DISPOSAL OF WASTE BY WATER:
AN URBAN, NOT A RURAL PRACTICE
Disposing of human waste by using water power is an idea
monks inherited from the Romans. It was an urban, not a
rural, invention. In a purely agricultural society the nitrogenous
content of this matter was far too valuable a substance
for replenishing the soil to be discarded in a stream.
The monks whose background was rural could not help
being impressed by the skillful engineering that went into
these water systems and lent to a primordial problem of
nature a touch of inventive elegance. Now and then, in
medieval sources, one runs into a passage that seems to
reflect this concept, such as the remark in the
Gesta Abbatum
Lobbensium which lists the following among the accomplishments
of Abbot Levinus (twelfth century):
He built a new but more elegant room of sewers, joined to the dormitory,
in the place of the old one (literally: from the old one);
which room, below cleansed from filth by incessantly running
water, he made more honorable above for the necessary use with
seats furnished by suitable beauty.[688]