From their baptism onwards, through olfactory practices and ideas, Catholics distinguished themselves from adherents of other confessions by smelling sweetly of virtuousness. During the ritual, the priest would touch the infant’s nose and speak the words in odorem suavitatis (‘to a pleasant/sweet smell’), in order to expel the stench of sin.12 But life was a continuous struggle against great and small temptations. The acquired stench of sinfulness had to be repeatedly washed away, which required the performance of virtuous acts such as attending church. It was common practice to employ incense up to seven times during one solemn Mass.13 Although it is impossible to know with certainty how many sung and low Masses were celebrated each day in the Antwerp church, we can produce a rough estimate based on the number of communion wafers that were consumed. Between 1465 and 1477, 22,000 large hosts were used by priests associated with the church (for the elevation). Assuming that each one was consumed, and that each priest officiated around three hundred Masses per year, it is estimated that there were fifty to seventy priests who, combined, officiated over some sixty Masses per day.14 The continuous increase in the number of celebrations led to the ritual of low Masses being simplified to its most basic form. The structure of the solemn Mass continued to be the norm and was retained as the template from which there could be deviations or certain actions eliminated. In the shortened version, the priest would fulfil the roles of deacon and subdeacon, only one acolyte sang, and the censing and the kiss of peace could be skipped.15 In 1533, the church housed (depending on the source) ‘at least fifty-seven’ or ‘more than seventy’ side altars, which could host devotional Masses simultaneously (fig. 3).16 Even with simplified low Masses, then, the church provided a smorgasbord of fragrant side altars for parishioners throughout the day. After exiting the church, they would emanate a pleasing odour that was directly associated with virtue.17 In addition, any stigmatising body odour would be dispelled in the sweetly aromatic haze. Internal and external fragrances were intermingled, so there would be an olfactory transformation on the physical plane to match the spiritual. The aroma of the ubiquitous incense lingered in the clothing of worshippers.

The counterpart was the stench of sin. On the one hand, people were averse to persons or objects that reeked unpleasantly, but on the other they ascribed negative olfactory characteristics to social groups or individuals who were considered to be undesirable.18 The stench emanated by the adherents of other confessions was employed as a topos by both Catholics and Protestants. In her artful refrains, the sixteenth-century Antwerp schoolmistress and poet Anna Bijns sighed: ‘Too long you tolerated our wicked ways, expecting improvement, but it worsens every day. The stench of our sins pollutes the air.’19 Social outcasts such as witches were known to secrete a disgusting, animalistic smell, and there was even a term specifically for the stink of Jews, the so-called foetor judaeicus.20 The active use of olfactory signalling in order to make or break someone’s reputation is evident in the public burning of the Lollard priest Richard Wyche and the ensuing turmoil that occurred in London in 1440. Tower Hill, where the burning took place, was soon transformed into a shrine attracting crowds of pilgrims. Wyche’s ashes apparently produced the divine odour of incense and were distributed across the country as sought-after relics. London’s authorities retaliated by situating a dunghill at the newly sacred location.21 A foul smell was not only a sure sign of sinfulness but could also be used as a gross insult.22

A late medieval image depicting this idea can be found among the illustrations of the Holkham Bible (c. 1327-1335) (fig. 4). Christ accuses those who loudly proclaim their own devotion of hypocrisy. They reek like a tomb that on the outside boasts opulent decorations but whose inside is nothing but rotting corpses. The accompanying miniature shows a church building in which a worshipper seated next to a tombstone holds his nose because of the pervasive smell of death.23 The text is derived from the Historia Scholastica (1169-1175) by Petrus Comestor, who based his work on the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean’ (Matt 23:27).24

The olfactory experience was thus characterised by a structured hierarchical system and the interplay between the external perception of body odour and inner spiritual sweetness.25 Only a sincere conversion to the true faith could dispel all physical and spiritual malodorousness. It was even possible for God to supersede the earthly stench of a deteriorating or dead body with the spiritual sweetness of the devout Catholic.26 Concurrent with the success of late medieval garden allegories, Roman Catholicism saw a peak in experiences of this odour of sanctity (osmogenesia). The phenomenon affected only the dying bodies of the most virtuous believers. Female mystics, who continuously subjected their emaciated bodies to neglect and deprivation, were especially likely to be counted among the lucky few. Their mortal coil was found worthy enough to produce the sweet perfume of sanctity.27

