We have already explored the origins of Perfume through a journey into Antiquity until the fall of the Roman Empire. To continue our set of articles on the history of Perfume, today we lay down our hat in the medieval era. Despite a certain decline compared to the profusion of fragrances of ancient Rome, this new age will give life to new scented rituals. Welcome aboard for a trip back in time, to understand how perfume was used in the Middle Ages, what medieval perfumes were actually made of, and why the period smells far better than its reputation.
The perfume in the Middle Ages: symbol of frivolity
After the fall of Rome, the trade routes that carried precious materials fell apart, and the Church condemned the profane use of scent as a pagan habit. In the West, perfumery became almost nonexistent from the 5th to the 11th century, while it kept flourishing in Byzantium and in the Arab world.
After the invasion of the Roman Empire in 410 by the Goths, Rome is plundered and considerably weakened. Finally, the Empire collapses a few decades later. After this, the Roman splendor and the frenzy of scents disappear from the western world to be reborn in the Byzantine Empire. The nobles still perpetuate a Greco-Latin way of life. The perfume then takes an important place in its most sophisticated uses. In the West, perfumery becomes almost nonexistent from the 5th to the 11th century. Even the religious and cosmetic functions of perfume, then popular during Antiquity, are no longer topical. This decline of the perfume finds a religious explanation. In the Middle Ages, Christianity becomes the religion of reference. In fact, men of the cloth strongly condemn the profane use of perfume. Indeed, it is considered as the breach of moral standards and the symbol of pagan traditions.
The Gauls are not great lovers of scented products. Yet they develop important knowledge in terms of botany and pharmaceutical care. This is precisely the door through which perfume will come back.
Perfume in medieval times, in six dates
- 476End of the Western Roman Empire, perfumery survives in Byzantium.
- c. 795The capitulary De Villis sets the plants of the royal gardens.
- 1174A pomander is offered to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
- c. 1268The Livre des métiers regulates the bathhouses of Paris.
- 1347The Black Death reaches Europe, perfume becomes a remedy.
- 1370Traditional date of Hungary Water, rosemary and alcohol.
Perfume as a cure
Medieval medicine blamed disease on bad air, so a good smell became a treatment. Monks grew the aromatic plants called simples in abbey gardens, apothecaries turned them into waters, vinegars and fumigations. Pharmacy and perfumery were one and the same trade.
In front of these new recommendations, fragrances are no longer an attractive feature but during Middle Ages, perfume is used only for its medicinal properties. At the time, the monks cultivate different aromatics in the abbeys gardens. These plants such as lavender, rosemary or sage are called "simple" in opposition to complex remedies. Once harvested, these herbs and spices enter into the preparation of various odorous compositions. Around 795, the capitulary De Villis, a Carolingian regulation, already lists the plants to be grown on royal estates, and in the 12th century Hildegard of Bingen devotes part of her medical work, the Physica, to their virtues.
These scented solutions helped to protect against "bad air" and to cure many ill health. Indeed, it was thought at the time that bad smells were vectors of disease. They entered our body by breathing nauseating smells. Pharmacy and perfumery are therefore intimately linked.
And this use will be even more accurate from 1347. A Genoese boat, returning from the Black Sea, brings back plague in its holds. This epidemic, which will devastate more than a quarter of the European population, will further fortify the therapeutic function of perfume. To fight this pandemic, aromatherapy is used. Doctors and other apothecaries concoct various "anti-plague" preparations. The body is covered by the "four thieves' vinegar", a composition including rosemary, wormwood, mint and camphor, whose famous recipe would in fact be popularised much later, during the modern epidemics. People use all sorts of plant-based purification methods: inhalation, fumigation or sprinkling. Laurel and rosemary are also burned into homes to purify the air. We tell more of this fragrant pharmacy in our article on the scented remedies.
One popular image should be set aside here: the beaked plague doctor mask, stuffed with aromatic herbs, does not belong to the Middle Ages. It appears in the 17th century, long after the great plague of 1347.
