Domestic water supply, or the obtaining of water reliable enough in quantity and tolerable enough in quality to satisfy the drinking, cooking, and washing needs of a household community, is always a pressing problem. Lugubrious Old Testament prophets knew the sense of hopelessness which gripped Mediterranean people, even privileged folk, when their customary sources of water ran dry. In early medieval Italy those deprived of a supply of water for their domestic needs felt as disheartened as people always have in such circumstances.

Solutions to the problem of domestic water procurement were various. In a Virgilian mood, the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon presented the inhabitants of Italy's cities as the drinkers of various rivers: the riverine water people drank established their identity. Certainly rivers, brooks, and other natural water courses provided many early medieval households with their water, perhaps more so in rural districts, where these resources were more accessible and “purer” than in cities. Yet mention of these water sources appears surprisingly little in the documents, and when natural sources do appear circumstances are exceptional. We may observe people turning to streams and similar natural sources primarily in emergencies, such as during wars, when normal supplies had been subverted. In the surviving record even natural springs, whose “purity” was less questionable than rivers into which sewage flushed, are not often approached by people, though they presumably were frequented and used for specific purposes, like washing clothes.