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People went swimming in the Middle Ages for a bunch of reasons, including cooling off in the summer and getting clean. Some of these are more ceremonial, such as baptisms, or people swimming in the Fountain of Youth. The focus here is more on swimming for leisure -- how people went swimming in the Middle Ages for fun -- than ceremonial dips in water. This also avoids actual baths (baths and bathing are on another page here) as well as depictions of Venus, Bathsheba or Susannah bathing. What clothes did medieval people swim in? Men often seem to wear their breeches while swimming -- if they wear anything at all. For historical instructions on swimming, see A short introduction for to learne to swimme, gathered out of Master Digbies Booke of the Art of Swimming. See also Early British Swimming.
The Fishes in the Sea, whose continuall life is spent in the water, in them dooth no man denie swimming to be the onely gift which Nature hath bestowed vpon them, and shall wee thinke it then artificiall in a man, which in it dooth by many degrees excell them, as dyuing downe to the bottoms of the deepest waters, and fetching from thence whatsoeuer is there sunck downe, transporting things to and fro at his pleasure, sitting, tumbling, leaping, walking, and at his ease perfourmeth many fine feates in the water, which far exceeds the naturall gifts bestowed on Fishes? nay so fit is the constitution of mans body, that who so dooth but with himselfe throughly consider of it, cannot but accord with mee in thys, that a man of all creatures vnder the circumference of heauen, naturally excelleth in swimming.
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