Baldness in the Middle Ages: Myths and Beliefs

Bald scalps stare out from medieval manuscripts more often than most people expect. They belong to monks with shaved crowns, saintly elders, a few comic villains, and the occasional courtier under a hood. If you’ve ever fallen down a rabbit hole of medieval recipes or stared at a miniature of Paul the Apostle with his unmistakable receding hairline, you know hair in the Middle Ages carried meaning—moral, medical, cosmic. Over the years, working with recipe collections and medical miscellanies in archives from London to Bologna, I’ve been struck by how persistently baldness sits at the intersection of science, satire, and spirituality. This article pulls those threads together: the myths people believed, the cures they tried, the theology and medicine they marshaled, and how much of it still echoes in assumptions people make today.

What “baldness” meant to medieval people

Medieval texts use a few different terms for hair loss, and they don’t always match modern categories.

• Alopecia: A Greek medical term, used in Latin and Arabic translations, meaning hair falling out. Often applied to patchy loss.

• Calvities: Latin for general baldness, sometimes meaning male-pattern baldness.

• Tinea, porrigo, favus: Terms for scalp diseases, often fungal infections or infestations causing scaly patches and hair breakage.

• Ophiasis: A serpent-like pattern of hair loss described in Galenic sources and taken up in scholastic medicine.

A barber-surgeon in 1300s Paris might call a shiny pate calvities, but the village healer writing in a recipe roll could lump various scalp problems together as tinea. That matters, because some medieval “cures for baldness” would have helped treat ringworm or lice (and bring hair back), while others tried to fix hereditary hairline recession with no chance of success.

From a modern vantage point, male-pattern baldness is the most visible form, and its genetics haven’t changed much. Large modern studies suggest about 30% of men show noticeable recession by age 30 and around 50% by age 50. Medieval Europe would likely have looked similar, even if we can’t pull percentages from parish rolls. What does differ is how visible baldness was day-to-day: hats, hoods, veils, and monastic tonsures shaped what people saw.

Everyday realities behind the myths

It helps to put two obvious facts on the table.

First, hair loss was common. My favorite line scribbled in the margin of one 15th-century household book reads, “For hair that falls away, use this,” followed by a recipe that includes nettles and vinegar. That quick, practical note shows hair loss was a normal life annoyance alongside toothache and sore joints.

Second, helmets and hats weren’t making medieval men bald. This myth shows up in armor forums and pub conversations, but squeezing a scalp for a few hours doesn’t reprogram follicles for life. If anything, headgear made hair loss more private. Knights wore padded coifs under bascinets; townsmen wore chaperons and hoods; women covered hair for modesty and fashion. Baldness could hide in plain sight.

Meanwhile, scalp infections were common, especially among children. Excavations in medieval York and London turn up fine-toothed combs packed with lice nits. Fungal infections like tinea capitis don’t fossilize in the same way, but cramped living, shared bedding, and limited hygiene made them likely. This is one reason many “baldness” cures revolve around washing, shaving, sulphur, and vinegar.

The medical model: humors, heat, and dryness

Medieval physicians worked within a humoral framework inherited from Greek and Roman medicine and deepened by Arabic scholars. In that system, health balances four humors: blood (hot and wet), phlegm (cold and wet), yellow bile (hot and dry), and black bile (cold and dry). Skin and hair were constantly read through this lens.

• Hair thrives in a well-moistened scalp.

• Heat and dryness, especially concentrated in the head, “cook” the moisture away, leading to thinning or loss.

• Excess cold could also harm hair by reducing nourishment from the blood.

This thinking shows in remedies: moisturize a dry scalp with oils, soften it with emollients, stimulate it with warming spices when circulation seems weak, or cool it when the head is inflamed. Physicians also reached back to Aristotle’s old claim that baldness was tied to virility—semen and hair both arising from the body’s heat. That association survived in scholastic lectures and sometimes hardened into a moral judgment: too much sex dries the body, thus the hair. You can find both the physiological and moral strands braided together in medical commentaries and sermons.

Several key authorities guided thinking:

• Galen: The master of humoral theory, widely excerpted in Latin translations.

• Avicenna (Ibn Sina): His Canon of Medicine, translated in the 12th century, details alopecia causes and treatments with remarkable nuance. He distinguishes patchy hair loss from diffuse thinning, suggests purgatives for systemic imbalance, and prescribes topical stimulants (e.g., myrtle, black cumin, pepper in vinegar).

• The Salernitan tradition (Constantinus Africanus, the Regimen sanitatis): Practical regimens emphasize diet, bathing, and seasonal adjustments for maintaining healthy hair.