What was the day-to-day smellscape in which this hierarchical olfactory system functioned? In the Antwerp Church of Our Lady, some altars were exceptional hotbeds of contagion and death. Relics that promised to deliver healing and good luck attracted droves of pilgrims, penitents, and those in need of aid.28 The public presentations of the Holy Foreskin, the most famous of the local relics, would have drawn particularly impressive crowds of believers. The most lucrative cult object, however, was the miraculous statue of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw op ’t Stokske (Our Beloved Lady of the Pole). This statue quickly attracted great numbers of ailing and grateful patients, with a peak in devotional gifts in the 1490s and a decline from the early 1520s.29 Of course, the physical condition of the patients was less than ideal. None of the suffering or sick were without stinking wounds, infections, or festering boils. The ingredients that were added to some medicinal oils, homemade salves, pomanders, and balsams also contributed to the lurid aroma. In their frantic search for healing or pain relief, people put their faith in all sorts of remedies. ‘Secret ingredients’ (geheimmiddelen) such as bat droppings, ox manure, human urine, smegma, rotting sperm, and children’s blood were applied to suffering bodies as late as the eighteenth century.30

Odours signalling disease were understood within the paradigm of the four bodily fluids, or humours: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. An imbalance in the humours was believed to be the cause of physical and mental disorders and could even lead to death. The main culprit causing such disharmony was airborne rotting organic material, known as miasmata. Marshlands, musty rooms, and sick wards were to be avoided, and poor air circulation was believed to be as hazardous as stagnant water.31 The deeper technical understanding of these theories was mostly reserved for the learned classes who applied their knowledge professionally, but the basic principles were widely known to the public.32 People were not powerless against the onslaught of miasmata, as they could protect themselves through the use of certain aromas. Pleasant smells did not simply mask the stench of disease and death, they actually inhibited infection by keeping dangerous airborne particles at bay. It was also understood by medical science at the time that the nose provided direct access to the brain, so breathing in healthy air was considered more efficacious than swallowing medicine which then had to traverse much of the body.33 Because people were to some extent able to control the atmosphere around them, numerous treatises were written on how to manage air quality. An oft-used method was fumigation, which involved the burning of aromatic spices in public spaces, on the streets, or at home. Additional ways of suppressing foul air included carrying spices (for example in pomanders), wearing strong perfumes, and the lighting of bonfires. The keeping of birds as pets was also recommended, as the flapping of their wings would help circulate the air.34

The fear of miasmata was most pronounced during plague outbreaks. As in other cities with an expanding population, these were quite common in late medieval Antwerp.35 Countermeasures focused mainly on combating foul air emanating from corpses and in the breath of plague victims. Just about any pungent odour was considered beneficial, and during an outbreak, most sources strongly advised against going out in public without olfactory protection.36 There were numerous publications in circulation providing medical guidance in those uncertain times. The widely disseminated recipe book Een nieuwe tractaet ghenaemt dat Batement van recepten (Antwerp 1549), for example, was one of many containing instructions for making a pomander that offered protection against the plague.37 The Fasciculus medicinae (Venice 1491), one of the most successful late medieval medical treatises, also featured various olfactory remedies. A later edition, produced in Antwerp in 1512, was the first illustrated medical book to appear in the Netherlands.38

A woodcut illustrating the chapter on the plague features a doctor paying a visit to a wealthy patient and serves as a compendium of miasmata countermeasures (fig. 5). As the doctor takes the pulse of his bed-ridden patient, he holds a pomander with laudanum up to his own face to dispel the foul air. This method was extremely popular as there were endless variations in the available scents, and ingredients were customisable depending on the financial resources of the buyer.39 The woman carrying a bowl of soup is also protecting her nose with a scented cloth. The young assistant in the foreground turns away from the sick person as he covers his nose with his hand. It is possible that he, too, is holding a pomander. In his other hand he is carrying a basket with glowing embers, used for burning aromatic herbs. In the Venetian version on the left, the doctor is flanked by two men with burning torches, which was also a proven method for dispelling miasmata. The author noted that ‘air should be dried as much as possible, by a fire of oak wood or of well dried boughs of laurel, of myrtle, juniper and other odoriferous woods [to decrease transmission of the plague]’. A curious difference between the two woodcuts is the presence of older women in the Antwerp edition. They are the only ones not using any kind of protection because, according to medical beliefs at the time, their bodies had smaller pores making them less susceptible to foul air particles.40

In the later seventeenth century, Daniel van Papenbroeck (Papebrochius) offered a casual remark in his extensive chronicle of the city of Antwerp:

Because it was customary to open graves and bury bodies daily, [the Church of Our Lady] was almost always a dangerous place for those feeling heavy or unwell; so much so that many people in less than perfect health were horrified of going to the parish churches, particularly pregnant women. It was therefore desirable to be able to open some windows here and there in good weather, to let some fresh air in.41

