Beauty Tips For the Medieval Lady
Who Did This? What Do We know?
Everyone wants to be pretty. After dunking on the beaux ideal last time, I thought I would clarify how people achieved this look. That means going to the source.
The most famous book covering beauty advice for medieval women would be the Trotula, but most medical books liked to compile recipes for the eager reader. There were Welsh medical books, a Spanish book called ‘The Book of Love,’ and a slew of others.
It has to be said that there was always some crossover between cultures as to both the ideal and the ways in which you achieved it. Castillan medical books for Jewish and Christian women shared a number of recipe ingredients, for instance. They had to take into account differences in religious requirements, but they clearly had some crossover.
There are a few other sources, such as fiction and public records. That should give us something to go on.
Baths
To start at the beginning, you have to get clean. Bath houses were left over from the Romans all over the place, so you could have a communal bath. (Generally, the men would have a set time and women would have a set time, though the bath houses were also famously a pickup spot too.)
Of course, if you are a lady, you could have your own wooden tub with a bench and a towel on the bench.
Skin Care
Olive oil soap, particularly Castilian soap, was supposed to be the best. This soap could be scented with cloves or lavender. Bran water and oil of tartar washes were supposed to make your face fairer, once your skin was properly cleaned.
Scented water was a favorite, too. Just add flower petals to warm water in fancy ewers.
Lipstick recipes, or ways to redden lips, pop up often enough. Ways to cover freckles are common too. I’m going to have to dig up some examples.
Hair Care
Combs go way back, and sometimes they were fancy. Viking combs could be made of bone, and clerical combs could be made of ivory. These were generally two-sided like you see on lice combs today. I have covered the medieval hair-care routine before, but I thought I would start with the basics.
A cleanser made of water that had held sowbread ash and chaff, vine ash, barley nodes and licorice wood was supposed to leave your hair ‘golden and shimmering.’ It was made by boiling the ashes together and then straining it for the water.
The nice lady made sure, once her hair was up, that it had something sweet smelling on it, such as musk, nutmeg, or cloves. The head covering should also have the same scent.
Tweezers were a thing. As I’ve mentioned before, there were women plucking the hairline back to show off their foreheads. They were only occasionally shaving any body parts, but they did have depilatories for the face. For waxing off unwanted hair, The Trotula recommends mixing pitch and Greek wax in a pot, adding galbanum (an element that melts at low temperatures) for a while, adding mastic and frankincense once it is cooked, and then applying it to the face. You let this mess cool on your skin for an hour and then pulled it off. The Trotula mentions plucking the bikini area too.
Naturally, The Trotula has coloring the hair covered too. There are recipes for making your hair lighter or darker. The hair darkening recipe requires a colisanth filled with oil of laurel, henbane seed and orpiment. The other recipe for black hair involved taking a lizard and beheading it.
To make yourself blonde, it was recommended that you cook together celandine, agrimony root, and boxwood shavings. Then you tie on oat straw and wash your head with this and ashes of oat or vine.
There were plenty of recipes for covering gray hair and to fight baldness. A lot of these recipes involved litharge, quicklime, earthworms, and rainwater.
A specific recipe for growing more hair called for putting a mouse and a wren in a pot and burning them until you can powder them. You added to this powder bay oil, goat blood, and boar lard, and you mixed it until you had an ointment. Presumably you then rubbed it on the head.
Tooth Care
To whiten teeth, a Welsh text suggests brushing with the ashes of a grape vine.
The same book said that mint juice and rue juice stuffed up your nose would make your breath smell better. Ivy juice boiled in red wine would have the same effect.
Cinnamon, spikenard, clove, mastic date pits, and olives ground to a powder and then scrubbed over black teeth was supposed to strengthen and whiten them.
But mostly, tooth care required scouring the surface with something hard. Pumice was recommended by some sources, for instance.
Mostly, it helps to remember that there was always someone wanting to be prettier, and as a consequence, always someone willing to sell some recipe to clean up.
Source:
Hair_care_and_beauty_in_medieval_Castili.pdf
The Medieval Podcast: Medieval Beauty Tips broadcast 5/25/22
Ten Medieval Beauty Tips, Medievialist.net