• Later scholastics like Bartholomaeus Anglicus: His 13th-century encyclopedia compiles medical lore into tidy summaries, so you see alopecia placed in a broader map of bodily properties.

For non-physicians, the logic still filtered down: “Your head is dry; oil it and warm it so the hair may be nourished” is the recipe-writer’s version of a Galenic lecture.

Stars and scissors: astrology’s say over hair

Medical astrology, the respectable cousin of horoscopes, shaped therapeutic timing. Physicians and barbers consulted almanacs that advised when to bleed, purge, or cut based on lunar phases and planetary hours. The “Zodiac Man” placed the head under Aries, and hair, in humoral shorthand, was tied to the moistening power of the Moon and the drying influence of Saturn.

• Cutting hair on a waxing moon was said to promote growth; the waning moon made cuts last longer.

• Saturn, a cold-and-dry planet, had a reputation for causing wasting and thinning; Mars added heat.

• Remedies to counter dryness were ideally begun when the Moon was in a moist sign (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) and not afflicted by Saturn.

Does this sound strange? In practice, it meant barbers had busier weeks each month. Whether or not the stars helped, the schedule kept a rhythm to grooming and minor care that made people feel they were working with, not against, nature.

Religion and symbolism: sin, sanctity, and the tonsure

Walk through any gallery of medieval art, and baldness leaps out from halos. Two images matter most:

• Saint Paul: Usually shown with a receding hairline and pointed beard, Paul’s baldness signaled wisdom, zeal, and age. Artists made him instantly recognizable.

• The monk’s tonsure: Western monks shaved a ring on the crown (the corona), a ritual mark of humility and clerical identity. Debates over the “right” tonsure went deep—at the Synod of Whitby (664), the Roman corona won out over the Celtic front-shaved style. To modern eyes, a tonsured head can look “bald,” but it carried pride of place.

Sermons sometimes used the story of Elisha and the mocking youths (2 Kings 2) to warn against scorning the bald. You’ll also find the occasional preacher riffing on Samson: cut hair, lost strength; cut sin, gained grace. Women’s hair was charged with meaning too—glory, temptation, modesty—though female hair loss rarely appears in moral literature. Veiling hid plenty.

Jewish and Islamic texts added their own frames. Rabbi Moses Maimonides, a physician, writes about alopecia and scalp disease in his medical works with a practical tone, mirroring Greco-Arabic medicine. In Islamic medical encyclopedias, alopecia is treated with cooling and moistening mixtures, in line with humoral thinking. None of these traditions stigmatized baldness as a sign of divine curse; rather, they slotted it into a moral-physical cosmos where bodies reflected states of balance and piety shaped how one bore them.

Laughter and the literature of hair

If medicine and theology were sober, literature had jokes to spare. A few favorites:

• Chaucer sketches a Monk whose head “shoon as any glass.” The joke isn’t that he’s bald, but that his polished scalp telegraphs luxury—he’s no ascetic tucked away with books, he’s a sportsman with greyhounds.

• French fabliaux and moral tales toss barbs at bald merchants or cuckolds, riffing on the classical association of baldness with lust and age.

• Proverb collections pair “bald” with “bold” or “old,” often with a wink.

Ridicule aside, the trope of the bald sage persisted. Baldness plus beard equaled gravitas—a visual shorthand still at work in icons and university seals.

What the recipes actually say

Medieval compilations are filled with recipes “for hair that will not grow.” A few common patterns appear again and again across Latin, Arabic, and vernacular sources.

Oils and emollients

• Olive oil infused with rosemary, sage, or bay leaves.

• Goose or duck fat blended with beeswax for a thicker unguent.

• Almond oil mixed with myrtle and rose water.

Why they used them: Soften a dry scalp, trap moisture, gently stimulate the skin. Even today, a scalp massage with a light oil can temporarily increase local blood flow.

Stimulants and rubefacients

• Mustard, black pepper, and ginger pounded with vinegar.

• Onion or garlic juice mixed with honey or wine.

• Nettle leaves bruised and rubbed in.

Logic: Warming, irritating agents bring “heat” to the surface and “draw” nourishment to the follicles. Some of these cause a noticeable tingle; too much can burn.

Antifungal and antiparasitic agents

• Sulphur powders or sulphur-lime washes.

• Vinegar or old urine (ammonia) as a scalp wash.

• Verdigris (copper acetate), alum, and pitch in small amounts.

These mixtures targeted tinea and lice rather than hereditary baldness. Sulphur does have antifungal and antiparasitic effects; vinegar can change scalp pH; shaving and frequent combing helped.