Towards new scented roads
The crusades, waged between 1095 and 1291, and trade with the Orient reopened the routes of odorous materials. From the 10th to the 15th century Venice became the European hub of the scented trade, while Arab science handed the West the still, rose water and a taste for precious raw materials.
With an important decrease in the interest for perfumes, some fragrances are forgotten for many years. But the crusades conducted between 1100 and 1290 and the development of trade with the Orient open new paths conducive to still unknown odors. Thanks to its strategic position at the crossroads of maritime trade throughout Europe, Venice becomes, between the 10th to the 15th century, the new epicenter of perfumery. The city ensures an increasingly regular supply of scented products. Camphor, nutmeg, pepper and other balms pass through this commercial platform. The influence of the Arab world and the need for hygiene contribute to the renewed success of the perfume.
Thus, little by little, spices and new scents are introduced again into the habits of Westerners. Warm and intense scents appear alongside the floral perfumes of the time, as with musk, amber, sandalwood or myrrh. In addition to new scents, new perfumed rituals from the East will also conquer the nose of wealthy Westerners.
The decisive influence is that of the Arab world. As early as the 9th century, the scholar Al-Kindi gathered more than a hundred formulas in his Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations. Around the year 1000, Avicenna refined steam distillation and drew from it a rose water of unprecedented delicacy. We follow that lineage in our article on the history of attar, and the journey of resins in the origin of incense.
What did medieval perfumes smell like?
Medieval scents were resinous, animalic and spicy rather than floral and light. Four families dominate: animal materials such as musk, ambergris and civet, resins such as incense, myrrh and benzoin, distilled flower waters, and the spices of the East. The first three were worth their weight in gold.
- Origin
- Tibet and the Himalayas for musk, Indian Ocean shores for ambergris
- Medieval use
- The heart of pomanders, believed to be both curative and aphrodisiac
- Today
- Recreated by modern synthesis, with no animal sourcing
- Origin
- Arabia, Somalia, Sumatra and the Mediterranean basin
- Medieval use
- Liturgical fumigation and the cleansing of enclosed spaces
- Today
- Base notes of amber and oriental compositions
- Origin
- Persia and Syria for rose water, abbey gardens for lavender
- Medieval use
- Hand washing bowls, scented baths, perfumed linen
- Today
- The backbone of the floral families of modern perfumery
- Origin
- India, Ceylon and the Sunda Islands, through Venice
- Medieval use
- Cooking, medicine and perfumery, often in the very same preparation
- Today
- The signature of spicy and oriental accords, as in our guide to oriental perfume
The pomander
A pomander is a hollow sphere of gold or silver filled with scented pastes. Worn at the neck, on the belt or as a ring, it was meant to keep harmful smells away and to display its owner's wealth. It is the closest medieval ancestor of the personal perfume bottle.
In 1174, King Baudoin of Jerusalem gives a small object then unknown, a pomander, to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. This jewel is a hollow sphere made of gold or silver. Inside this "scented apple", its French name, we insert aromatic preparations that are reinforced by animal substances, then known for their therapeutic virtues, such as musk, amber or the civet. It is very popular with the aristocracy and the most fortunate bourgeois, who assign healing but also aphrodisiac virtues to the pomander. This object is worn everywhere: neck, belt or ring to both mark its social position but also to push harmful scents away. Gradually, the perfume of the Middle Ages is emerging from its therapeutic functions to become a sign of wealth.
Was there such a thing as a medieval perfume bottle?
Not in the modern sense. Before alcohol based perfumes, scent was a paste, a powder or an oil, so it needed a container rather than a flacon: the pomander, small enamelled or metal boxes, and glass or pewter phials for aromatic waters. Goldsmiths competed in ingenuity, up to segmented models holding a different scented paste in each compartment.
A new preoccupation: cleanliness
Yes, medieval people washed, far more than the legend suggests. Towns had many public baths, banquets offered bowls of scented water, and wealthy households kept perfumed sachets in their linen. It was the fear of epidemics, in the 14th century, that closed the bathhouses and created the myth of a filthy Middle Ages.
