skip.knox submitted a new blog post:
History for Fantasy Writers: Bathhouse Keepers
by E.L. Skip Knox
This is another installment in my series, History for Fantasy Authors.
There were scores of trades and crafts that organized into guilds. This is an essay about one of them, a guild that existed in Augsburg, Germany in the late Middle Ages. It's not typical, and that's part of why I think it's worth examining. I hope it will give you some ideas for new settings and new ideas about guilds in your own writing.
Bathhouses had little to do with getting clean. A bath was more like a spa, a place in which to get healthy or to maintain health. It was also like a spa in that it was a place to hang out, to relax and have some casual fun.
Bathhouses were a place for conversation. Business was transacted here, for most patrons of wealth and power came to the baths at least occasionally. It was the perfect place for making business deals and also for making social contacts so important to medieval town life. That father of the girl your son is so crazy about? You’ve probably met him at the baths.
The bath house was also a prime place for gambling, prostitution, and just plain fooling around. It is no coincidence that the public bathhouse began a long...
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
History for Fantasy Writers: Bathhouse Keepers
by E.L. Skip Knox
This is another installment in my series, History for Fantasy Authors.
There were scores of trades and crafts that organized into guilds. This is an essay about one of them, a guild that existed in Augsburg, Germany in the late Middle Ages. It's not typical, and that's part of why I think it's worth examining. I hope it will give you some ideas for new settings and new ideas about guilds in your own writing.
Bathhouses had little to do with getting clean. A bath was more like a spa, a place in which to get healthy or to maintain health. It was also like a spa in that it was a place to hang out, to relax and have some casual fun.
Bathhouses were a place for conversation. Business was transacted here, for most patrons of wealth and power came to the baths at least occasionally. It was the perfect place for making business deals and also for making social contacts so important to medieval town life. That father of the girl your son is so crazy about? You’ve probably met him at the baths.
The bath house was also a prime place for gambling, prostitution, and just plain fooling around. It is no coincidence that the public bathhouse began a long...
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.