Animal-derived nostrums

• Bear or fox fat, considered “hotter,” to awaken the scalp.

• The infamous “burnt mouse” mixed into grease, a recipe that descends from Pliny and reappears in early medieval leechbooks.

• Viper broth or burned bees reduced to ash and mixed with oil.

Do they work? As symbols, absolutely—wild vitality to spark growth. As medicine, any benefit comes from the carrier oil and massaging, not the exotic additive.

Mineral and caustic preparations

• Quicklime tempered in oil, then washed off.

• Arsenic or lead-based depilatories for unwanted hair, sometimes followed by “regrowth” treatments when too much came off.

• Vitriol (sulphates) in tiny quantities.

Some of these are dangerous. Many medieval compilers include cautionary notes: test on the arm, don’t leave on long, counter with rose oil if it burns.

Named sources and snapshots

• Avicenna’s Canon: Suggests black cumin (Nigella sativa) with vinegar, sometimes combined with myrtle, pepper, and galls; also recommends purging melancholic excess in systemic cases.

• The Trotula (Salerno): Offers cosmetic recipes for women’s hair—adding shine, dyeing, and, occasionally, regrowth after overzealous depilation—with ingredients like alum, soda ash, and aromatic oils.

• English and German household books (14th–15th c.): Short, practical notes—“For baldness, rub onion and salt; for tinea, shave and wash with wine and vinegar.”

From a modern standpoint, the antifungal mixes and consistent washing were the winners when hair loss had an infectious cause. For genetic baldness, only the regular scalp massage had marginal benefit.

What likely worked—and what didn’t

Let’s separate plausible from fanciful.

• Likely helpful for scalp disease: Sulphur preparations, vinegar washes, shaving, frequent combing, rosemary or thyme infusions (mild antimicrobial properties), and general hygiene.

• Possibly helpful for appearance: Oils for shine, darkening concoctions (walnut hulls, henna, iron filings in vinegar) to reduce contrast between hair and scalp.

• Limited but plausible benefit: Regular scalp massage with warm oil increases local blood flow. That’s not going to reverse male-pattern baldness, but it can make hair look a bit healthier.

• Unhelpful or risky: Animal-fat talismans (burnt mouse), caustic minerals without skill, lead- or arsenic-based compounds beyond microdoses in skilled hands.

Modern medications like minoxidil and finasteride didn’t exist, but medieval practice wasn’t blind guesswork. Within their model, many treatments had internal logic, and a surprising number map onto antifungal hygiene or basic cosmetology.

Women, hair, and quiet fixes

Women’s hair operated under a different social economy. Veiling covered many sins; elaborate braids and false additions masked thinning. Childbirth, dietary stress, and illness caused temporary shedding—problems addressed more in household recipe books than in scholastic treatises.

The Trotula and similar texts discuss:

• Nourishing oils and scalp washes for shine and thickness.

• Dyes and rinses using walnut, henna-like herbs, and iron mordants.

• Care after depilatories accidentally removed brow or temple hair—the advice often boils down to gentle oils and patience.

Because the stakes for women’s hair were tied to modesty and beauty rather than clerical identity or comic trope, the surviving commentary is more practical and less moralized.

Barbers, surgeons, and the business of hair

Walk down a medieval street and you’d see striped poles later linked to barbers, shops offering bloodletting, tooth-pulling, and basic surgery. Barbers handled:

• Shaving tonsures and beards.

• Treating tinea by shaving and washing.

• Applying plasters and ungents for scalp conditions.

Wigs for men didn’t become a fashion until the 17th century, but hairpieces existed. Women used pads of wool or horsehair for volume and sometimes added human hair braids. Men with prominent baldness leaned on hats—hoods, caps, felted hats—as both fashion and cover.

The trade also ran on combs, oils, and perfumes. Herbalists sold rosemary and bay; apothecaries stocked sulphur and alum. A city with a university or cathedral had a bustling micro-economy of hair care long before perukes lined shop windows.

Common myths and how to recognize them

A handful of claims come up repeatedly. Here’s how to spot and debunk them.

• Myth: Helmets made knights bald. Reality: Genetics and age did the heavy lifting. Helmets might cause broken hair shafts or temporary traction issues, but not progressive baldness.

• Myth: Baldness proved sexual excess. Reality: A moralized reading of humoral theory. While sex did figure into medical calculations of heat and dryness, medieval physicians noted many causes for hair loss, including age, illness, and local disease.

• Myth: The Church despised baldness. Reality: The Church ritualized tonsure and honored bald saints; ridicule appears in satire, not doctrine.

