OK, one more time, then I'll wash my hands of this thread.
- People in the middle ages routinely washed their hands before meals. It was expected. hosts provided the means as a matter of course. Eating with unwashed hands was regarded as a sign of extremely poor manners. the ability to eat without soiling one's fingers was prized highly, and taught just as using knife and fork is taught today.
- Baths were common until the end of the Middle Ages among the urban population, with labourers entitled to, on average, a bath a week as part of their wages. Only peasants and beggars, for want of opportunity, and the religious, for the sake of their souls, bathed less often than that as far as we can tell.
- Roman baths - as in, the baths at Rome - were monuments to public munificence. Their use was free. In most cities throughout the empire, donations of firewood, oil and other supplies to ensure their cheap or free availability tended to be institutionalised to some degree, often as a tax in all but name. In many Roman towns, their maintenance unltimately became part of the episcopal or monastic duties, while in the Islamic world, they often became a religious waqf. How they were managed in the west is still uncertain, but we know that Milan continued to have public baths in Lombard times.
- cleanliness was not viewed as a virtue, but as a pleasure and a courtesy in much of medieval Europe. It was highly prized. I invite you to read the twelfth- or thirteenth-century de orhatu mulierum, (it exists separately or as part of the Trotula ensemble of medical texts) to get an idea of the complexity of courtly toilette.