His comment leaves little to the imagination as regards the daily aroma in the city’s cathedral. The most dreaded stench in the Antwerp church came from the many corpses.42 Between 1352 – the likely date the Gothic church was established – and the middle of the eighteenth century, thousands of people were buried under the slabs of the church (fig. 6).43 However, it remains unclear how often the floor was in fact dug up. According to Tony Oost, who led the archaeological site investigations of parts of the cathedral between 1987 and 1990, burials must have occurred regularly.44 A sample from the church accounts in the mid-sixteenth century shows a rather low number, namely between twenty-four and thirty-three burials inside the church (kerklijken) per year.45 However, a concession from 1535 proves that the church accounts may need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Two years after a major fire at the church, the powerful guild of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Lof (Our Lady’s Praise) obtained the concession that there would be no more ‘funerals, masses of the seventh or thirtieth days, or memorial masses for any bodies on Sundays, holy days, or working days’ in their chapel, unless there were at least three deceased in one day. They obtained this exemption after donating a significant sum of money towards the repair of the damaged church.46 Based on this source, it is clear that it was indeed common for multiple burials to take place per day, and it was probably impractical for the various religious organisations to grant access to their altars every time. When people expressed a preference for a burial location in their will, they would usually name a specific chapel, altar, or pew, or request to be buried in the vicinity of the pulpit or the choir.47 The most expensive location was the choir, since proximity to the Holy Sacrament was believed to promote the salvation of the soul. People settled for a plot in the cemetery only if burial inside the church was financially unattainable.48

Space was at a premium due to the growing urban population, and especially so during times of sickness or war. Due to practical considerations, the same burial pit could be used for multiple bodies (stacking as many as eight) and pits were also extremely close together.49 The limited number of burial pits in the church were regularly cleared to make room for new bodies. In fact, the demand for new plots both within and without the church building was so high, graves were emptied and re-used before their previous occupants could fully decompose.50 By 1582 St. Andrew’s cemetery had become so badly overcrowded that the resulting ‘heavy stench and infection’ led to a ban on burying more bodies for several months.51 During epidemics, temporary measures were implemented, but burial within the city limits was never questioned.52 For example, fear of contamination by miasmata was so great that viewing the body in church was no longer permitted. The burial took place immediately, even before the funeral service. Moreover, it was forbidden to bury anyone while a Mass was being celebrated at another location in the church. At the same time, large bonfires were lit in graveyards to dispel the foul air. To relieve the pressure on the traditional parish churchyards, supplementary cemeteries within the city walls could be consecrated, as was done by the canon priest Franciscus Donckers during the plague outbreak of 1571.53 Still, until the late eighteenth century, when Joseph ii ordered all city churchyards in the Austrian Low Countries to be moved outside urban centres, the lack of burial space would remain a recurring problem.54

The stench was at its worst when a burial pit was left uncovered, or covered only with a thin layer of soil, in anticipation of the next funeral. Though these practices were strictly outlawed, compliance was clearly less than perfect.55 A document from 1638 sheds some light on one of the reasons why these ordinances were so frequently ignored. Gravediggers covered ‘the dead bodies with so little soil, that it often resulted in a dreadful stench. They did this intentionally so that the owners of the burial plots would believe that the graves [in the church] needed to be cleared sooner. This carried no fixed fee, and so they could extort them to pay excessive prices.’56 Apart from burial pits, the church also housed crypts: forty-seven individual crypts and fourteen shared ones, most of which were arranged haphazardly throughout the southern transept (fig. 6). These would also release a disgusting smell whenever they were opened to add a newly deceased family member.57 In the 1286 Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, which by the fifteenth century had become the most copied liturgical exposition in Western Europe, Durandus had good reason to advise readers to place burning incense in the tomb.58 Church leaders purchased aromatics explicitly for this reason. Lighting candles and burning incense during funerals not only served as a symbol of virtue, transition, and rising prayers, but also as protection against wafts of miasmata. Durandus and others explained that these fragrant clouds protected bystanders from the risks of harmful odours.59 Gravediggers also carried strong aromatics and some bodies were buried with fragrant herbs.60

The scattering of fresh rushes and other plants on the floor in order to keep the foul-smelling filth at bay even developed into a fully-fledged religious festival in late medieval England: rush-bearing.61 Much ink has also been spilled about whether or not there is religious significance to the greenery appearing in many paintings from the Southern Netherlands.62 But specifically in terms of medicinal use, there are only rare instances where such a floral theme appears in the iconography of church interiors. The Leiden painter Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden elegantly exhibited the medicinal use of plants in his panel painting The Calling of Saint Anthony (c. 1530, fig. 7). The flowers and herbs scattered in the foreground were used to treat Saint Anthony’s fire (ergotism) and the plague.63 In the background, Saint Anthony, in contemporary garb, distributes bread to a group of cripples who may be suffering from this affliction.64 Ergotism patients often needed assistance to walk due to their rotting feet. The painting may have been displayed either in Saint Anthony’s hospital in Leiden, or as part of the altarpiece of the eponymous guild.65

