From a review in the LRB of Edward Luttwak's latest book comes this point about Byzantine diplomacy:
"Christianity certainly helped to combat prejudice – not only because of its universal embrace but also because it dissuaded its followers from bathing, and therefore removed the barrier of smell that greatly inhibited Roman intimacy with barbarians."
It is true that some forms of early Christianity regarded dirt as virtuous, in as much as it showed that you despised the body. This didn't last. The earliest quote for cleanliness in the OED is from 1430 "So is my meaning clean devoyde of syn Grounded and set upon al clenlynesse" and by then the word has already become, as the dictionary says, "the adjective of moral purity". While it is theoretically possible that one would regard it as a solely moral virtue, I don't think that did happen, and "Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness" comes out of John Wesley's collected sermons.
It's difficult nowadays to construct a defence of filth and smelliness as a sign of virtue. The last Christian seriously to attempt it would I suppose be Tolstoy. It's all an interesting demonstration of the enormous flexibility of religious belief. You couldn't say with any confidence which of these two opposing viewpoints was the real true Christian one.