It is also during this period that people start to feel the need for hygiene. Contrary to popular opinion, cleanliness and therefore perfume become an important preoccupation during the Middle Ages. At the greatest banquets, the hosts offer bowls of scented water to clean guests' hands because they ate with fingers. The wealthier ladies already appreciated lavender and orange blossom perfumes. They hid flowers under their petticoats and had cushions, small sachets that held perfumed powder, in their laundry.
The bath
At that time, the bath is also a ritual that everyone appreciates. It is practiced at home by aristocrats and is given in large vats made of metal, stone or wood, covered with a sheet and in which we infuse spices. As for the people, they go to public baths that offer hot and flavored baths for a modest sum of money. Real meeting place, men and women stir together to enjoy a moment of relaxation. This moment of pleasure could even be prolonged after the bath since four-poster beds were available for visitors to luxuriate in charming company. Around 1268, the Livre des métiers of Étienne Boileau, provost of Paris, gives the bath keepers their own statutes: running a bathhouse was a regulated profession, like any other.
Seignor, quar vous alez baingnier et estuver sans deslaier, li baing sont chaut, c'est sans mentir.
Guillaume de la Villeneuve, Les Crieries de Paris, 13th century
The Paris street crier is simply shouting that the baths are hot. Hardly the sound of a city that had given up on washing.
Medieval perfume comes down to the three gestures shown in the illustration of this article: the cultivation of various aromatic plants, the pomander worn by a noble, and the public baths, a colorful meeting place.
In towns, the bathhouse works as much as a parlour as a washroom. People come to wash, but also to eat, drink and talk, in steam loaded with aromatics.
The end of a ritual
But from 1348, the greatest doctors of the time begin to advise against this practice and especially hot baths that open pores, leaving the door open to all bacteria. That same year, the medical faculty of Paris delivers to King Philip VI its Compendium de epidemia, a report on the epidemic that would be read across Europe. The pressure of the Church, which condemned these places of depravity, added to the medical recommendations, will end up to the definitive closing of these establishments at the beginning of the Renaissance.
Alcohol: a turning point in perfumery
From the 12th century, the still and the cooling coil made alcohol distillation possible. In Salerno, apothecaries gradually replaced the oil that had carried scent until then with spirits of wine. Compositions became lighter and fresher, and medieval perfume finally came close to what we call a perfume today.
Thanks again to the Arab influence, a new form of perfumery appears with the still and the coil, which allow a distillation with alcohol. It is in Salerno, Italy, that apothecaries test these techniques to replace the oil then used as an excipient of perfume. From the 12th century, they discover how to obtain ethanol, then called spirits of wine. In the 13th century the physician Taddeo Alderotti describes a water cooled coil that greatly improves the yield of distillation. This period marks a fundamental step in the evolution of perfume manufacturing techniques and paves the way for a new form of alcohol-based perfume. Fragrances are lighter and fresher.
It is at this time that the Queen of Hungary Water (and later just Hungary Water) appears. This formula, created from alcohol and rosemary, will meet a phenomenal success. This water is rubbed all over the body to protect against infections. Some even drink it to enjoy even more its extraordinary virtues. Tradition dates it to 1370 and credits Elizabeth of Poland, Queen of Hungary, although historians point out that no known medieval source confirms it. What is certain is that it opens the long line of alcohol based waters, of which eau de Cologne would become the most famous heir.
How was a scented water made?
-
Harvest the simples
Lavender, rosemary, sage or roses are picked in the abbey garden, ideally in the morning, before the heat disperses the essences.
-
Macerate
The plants rest for several days in water or in spirits of wine, long enough for the odorous materials to pass into the liquid.
-
Distil in the still
The preparation is gently heated. The vapours rise into the head of the still, then condense in the cooled coil.
-
Collect and rest
The aromatic water is separated from its oily phase, then left to rest for a few weeks so that the smell settles.
-
Keep away from light
A glass or pewter phial is carefully stoppered and stored in the dark, the only way to keep the scented water for months.
