Castile soap is an olive oil based

hard soap Hard soap or curd soap is a kind of soap. Examples are Nablus soap, Aleppo soap, Castile soap, and Marseille soap or ''savon de Marseille''. During the preparation of the soap, common salt ( sodium chloride) is added to the liquid soap mass. This ...

made in a style similar to that originating in the Castile region of

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

History

The origins of Castile soap go back to the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

, where

Aleppo soap Aleppo soap (also known as savon d'Alep, laurel soap, Syrian soap, or ghar soap, the Arabic word "غَار", meaning 'laurel') is a handmade, hard bar soap associated with the city of Aleppo, Syria. Aleppo soap is classified as a Castile soap as ...

-makers have made

s based on olive and laurel oil for millennia. It is commonly believed that the

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

brought Aleppo soap back to Europe in the 11th century, based on the claim that the earliest soap made in Europe was just after the Crusades, but in fact, the Greeks knew about soap in the first century AD and

Zosimos of Panopolis Zosimos of Panopolis ( el, Ζώσιμος ὁ Πανοπολίτης; also known by the Latin name Zosimus Alchemista, i.e. "Zosimus the Alchemist") was a Greco-Egyptian alchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning ...

described soap and soapmaking in c. 300 AD. Following the Crusades, production of this soap extended to the whole

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

area. Early soap-makers in the Mediterranean area did not have easy access to laurel oil and therefore dropped it from their formulations, thereby creating an olive-oil soap now known as Castile soap. Castile soap is so called because it was produced on a large scale in the territories of the Crown of Castile, from where it was exported to numerous places in Europe, mainly during the Modern Age. Although the Crown of Castile was not the only producer of this type of soap, it was its producer par excellence. In the 17th century, the soap caused controversy in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, since it supplanted the unnamed local soap after the Spanish

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

manufacturers purchased the

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

on the soap from the cash-strapped Carolinian government. Its ties to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

caused a public-relations campaign to be established, featuring washerwomen showing how much more effective local soaps were than Castile soap. The sale of a monopoly in

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

England to a Catholic company caused a great uproar, ending with the Castile soap company eventually being stripped of the monopoly. Importations of "Castile soap" through

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

appear in the London port books of 1567–1568, though the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

'' has no references to "Castile soap" earlier than 1616. In his article "A short history of soap", John Hunt maintains that ''

barilla ''Barilla'' refers to several species of salt-tolerant (halophyte) plants that, until the 19th century, were the primary source of soda ash and hence of sodium carbonate. The word "barilla" was also used directly to refer to the soda ash obtained ...

'' (an impure form of

sodium carbonate Sodium carbonate, , (also known as washing soda, soda ash and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2CO3 and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield moderately alkaline solutions ...

obtained from

halophyte A halophyte is a salt-tolerant plant that grows in soil or waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray, such as in saline semi-deserts, mangrove swamps, marshes and sloughs and seashores. Th ...

plant ashes that were high in

sodium Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin ''natrium'') and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable ...

) was boiled with locally available olive oil, rather than

tallow Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides. In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, includ ...

. Adding brine to the boiled liquor made the soap float to the surface, where the soap-boiler could skim it off, leaving the excess lye and impurities to settle out. While Aleppo soap tends to be green, this produced what was probably the first white hard soap, which hardened further as it aged, without losing its whiteness, forming ''jabón de Castilla''.

Apothecaries ''Apothecary'' () is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses '' materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern chemist (British English) or pharmacist (British and North Ameri ...

knew the product by the Latin names of ''sapo hispaniensis'' (Spanish soap) or of ''sapo castilliensis'' (Castilian soap).Soap (data)
fro
Pharmaceutical-journal.com
Retrieved Oct 2014. Some manufacturers have redefined Castile soap to use little to no olive oil. This undercuts the vendors who sell real olive oil soap.Dole
"A Coconut is not an Olive"
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History

See also

References

Further reading