Context for this image of a 15th Century German bathouse

[bigdummy]

All I can find out about this is that Wikimedia Commons says it's from a 15th Century German source, and German wikipedia gives it the title 'Badehaus Valerius Maximus'. I also found a reference to a 'Handschrift von Valerius Maximus' from 1471 which may have been purchased by a collector from a monastery. Anyone know what the source is?



Is this a brothel or a private party of some aristocrats or just a regular bathouse or what?

The only Valerius Maximus I could find is a Roman writer on rhetoricc, was this a Medieval illustration of a Roman text?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerius_Maximus

I see a possible link to this writer Peter Schöffer, a former protege turned enemy of Gutenburg, who apparently printed a pamphlet about Valerius Maximus in 1471

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sch%C3%B6ffer

BD

[Fab]

Brothels and bathouses were frequently associated We have a lot of documentation on the subject for the city of Dijon BTW.

[bigdummy]

Would love to see some. particularly if you have anything in English.

BD

[Ariella Elema]

I think the source of the picture is actually French. You can see a little bit about it in this article: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1512798.

Illustrations of bathing and bath-houses are not uncommon in medieval books. Karen Larsdatter has a collection of online images here: http://www.larsdatter.com/baths.htm. The association between brothels and bath-houses goes back a long way. In English, the word stews referred to both kinds of establishments.

Ruth Mazo Karras discusses the stews of Southwark in her book Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. Jacques Rossiaud also wrote a book on medieval prostitution. He concentrates on Toulouse, if I recall correctly.

[bigdummy]

I gather there was a lot of prostitution in bath-houses, particularly in England, but what I'm trying to sort out actually is what was the normal behavior in a 'normal' bath-house in Central Europe in the 15th Century. Brothels were typically regulated and taxed as such, as were the sex workers. Over 150 show up on one tax roll in Stockholm in 1480.

But there are different threads here, many of these relatively small cities I've been reading about in the Baltic area had 10 or 20 bath-houses of different types, and there were also many rural ones of the Banya (steam bath) type as well. I'm trying to understand better what the social context of these once.

Thanks for the links though I am going to check those out. The book looks interesting I may have to get that, though England is not the area I'm really looking at right now.

BD