From glove makers to Grasse
As the Middle Ages come to a close, another trade takes shape. Glove makers, whose first letters patent are traditionally dated to 1190 under Philip Augustus, take the habit of masking the smell of tanned leather with essences. Scented leather becomes a luxury item and the tanneries of Grasse gradually turn to perfumery. The guild of glove makers and perfumers would only be made official in 1656, but the craft is born here, at the hinge between two eras. We devoted a whole article to it, glovers perfumers.
Next step: Renaissance
At the end of the Middle Ages, the fear of water in the ritual of the toilet sets in and the Renaissance will see these scented practices change. The use of aromatic vinegars among the more affluent classes thus replaces the bath. You want to learn more about the evolution of Perfume through the ages? The journey continues in our article on perfume in the Renaissance.
Medieval scents at Carrément Belle
Spices, resins, amber and warm materials: the accords brought back from the East during the Middle Ages still run through perfumery today. At Carrément Belle, we work them with our perfumer in Grasse, in four fragrances that carry on that story. Each one is available as an eau de parfum and as a diffuser, and two of them also as an extrait de parfum.
An oriental of wool and spices, patchouli and warm notes, like a rug brought back from the silk road.
The amber incense of the house, iris, white pepper and citrus. A direct heir of the resins burned in medieval churches.
Built around oud, the precious wood of the East, a dense and resinous composition, in the line of the materials Venice used to import.
The modern amber of the house: amber, spices, tonka bean and vanilla, an invitation to an inner journey.
Your questions about medieval perfume
Did people wear perfume in medieval times?
Yes, but differently from today. Perfume in the Middle Ages was first a remedy and a way to purify the air: resin fumigations, scented waters for the hands, herb infused baths, sachets tucked into linen. The ornamental use comes back from the 12th century, with the materials brought from the East.
What did medieval perfumes smell like?
Far more resinous and animalic than modern fragrances. Medieval perfumes were built on incense, myrrh, benzoin, musk and ambergris, warmed by spices such as clove, cinnamon and nutmeg, and lifted by rose or orange blossom water. Think of a church at the end of mass rather than a flower shop.
What was perfume called in the Middle Ages?
People spoke of scented water or aromatic water for liquids, and of pomander or scented apple for the object worn on the body. The word perfume itself comes from the Latin per fumum, through smoke, a reminder that the oldest use was to burn resins.
Did medieval people really smell bad?
Less than the legend claims. Public bathhouses were numerous and popular, and linen was washed regularly. The reputation of a dirty era comes mostly from the following centuries, when the closing of the baths after the 14th century epidemics kept Europeans away from water.
What is a pomander?
A hollow sphere of precious metal, often openwork, filled with scented pastes made of ambergris, musk and resins. It was worn at the neck, on the belt or as a ring, and is the closest ancestor of the personal perfume bottle.
When did the first alcohol based perfume appear?
Alcohol distillation spreads through Europe from the 12th century, notably around the medical school of Salerno. Hungary Water, a blend of alcohol and rosemary, is traditionally named as the first alcohol based scented water of the West, even though its 1370 date is debated by historians.
Were medieval fragrances used against the plague?
That was the belief of the time. Medieval medicine blamed contagion on bad air, so scented preparations were seen as protective: aromatic vinegars, laurel and rosemary fumigations, pomanders held to the face. They had no effect on the disease, but they tied perfume and health together for centuries.
- From the 5th to the 11th century, Western perfumery almost disappears, condemned as a pagan legacy, and survives in Byzantium and the Arab world.
- It comes back through medicine: abbey gardens, the simples and the theory of bad air turn perfume into a remedy.
- The crusades and Venetian trade reopen the routes of spices, resins and animal materials.
- The pomander, which reaches Europe in the 12th century, is the first object of personal perfumery in the West.
- Alcohol distillation, inherited from Arab science, invents in the 12th century the perfume we know today.
The Discovery Set brings together our eaux de parfum in sample format, so you can take the time to find the fragrance that suits you. Your first set is refunded as a voucher on your next order.
The Discovery Set
21 Comments