• Myth: Medieval people had no idea what they were doing. Reality: They lacked modern pharmacology, but they recognized infectious scalp disease, used antifungals like sulphur, and adopted decent hygiene measures—often effectively for the problems they were actually treating.

When evaluating a claim, ask: Does the source belong to satire or medicine? Does the proposed mechanism match humoral logic? Is the recipe treating a disease or attempting to reverse hereditary recession?

How to read a medieval hair-loss recipe (step-by-step)

If you’re a reenactor, a student, or a curious reader, this quick reading method has saved me from many a wild goose chase.

1) Identify the problem type: Is the recipe for alopecia (general loss), tinea (scaly, itchy patches), or “falling hair” after illness? Words like “scab,” “worm,” or “itch” point to infection. 2) Note the humoral action: Is the mixture warming, cooling, moistening, drying? Pepper and mustard heat; rose water cools; oil moistens; vinegar astringes. 3) Look for an antimicrobial core: Sulphur, vinegar, wine, and certain herbs (rosemary, thyme) may target infection. 4) Spot the carrier: Most actives need oil, vinegar, or wine to carry them. The carrier often does more good than the exotic additive. 5) Assess risk: Quicklime, arsenic, verdigris, and lead are red flags. If you’re experimenting for educational purposes, swap in safe analogues and never apply caustics to skin. 6) Check regimen advice: Does the recipe combine topical care with diet, sleep, or bathing directions? That signals a more thoughtful medical approach. 7) Consider timing: Some texts advise moon phases or seasonal windows. Whether or not you follow them, timing suggests how medieval practitioners paced treatment.

As a practical, safe experiment, I’ve demoed a rosemary-thyme infusion in mild cider vinegar followed by a diluted almond oil massage for students. It makes historical sense for tinea-like problems and is gentle enough for a classroom setting, as long as no one is allergic.

Interpreting sources: pitfalls to avoid

I’ve watched smart readers trip over the same hurdles:

• Taking satire literally. Chaucer’s shiny Monk is a caricature, not a dermatology case study. Fabliaux are not ethnographies.

• Confusing tonsure with baldness. A shaved crown is a ritual mark; it’s not evidence of natural hair loss.

• Missing the disease/hereditary distinction. Many cures “for baldness” made hair grow because they treated infection, not receding hairlines.

• Skipping the humoral logic. Recipes are not random; they embody a consistent theory. Read them with that grammar in mind.

• Projecting modern shame. We carry a lot of baggage about hair. Medieval people laughed at baldness but also honored it; the social meanings were different.

To keep your footing, triangulate: look at a medical treatise, a household book, and a piece of art from the same century. Patterns stand out fast.

Data and estimates: what we can reasonably say

We don’t have scalp surveys from 1275, but a few anchors help:

• Genetics: Variants near the androgen receptor (AR) gene tied to male-pattern baldness are ancient and widespread in European, Middle Eastern, and North African populations. Ancient DNA studies show relevant alleles long predate the Middle Ages.

• Modern prevalence as proxy: With little reason to suspect dramatic differences, assume roughly one in three men had visible recession by 30, and about half by 50.

• Infectious scalp conditions: Archaeoparasitological finds show heavy lice burdens; by analogy with pre-antifungal eras, tinea capitis and other scalp diseases likely affected a significant minority of children, especially in urban centers and convent schools.

• Remedies’ risk profiles: Sulphur is broadly safe topically in modest amounts; lead, arsenic, and strong alkalis are hazardous—then and now.

Numbers aside, the lived landscape would have included many men with thinning crowns, others cleanly shaved, children with patchy infections carefully shaved and treated, and women quietly managing shedding under veils and wimples.

Across cultures: Latin West, Byzantium, and the Islamic world

A quick tour shows how ideas traveled.

• Latin West: Galen and Hippocrates arrived through translations, often via Constantinus Africanus. The Salernitan school blended Mediterranean botanicals with practical regimens, and encyclopedists packaged it for wider audiences.

• Byzantine medicine: Preserved Greek commentary more directly and maintained a strong tradition of compounded ointments and unguents for skin diseases. Iconography also kept the bald sage motif alive.

• Islamic medicine: Avicenna, al-Razi, and later compilers catalogued alopecia and tinea with clarity, emphasizing both systemic humoral correction and topical therapy. Ingredients like black cumin, myrtle, and galls recur.

• Jewish physicians in Iberia and Provence: Working in Arabic and Hebrew, they bridged traditions, translating and commenting. Maimonides’ medical works echo the same cause-and-effect structure on alopecia’s dryness and treatment.

