fault also in water, not only to have a bad smell, but to have any flavour at all, even though it be a flavour pleasant and agreeable in itself.... Speaking in general terms, water, to be wholesome, should have neither taste nor smell.”. Centuries later, Paulus Aeginata (seventh c.) wrote: "of all things water is of most use in every mode of regimen. It is necessary to know that the best water is devoid of quality as regards taste and smell, is most pleasant to drink, and pure to the sight; and when it passes through the praecordia quickly, one cannot find a better drink."
Bavarian law (c. eighth century) addresses the case where someone pollutes a fountain: "If someone pollutes or stains a fountain with any filth, they are to clean it so that there is no sign of pollution and pay six sols..."
Medical authorities of the time did have some reservations about water, but none of these reflected any concern that clear, odorless water carried disease. Pliny and Paulus both warned, as did others, against water that smelled bad. But even then, Paulus thought these might be used:
> But waters which contain impurities, have a fetid smell, or any bad quality, may be so improved by boiling as to be fit to be drunk; or, by mixing them with wine, adding the astringent to that which is sweeter, and the other to the astringent. Some kinds of water it may be expedient to strain, such as the marshy, saltish, and bituminous.
Note that if he suggests improving bad water by adding wine, neither he nor any other medical authority says to replace water by wine or beer in order to avoid disease.
What many did say, and with reason, is that water was not as nutritious as wine and so wine was more appropriate for health overall. Both Villeneuve and de Mainer wrote that, if water was more appropriate for quenching thirst, wine was a more appropriate basis for a healthy regimen. But saying that (as is still true) wine was more nutritious than water is not in the least to say that water caused disease.
Doctors also warned against drinking too much of it, as in Villeneuve's suggestion of using a vessel that limited how much one could drink. Galen, whose writings would be central to Western medicine for over a millennium, warns that an excess of water “corrupts, then breaks and destroys the stomach's strength and vigor; which being so weakened receives bad humors, which flow and drift through the whole body in its cavity; no more or less than those who fast and endure hunger for a long time.” To drink mainly water, that is, was like abstaining from solid food and would similarly make a person weaker and more prone to illness.
Yet Galen certainly does not say not to drink water in general and in fact he says that those of hot natures _should_ drink more water than wine. This is because, in humoral theory, water was believed to be cold (and so a balance to hot natures). For the same reason, several doctors, such as Villeneuve, recommended against drinking it with meals, on the grounds that it would retard digestion.
If modern doctors put no stock in humoral theory - and so would never condemn water as being "cold" - they certainly would agree that water on its own cannot support Life and that one should avoid water that smells or looks bad. The classic and medieval theories on water, then, did not substantially differ from modern ideas. And again no early medical authority said to replace water - good or bad - with wine or beer.
All of this is of course quite academic, since it is unlikely that many in the largely illiterate society of the time even knew what medical opinion was; to the degree that they thought they did, their information was probably as distorted as much that passes for medical knowledge on the Internet today.
There is no specific reason then to believe that people of the time drank proportionately less water than we do today; rather, since water was not typically sold, transported, taxed, etc., there simply would have been no reason to record its use. Did people in the time prefer alcoholic drinks? Probably, and for the same reason most people today drink liquids other than water: variety and flavor. A young man in a tenth century Saxon colloquy is asked what he drinks and answers: “Beer if I have it or water if I have no beer.” This is a clear expression of both being comfortable with water and preferring beer.
At the time, most prepared drinks were alcoholic drinks and those that were not intended to be would quickly have become so. The Gauls, for instance, were said to drink water that had been poured through beehives; that is, honey water. In Merovingian times, Fortunatus describes Radegund as drinking the same drink. But leave honey water sitting long enough and it will ferment, producing mead. In a time before refrigeration, this was true of many flavored drinks; in a sense, fermentation was a preservative process. That is, drinking something that was _not_ water almost inevitably meant drinking at least weak alcohol.
It may be too that, as per Galen, it simply seemed fortifying to drink more substantial drinks. Even in the eighteenth century, Ben Franklin discovered that his fellow printers in London believed that drinking beer gave them strength.
> My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese, for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer in order to acquire strength to work.
> I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength furnished by the beer, could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed...
But as poor a method as Franklin found this for gaining nourishment, beer does indeed contain some nutrients; more, certainly, than water. And for people in a subsistence economy (as many were in the Middle Ages) that would have been as good a reason as any to drink it. When they could get it.
