The Great Medieval Water Myth
24th February 2015
The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it’s not true.
Well, that’s not really the Great Medieval Water Myth, because people of the Middle Ages (and indeed up to the advent of knowledge of bacteria) had no concept of ‘bad water’ above what a child would have in the modern age, focusing on the smell and taste.
The rest of the article is devoted to vivisecting this straw man as if it were a Real Thing, so it’s pretty much pointless. It is, however, a good overview of writing about drinking during that period, so is not totally useless.