Was Poor Water Quality in the Middle Ages a Myth? A Detailed Bibliographic Analysis

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The idea that people in the Middle Ages drank beer or wine to avoid drinking water is so established that even the most serious experts see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as an indisputable truth.

Water in the Middle Ages — Water quality in the Middle Ages

Not only are there specific and very everyday mentions of people drinking water throughout the entire medieval period, but there also seems to be no evidence that it was considered unhealthy, except, as today, when it obviously was.

Physicians had a somewhat more biased view, but they certainly did not recommend abstaining from drinking water, nor replacing it with alcohol.

Paolo Squatriti is one of those rare writers (Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000) who has taken a look at this question, writing about Italy and Gaul.

Once they had assured themselves of its purity (clear, odorless, and cold water), people in post-classical Italy drank, in the end, water. The willingness to drink water was expressed in late antiquity by writers as different as Paulinus of Nola, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Peter Chrysologus, who praised drinking a glass of water.

In Misconceptions about the Middle Ages, Stephen Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby write:

The myth of constant beer consumption is also false: water was available in many forms (rivers, rainwater, melted snow) and was often used to dilute wine.

Steven Solomon also examines the various uses of water, including its use as a beverage, in his book Water: the epic struggle for wealth, power and civilization.

On the other hand, modern research on the subject is scarce. In the period in question, however, there are numerous and uncritical mentions of people drinking water.

When Fortunatus (6th century) said that Radegund drank water mixed with honey, there is no suggestion whatsoever that water on its own could be dangerous.

Gregory of Tours (6th century) writes:

When a man arrived at a village near the road, he went into a small room and asked for water.

He even mentions a pond — stagnant water — as a source of drink:

In the center is a pond with water that is very pleasant to drink.

And in another tale, a merchant uses river water from the Saône to dilute wine.

Gregory also speaks of a crowd finding the marks left by a hermit who had knelt down to drink from a river.

Saint Lupicinus is said to have drunk water from a local stream; when a child miraculously recovered the power of speech, he said to his mother:

Run and bring me a glass of water.

When Gregory mentions miraculous cures using water associated with a holy figure, the water naturally has even greater power because of that association, but he never implies it would have been undrinkable otherwise.

Since then a great number of the sick, having drunk water or wine in which this gem had been submerged, have immediately recovered their health. The water deposited there by the rains is sought by the sick, who recover their health by drinking it. Often those possessed, those with fever, and other sick persons recover their health by drinking water from this well.

It was customary, when speaking of the devout or saints, to say that they drank mainly water. Gregory relates what happened to a boy after receiving religious instruction:

He became so abstemious that he ate barley instead of wheat, drank water instead of wine, used a donkey instead of a horse, and wore the humblest of clothes.

Patroclus, a hermit in Bourges, drank only water “slightly sweetened with honey.” Other writers share similar anecdotes. Saint Paul Aurelian, for example, dipped his bread in water.

A widow of Saint Clotilde recounts how she brought a glass of spring water to the builders of Les Andelys (only to have it turned into wine).

In the 13th century, the physician Arnaud de Villeneuve said that water was better than wine for quenching thirst, but recommended drinking it from a vessel with a small mouth or narrow neck so as not to take too much.

In the 14th century, Maino de Mainer (Magninus Mediolanensis) wrote:

The natural drinks are two, water and wine. These are the drinks we use.

In 1389, Jean Juvenal des Ursins wrote that when Paris welcomed the queen:

There were fountains at every intersection, pouring water, wine, and milk.

Was it safe to drink that unpasteurized milk? That is another question altogether.

A 14th-century monk in Liège not only listed water as one of his preferred drinks, but recommended it over beer.

It was also common during the period to punish monks by putting them on a diet of bread and water — something that would have been frankly sadistic if people of the time believed water would cause disease.

Rather, the idea was clearly to limit food to the bare minimum required to keep them alive, as was also done with prisoners.

People of the time knew the difference between good and bad water. Pliny, speaking of drinking water, noted:

In water the problem is not only if it has a bad smell, but also if it has any kind of taste at all, even a pleasant and agreeable one. In general, for water to be healthy, it must have neither taste nor smell.

Centuries later, Paulus Aegineta (8th century) wrote:

Of all things, water is used in every kind of diet. It is necessary to know that the best water has no quality of taste or smell, is pleasant to look at, and pure to the sight; and that when it passes quickly down the throat, it is not possible to find a better drink.

The Bavarian laws of the 8th century spoke of what happened if someone contaminated the water of a spring:

If someone fouls or contaminates a spring with any filth, they shall clean it so that no trace of contamination remains and shall pay six solidi.