Finally, the geographical location of the church relative to the topography of Antwerp affected its palette of odours. Among others, the nearby Churchyard of Our Lady (Green Cemetery), was the source of significant olfactory peril. This busy location was used by various industries as a marketplace or place of work. Church officials allowed furriers, glovers, and mercers to set up shop during annual fairs. This lasted until 1468, when Charles the Bold decided to put an end to the ‘evil sins and adultery and other unseemly and dishonourable crimes, leading to death and bloodshed’ that occurred so close to the church at market times. From then on, market stalls moved outside of the sanctuary, but without depriving the church authorities of the income generated by renting out the pitches.66 However, the Green Cemetery remained a popular spot year-round for retail and recreation throughout the early modern period.67 It goes without saying that the furriers, glovers, and mercers did not always leave the churchyard in pristine condition. The Antwerp customary law (coren) therefore stipulated fines for ‘leaving any kind of rubbish on the marketplace, or on the cemetery of Our Lady, or on the fish market or on anyone’s doorstep on the street’.68 When the wind was unfavourable, moreover, the smell of rotting carcasses from the nearby butchers’ quarter – located just 150 meters away – wafted into the church, while fly-tippers frequently dumped meat waste in the nearby streets or even in the churchyard.69 As a result, the muddy tracks left by worshippers on the church floor were an unpleasant mixture of dirt, rubbish, stale water, congealed blood, and faeces.

In analogy with the method for dispelling miasmata, the virtuous aroma of incense suggested spiritual purification.70 Incense was used at many different events, including the consecration of new churches, burial grounds, bells, altars, vasa sacra, bishops, and the holy chrism, the blessing of holy anointing oils, and when officiating weddings.71 What all these circumstances have in common is a change in spiritual status: by censing the route of a procession ahead of the passage of the Sacrament, a dirt road was transformed into a temporal religious space, worthy of the holiest.72 But spiritual and physical purity were two sides of the same coin. Both incense and storax (a balsamic, fragrant resin) were popular disinfectants as well as a protection against the rancid smell of jam-packed parishioners and pilgrims.73 The liturgical scholar Cuthbert Atchley mentions a common blessing which utilises incense specifically for its air-purifying qualities: ‘May the Lord bless this incense for the removal of every harmful stench, and kindle it for the perfume of its sweetness.’74 Accordingly, Atchley believes that censing people halfway through the celebration of Mass was originally done with the intent to disinfect. By that time, poorly ventilated church spaces would have become musty with the body odour of the gathered worshippers.75

The purifying powers of incense also found their way into private devotion. Prayer and contemplation fortified the devout spirit, resulting in spiritual sweetness, and prayer beads often stimulated a fragrant experience. Beads made from amber would emit a pine-like smell when in contact with a warm body. The scent not only pervaded the space around the devotee, but also clung to their fingers after prayer. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the clergy increasingly made use of raw amber by burning it during Mass. Throughout Western Europe, the smell became strongly associated with church buildings and religious ceremonies.76 Even the elaborately worked ornaments or tiny carvings that decorated the end of the string of beads were capable of touching both nose and spirit. An often-used pendant for this purpose was the pomander, a round shaped object containing perfumes. The aromatic dimension of these objects was a continuation of the late medieval tradition of including copious garden and floral metaphors in vernacular prayers. Those were after all the meditative prayers that were being recited with the aid of prayer beads.77

Beads as well as pendants existed in all manner of shapes and materials, ranging from luxurious golden, silver, or amber showpieces to cheaper tin, glass, or wooden versions. Recipes were circulated for making one’s own sweet-smelling paternosters (welrieckende paternosteren). The Batement van recepten contained instructions for using simple ingredients at home. The dough was a mix of dark soil, tragacanth (a sweet white gum), storax, calaminta (a type of mint), cloves, laudanum, cinnamon, and sandael cytrin (white or yellow sandalwood). Both storax and sandalwood have incense-like aromas, clearly suggesting an association with the church building.78 In short, the fragrances released when using different types of prayer beads symbolised virtue and manifested both internally (on a spiritual level) and externally (in the surrounding space and on fingertips).

The memento mori pendants with their abraded noses are only one element of the olfactory dimension penetrating sixteenth-century lived religion. In late medieval Antwerp, there was a strong interaction between externally perceived body odour and a person’s inner sweetness. Believers resorted to ritual actions and concrete practices that were small-scale reflections of prevailing medical theories and philosophies. The same wholesome or harmful odours that regulated physical health also applied to one’s purity of spirit. As sinners stank both physically and spiritually, prayer could, alongside a spiritual sweetness, effect a sweet aroma. As such, the interconnectedness of physiology and religious experience adds new layers of interpretation to long known objects and rituals in late medieval Christianity, and to the olfactory dimensions behind death, disease, and burial within one particularly illustrative Antwerp church.