Introduction
Creators: name: Rawcliffe, Carole
name: Weeda, Claire
Publisher: name: unknown
Year: 2022

description: As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, 
authorities promptly responded with a plethora of regulations to facilitate, at least in theory, 
the orderly cohabitation of dwellers within the city walls. Many of these rules concerned 
public health matters, such as the disposal of waste, the protection of water supplies, and the 
sale of wholesome foodstuffs. In some cases, sanitary regulations drew from Ancient Greek 
and especially Galenic medical theory, which stressed the importance of a hygienic 
environment in safeguarding the urban body from disease. The effective execution of such 
measures relied in part on the active engagement and compliance of the population. Shared 
assumptions regarding physical and spiritual well-being, social cohesion, neighbourliness, and 
economic prosperity, as well as the pursuit of ideals of urbanity, fed into communal efforts to 
police the environment, the behaviour of others, and the conduct of the self. Nonetheless, 
conflicting interests and contradictory impulses abounded, and official bodies might wield the 
disciplinary stick when their efforts met with apathy, confusion, resistance, or evasion. This 
volume explores attempts to enforce rules and recommendations for the improvement of 
public health and sanitation in premodern Western Europe, while also seeking to establish 
how urban populations may have reacted to them. To this end, it draws upon a wide range of 
source material, including bylaws, court rulings, and official injunctions, together with the 
evidence of judicial inquiries, administrative records, urban chronicles, panegyrics, and 
medical texts. And in so doing it comprehensively challenges a lingering tendency on the part 
of historians writing for the academic as well as the popular market to employ the word 
'Medieval' as a synonym for ignorance, superstition, and indifference to squalor.
description: As urban communities in Western Europe mushroomed from the twelfth century onward, authorities promptly responded with a plethora of regulations to facilitate, at least in theory, the orderly cohabitation of dwellers within the city walls. Many of these rules concerned public health matters, such as the disposal of waste, the protection of water supplies, and the sale of wholesome foodstuffs. In some cases, sanitary regulations drew from Ancient Greek and especially Galenic medical theory, which stressed the importance of a hygienic environment in safeguarding the urban body from disease. The effective execution of such measures relied in part on the active engagement and compliance of the population. Shared assumptions regarding physical and spiritual well-being, social cohesion, neighbourliness, and economic prosperity, as well as the pursuit of ideals of urbanity, fed into communal efforts to police the environment, the behaviour of others, and the conduct of the self. Nonetheless, conflicting interests and contradictory impulses abounded, and official bodies might wield the disciplinary stick when their efforts met with apathy, confusion, resistance, or evasion. This volume explores attempts to enforce rules and recommendations for the improvement of public health and sanitation in premodern Western Europe, while also seeking to establish how urban populations may have reacted to them. To this end, it draws upon a wide range of source material, including bylaws, court rulings, and official injunctions, together with the evidence of judicial inquiries, administrative records, urban chronicles, panegyrics, and medical texts. And in so doing it comprehensively challenges a lingering tendency on the part of historians writing for the academic as well as the popular market to employ the word 'Medieval' as a synonym for ignorance, superstition, and indifference to squalor.