Father Aderbal Murta tells that
the dean of the Louvain University,
in Belgium, wasn’t at
all pleased when the brazilian
seminarists that were arriving
there started asking for a bathroom,
no matter how small, among the
immense group of buildings,
something that they considered
to be of the maximum importance.
That’s right, a place
where they could wash from head
to toe, a shower from high,
use soap, rinse their bodies
and then dry off with a fluffy
towel. They insisted that they
didn’t want to do it in
a basin, splashing water all
over and not getting the job
done as my friend Nó
Barrão. A real bath,
at least a humble little shower.
With warm water, not scalding
and not freezing, either, because
no one is made of stone. This
demand, said the administrators,
was a trait of third world students,
this had to have come from Brazilians,
crazy kids. Baths, in Belgium,
until the present age, were
crudely effectuated with a sponge
or cloth, and nothing else.
Just scrubbing, no running water,
no wetting the floor.
Great!
Now, I read in the Brazilian
Rotary magazine an interesting
commentary of Derli Antônio
Bernardi, de Maringá,
telling about the time when
taking a bath was a sin, and
one could even go to jail because
of it. How curious! They had
somehow lost the Arabian knowledge,
where it was known that “water
is the most efficient of all
medicines and the best of all
cosmetics.” They had lost
the Egyptian experience of when
you used to take a bath in a
golden basin and of Greece when
the palace of King Minos possessed
the most spectacular bathtub
in ancient history, decorated
with marble and precious stones.
They had forgotten the Roman
tradition of taking baths, when
the bathrooms were so important
to the influential Romans that
there were twenty five different
ways of taking a simple bath
- with oils, vapors, herbs,
essences, etc, - And there were,
at their sides, art galleries,
theaters and temples dedicated
to the Gods.
The
barbarians, when they invaded
Europe, poor creatures, blamed
the collective baths as the
origin of the decadence and
fall of Rome. They took advantage
of war and destroyed all of
the baths, public and private
as well, sweeping for a period
of one thousand years this pleasant
and hygienic custom, practically
erasing from the vocabulary
the word bath. Time goes on,
never stopping, and in the middle
age Europe, the books of etiquette
recommended the washing of hands
only before meals, which really
isn’t suprising, because
at that time, spoons and forks
had not been invented yet, the
food, as in some countries today,
was passed from hand to mouth.
Something
strange, to be sure, The queen
Elizabeth of Castella, made
no secret of how many baths
she had taked during her entire
life: only two, one, when she
was born, and the other, when
she was married, to be sweet-smelling
for the royal consort on the
first day of their honeymoon.
As strange as it seems, religion
also greatly contributed to
the decline of little popular
habit of bath-taking. Pope Gregory
prohibited bath-taking on Saturdays,
principally if the object of
the bath was simple hygiene.
A law was even passed prohibiting
baths on any other day except
Tuesday. To take a bath was
considered to be sinful, luxuriously
evil materially absolutely mundane,
exaggerated zeal wasted on the
body.
It
was around the year 1800 that
in England appeared a Turkish
bathhouse with frequency permitted
only men and courtesans . It
was hermetically closed to women
of family because it was not
dignified for serious ladies
of the fair sex. In France,
at the time of Napolean, there
was more liberty for bath taking.
It even constituted a new profession,
the bath givers, that would
go door to door, carrying basins
and everything else necessary
to wash away the aristocratic
sweat and grime. In colonial
America, the puritans considered
baths and bathsoap to be impure
things. Getting to the point
in Filedelphia who takes more
than one bath a month had to
be condemned to prison for disrespect
of the hallowed customs. The
first public bath-house of New
York City only appeared around
1852, only allowed through a
special commission in 1913.
An
extensive bath, daily, more
than once a day, is really a
Brazilian habit and it’s
not because of the Portuguese
and African who weren’t
really that fond of immersing
themselves in water. We owe
our tradition of taking daily
bath to our Tupi and Guarani
Indian ancestry, who greatly
appreciated playing in it in
the abundant rivers and beaches,
principally on days of intense
heat, more fun couldn’t
be found elsewhere. That is
why I believe that daily bath
taking is a purely Brazilian
invention.
