Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 45957
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Jacques de Vitry and 'Usamah ibn Munqidh,
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Keeping It Clean [A Close Shave with an Infidel and Dangerous Liaisons]
  • Source: Texts from the Middle: Documents from the Mediterranean World, 650–1650.  Edited by Thomas E. Burman, Brian A. Catlos and Mark D. Meyerson.  University of California Press, 2022.  Pages 105 - 107.
  • Description: Two excerpts describe northern European Franks’ encounters with Mediterranean bathhouses, where differences of class and religious community became ambigious. The first anecdote relays an intimate encounter from a bathhouse attendant in Muslim-ruled Marrat al-Nu'man serving a Frankish man and woman. The second excerpt from Jacques de Vitry presents a French theologian’s complaints about the dangers of the bathhouse for Frankish women.
  • Article Type: Translation
  • Subject (See Also): Bath Houses Bathing Multiculturalism Muslims Nudity
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: Eastern Mediterranean
  • Century: 12- 13
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources: The first text is from The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, ed. Carole Hillebrand (Routledge, 2000), pp. 593-94. The second text is from Iacobi de Vitriaco…Libro duo, quorum prior orientalis, siue Hierosolymitanae (Balthazaris Belleri, 1597), pp. 188-89 (Latin).
  • Author's Affiliation:
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2022.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 9780520296534