Trade routes meant ingredients—myrtle, alum, sulphur, and perfumes—circulated widely. A 14th-century apothecary in Barcelona and one in Palermo might stock near-identical hair remedies.

Case files from the manuscripts

A few snapshots from texts I’ve handled or seen in reliable editions help ground the generalities.

• A medical miscellany in a late 14th-century English hand includes: “For tinea: shave the head and wash with wine; anoint with sulphur in vinegar and oil of roses, and keep warm.” Straightforward, and likely effective for ringworm.

• A French household book, c. 1450, gives: “For hair that falls away after fever, boil sage and rosemary in white wine, bathe the head, and rub gently with almond oil. Beware strong heat.” Post-illness shedding is self-limiting; the advice is mostly gentle care.

• A Latin recipe roll, probably 13th century: “To make hair grow on a bald place: take onion, strong vinegar, and a little pepper; pound and strain; apply with wool to the place until it reddens.” A classic rubefacient—unpleasant but logical in context.

The manuscripts smell of vinegar and tallow even centuries later. You can understand why households favored the simpler, less caustic entries.

Why the myths endured

Three forces kept baldness myths alive.

• Authority. Aristotle and Galen said heat and dryness cause baldness; scholastics repeated it with respect. The sex-and-baldness link lingered because it fit the theory.

• Symbolism. Art and literature made baldness visually meaningful—sage or satiric. Those images stick, shaping expectations long after the theories fade.

• Human nature. Hair is emotional territory. Where medicine lacks an easy fix, stories rush in to explain and console: helmets, sins, cures from the forest’s slyest animals.

If you’ve ever scrolled past a “miracle hair regrowth” ad, you’ve seen the same pattern in a new costume.

Practical takeaways for readers and researchers

For anyone reading medieval sources—or designing a historically informed demonstration—these principles help.

• Separate hereditary recession from contagious scalp disease. Use the right recipes for the right problem in your reconstructions.

• Lean on safe, plausible ingredients: rosemary, thyme, myrtle, black cumin, gentle vinegars, and light oils. Avoid anything with lead, arsenic, strong alkalis, or verdigris on skin.

• Include regimen advice. Medieval medicine wasn’t only ointments. Sleep, diet, bathing frequency, and hat-wearing appear alongside recipes.

• Use timing as context, not dogma. If you want to demonstrate medical astrology, pick a waxing moon for a hair-trimming workshop; explain the rationale as part of the performance.

• Read across genres. A hair joke in a fabliau tells you about attitudes; Avicenna tells you about therapy; a miniature of Saint Paul tells you about iconography. Together, they give texture.

A short guide to modern parallels

A few medieval beliefs have modern cousins.

• The scalp “needs circulation.” Massaging oil into the skin won’t reverse genetics, but the comfort and shine were valued then and now.

• Antifungal shampoos for dandruff and tinea: sulphur and selenium stand in for the old sulphur-and-vinegar—same principle, better chemistry.

• Cosmetic camouflages: fibers and darkening rinses echo walnut and iron-vinegar dyes. Medievals did the same to reduce contrast between hair and scalp.

Whenever you catch a headline promising a botanically pure, star-aligned hair cure, imagine a medieval apothecary smiling in recognition.

Baldness as identity: pride, patience, and performance

One thing that surprised me in the archives is how little angst appears in sources compared to the energy spent on beards and women’s hairstyles. Baldness could be mocked, but it was also folded into roles:

• Clergy: The tonsure let hair loss pass without comment.

• Elders and scholars: The visual shorthand of bald head and beard signaled authority.

• Laymen: Hats and hoods made hair an accessory choice.

When people did seek cures, they mostly did it pragmatically—try the vinegar wash, rub with oil, move on with life. The panic and medicalization we see around hair loss today has a different temperature.

Final thoughts

Strip away the romance and the ridicule, and medieval beliefs about baldness come down to a consistent worldview. Bodies were governed by balance; hair was a barometer for heat and moisture; the heavens set the clock; and remedies aimed to coax nature gently back into line. Some of those cures were soothing and sensible, others caustic or comical, but they weren’t random. And while the cold-and-dry logic of Saturn won’t bring back anyone’s hairline, the mix of practical care and meaning-making feels familiar. People then, like people now, wanted their bodies to cooperate, their scalps to behave, and their mirrors to be kind.

If you’re approaching the topic as a researcher, start with Avicenna, the Salernitan texts, and a few late medieval household books. If you’re coming at it as a living historian, lean on rosemary, vinegar, and a gentle hand. And if you’re browsing for the joy of it, keep your eye out for those gleaming crowns in manuscripts—they tell a bigger story about medicine, identity, and the everyday negotiations between nature and culture.