Keeping medieval cities clean and fragrant

I think I have posted in the past about the problems caused by waste in medieval European cities and the efforts made to remedy the problem. The other day I chanced upon an article which drew on an Anglo-Norwegian study of these matters and appears to offer a balanced interpretation of what was happening and what was being attempted. It is from Science Norway and can be seen at How dirty and stinky were medieval cities

One of the problems with the written source material. I think we all can recognise the loud tone of protest coming from the exasperated householders or councillors by seeing its similarities to modern complaints ( and how they may be expressed ) about mess and nuisance, the noise and smells from factories, and the problem of bad neighbours. In not a few ways such problems foistered upon communities or caused by industrial processes that have an impact on the lives of others are familiar and understandable. So-called ‘nimbyism’ is nothing new - it is part of the human condition.

There is also the idea that things improve at a steady and consistent pace. We fail to shake off the ‘Enlightenment’ and nineteenth century concepts of relentless and consistent improvement and ‘progress’ to a better and cleaner urban environment. The reality may be that things got worse with increasing population and increasing industry until an era of active legislation and technological improvements wrought really substantive change. Early and mid-Victorian London had little to boast about to preceding centuries. Each era tried its best to address the particular problems they faced and equipped with the means at their disposal in dealing with such problems.

The medieval fear of the malign effects of miasma May strike us as somewhat strange, yet paradoxically it may well have contributed to pressure to keep things cleaner than they would have been otherwise. An enthusiasm for clean air is not an invention of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. 

The fact that we have records of regular complaints and frequent responses as well as archaeological evidence of what was done suggests not that everything was wonderful or dreadful in any particular past era but that it was ‘normal’ for its own time.