One would think that, confronted with the above evidence, those who insist medieval drinkers drank beer and wine to avoid water would at the least reconsider. Unfortunately, long-standing myths are not displaced by anything so flimsy as documentation. In previous discussions elsewhere, one person's response was simply to say, "The lack of evidence is not evidence." Another's was that since _some_ doctors criticized _some_ water, _some_ drinkers might have considered this good enough reason to avoid water. Etc. This long-established idea then is unlikely to die anytime soon. But at the least, the next time you see or hear someone put it forth, you can always try asking: what is the evidence for this from the period?
Because that simple question has, for too long, been ignored.
**UPDATE 10/18/2017:** Why are people who have little or no firsthand knowledge of the Middle Ages absolutely convinced they know the facts on this issue? Some even after reading this or similar items? Here's a new item from the _New Yorker_ : Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds: New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
**UPDATE 2/8/2018:** One problem with the common myth is that it ignores the water actually available to most people - who, in early European countries, mainly lived in rural environments (pollution was primarily an urban problem, and actually became more of an issue AFTER the Middle Ages). One major source then would have been streams, which, as this article demonstrates, typically provide perfectly safe drinking water: Actually, Backpackers, You Don’t Need to Filter Your Stream Water.
**UPDATE 4/21/2108:** And if we needed any further confirmation that people will drink water from springs and streams, this look at the Raw Water craze is a reminder that, yes, natural water carries risks, but also that, modern hygiene or no modern hygiene, not only are some modern, sophisticated people doing that today, they are paying well for the privilege. How likely is it then that people with no knowledge of science would have avoided water which to them looked clean and fresh?
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**NOW OUT!**
**_A History of the Food of Paris:_**
**_From Roast Mammoth to Steak Frites_**
**Visitparisfoodhistory.com for more.**
_**
**__**AND THE MYTH GOES ON:**_
2019-5-22: "Since there was always a risk of contamination with water, fermented beer and wine were considered much safer to drink."
# Israeli researchers brew 'ancient beer' with antique yeast
FOR FURTHER READING:
Paolo Squatriti, _Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000, Parts 400-1000_ 2002
Stephen Harris, Bryon L. Grigsby, _Misconceptions About the Middle Ages_ 2007
Steven Solomon, _Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization_
_Sainted Women of the Dark Ages_ , edited by Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, Gordon Whatley
Saint Gregorius (évêque de Tours), Henri-Léonard Bordier, Les livres des miracles: et autres opuscules, Volume 1 1857
Joannes Bollandus, Jean Baptiste Carnandet, Godefridus Hanschenius, Daniel van Papenbroeck, L. M. Rigollot, Acta sanctorum: Ed. novissima, Volume 21 1867
Arthur Le Moyne de La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne : topographie générale de la Bretagne de 57 av. J.C. à 753 de J.C
Thomas Wright, Richard Wülcke, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies: Vocabularies
Arnaldi Villanovani... Opera omnia cum (ejus vita per S. Champerium et) Nicolai Taurelli... annotationibus... (Carmen V. Thilonis) 1585
Magninus Mediolanensis, Johannes Van Westfalen, Regimen sanitatis 1482
Jean Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI roy de France et des choses ... advenues des l'an 1380-1422. mise en lumiere par Theodore Godefroy. -Paris, Pacard 1614
Ferdinand Walter, Corpus juris Germanici antiqui, Volume 1 1824
Galien, Le Livre de C. Galen traictant des viandes qvi engendrent bon & mauvais suc, mis en françois pour
Pliny (the Elder), The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5 1856
Paulus (Aegineta.), Francis Adams, The Medical Works of Paulus Aegineta, the Greek Physician: Tr. Into English Vol I 1834
Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography an Essays 1864
FROM CHEZ JIM - TRANSLATIONS OF EARLY WORKS IN FOOD HISTORY:
Anthimus,_How to Cook an Early French Peacock - a translation from the Latin of Anthimus' De Observatione Ciborum_
_How to Cook a Golden Peacock - a translation of the lesser-known medieval cookbook Enseingnemenz Qui Enseingnent à Apareillier Toutes Manières de Viandes_
Taillevent, How To Cook a Peacock - A translation of the fifteenth century edition of Taillevent's Le Viandier
Pierre Jean Baptiste Le Grand d'Aussy, _A History of Wine in France From the Gauls to the Eighteenth Century_
https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