The medical authorities of the Middle Ages had certain reservations about water, but none of these reflected any risk that clean, odorless water carried any kind of disease.

Pliny and Paul warned against water that smelled bad. But even then, Paul thought it could be used.

But waters that contain impurities, have a fetid smell, or any bad quality, can be improved by boiling them to make them drinkable, or by mixing them with wine, adding the astringent to that which is sweet, or vice versa. Some types of water should be filtered, such as muddy, salty, and bituminous ones.

Note that while he mentioned improving poor-quality water by adding wine, neither he nor any other medical authority said anything about replacing it with wine or beer to avoid disease.

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What many said, and rightly so, is that water was not as nutritious as wine, so wine was more beneficial to health.

Both Villeneuve and Mainer wrote that, although water was more appropriate for quenching thirst, wine was a more suitable basis for a healthy diet.

But saying that wine was more nutritious than water (as it still is) is not the same as saying that water caused disease.

Physicians did warn against drinking too much water, as in Villeneuve’s suggestion to use a vessel that limited the amount one drank.

Galen, whose writings would form the core of Western medicine for more than a millennium, warned:

An excess of water corrupts, then breaks and destroys the strength and vigor of the stomach, which weakened in such a way receives bad humors, which flow and move through the entire body in its cavity, no more or less than those suffered by those who fast and go hungry for a long time.

Drinking mainly water was like abstaining from solid food and would make a person weaker and more prone to disease.

Yet even so, Galen does not say we should not drink water — and in fact says that people of a warm nature should drink more water than wine.

This is because, in humoral theory, water was believed to be cold; therefore a balance for warm natures.

For the same reason, some physicians, such as Villeneuve, recommended avoiding consuming it with meals, as it would slow digestion.

Although modern medicine dismisses humoral theory, so would never condemn water for being “cold,” it would agree that water alone cannot sustain life and that water that smells bad or appears dirty should be avoided.

Classical and medieval theories about water are therefore not substantially different from modern ideas.

And again, no ancient medical authority indicates replacing water — good or bad — with wine or beer.

All of this is, of course, quite academic, since it is quite implausible that in a largely illiterate society like that of the time the general public would have known what the medical opinion was.

To the extent that they believed they knew it, their information was probably as false and distorted as what passes for medical knowledge on the internet today.

There is no specific reason to believe that people in the Middle Ages drank less water than we do today; rather, since water was not sold, transported, or taxed, there was simply no reason to record its use.

Did people of the time prefer alcoholic drinks? Probably, and for the same reason that people today consume beverages other than water.

A young Saxon, in a 10th-century colloquy, is asked what he drinks and replies:

Beer if I have it, or water if I have no beer.

This is a clear expression of making do with water, but preferring beer.

At the time, most prepared beverages were alcoholic and those that were not would soon become so. The Gauls, for example, mentioned drinking water that had been filtered through beehives — that is, water with honey. In Merovingian times, Fortunatus describes Radegund drinking the same.

But if you store water with honey for long enough, it will ferment, producing mead — which, before refrigeration arrived, happened to many beverages, since in a sense fermentation was a preserving process.

Drinking something other than water practically inevitably meant consuming alcohol, even if of low strength.

It may also be that, as Galen suggested, consuming more substantial beverages seemed fortifying.

As late as the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin found that his fellow printers in London believed that drinking beer gave them greater strength:

My fellow pressmen drank daily a pint of beer before breakfast, another pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, another between breakfast and dinner, another at dinner, another at six in the afternoon, and another when they had done their day’s work. To me this custom seemed abominable, but they affirmed that they needed all that beer in order to have strength enough for the work. I tried to convince them that the strength given by the beer could only come from the proportion of barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed.

But although Franklin considered this a poor method of nourishment, beer has many nutrients; certainly more than water.

And for people in a subsistence economy (as most were), that would have been reason enough to drink it, when they could get it.

One might think that, seeing the evidence described above, those who insist that people in the Middle Ages drank beer and wine to avoid drinking water would reconsider their views.

Unfortunately, the most deeply rooted myths are not displaced by something as feeble as documentation. In previous debates elsewhere, one person’s response was to say:

Lack of evidence is not evidence.

Another’s response was that, since some doctors criticized some types of water, people might have considered this sufficient reason to avoid water altogether.

This long-established idea is unlikely to go away.

But at least, the next time you hear someone express an opinion on the matter, you can ask them: What evidence do you have for that?

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(*) Jim Chevallier is a food historian with a wide range of interests who has published notable books such as Feasting with the Franks; the First French Medieval Food, which is a continuation of his history of bread in France entitled Before the Baguette: The History of French Bread.