Religion in the Middle Ages

[mangalavara]

The process of Christianization was a slow one and, even toward the end of the Middle Ages, many people still practiced 'folk magic' and held to the beliefs of their ancestors even while observing Christian rites and rituals.

So, basically, Folk Christianity was mainstream Christianity.

 

[metis]

Religion in the Middle Ages

"Christianity did not immediately win the hearts and minds of the people of Europe. The process of Christianization was a slow one and, even toward the end of the Middle Ages, many people still practiced 'folk magic' and held to the beliefs of their ancestors even while observing Christian rites and rituals. The pre-Christian people – now commonly referenced as 'pagans' – had no such label for themselves. The word 'pagan' is a Christian designation from the French meaning a 'rustic,' one who came from the rural countryside, where the old beliefs and practices held tightly long after urban centers had more or less adopted orthodox Christian belief....

The belief in fairies, sprites, and ghosts ('ghosts' defined as spirits of the once-living) was so deeply embedded that parish priests allowed members of their congregations to continue practices of appeasement even though the Church instructed them to make clear such entities were demonic and not to be trifled with. Rituals involving certain incantations and spells, eating or displaying certain types of vegetables, performing certain acts or wearing a certain type of charm – all pagan practices with a long history – continued to be observed alongside going to Church, veneration of the saints, Christian prayer, confession, and acts of contrition....

In the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500 CE), the Church continued to root out heresy on the large scale by suppressing upstart religious sects, individually by encouraging priests to punish heterodox belief or practice, and by labeling any critic or reformer a 'heretic' outside of God's grace. The peasantry, though nominally orthodox Catholic, continued to observe folk practices and, as scholar Patrick J. Geary notes, "knowledge of Christian belief did not mean that individuals used this knowledge in ways that coincided with officially sanctioned practice" (202). Since a medieval peasant was taught the prayers of the Our Father and Hail Mary in Latin, a language they did not understand, they recited them as incantations to ward off misfortune or bring luck, paying little attention to the importance of the words as understood by the Church. The mass itself, also conducted in Latin, was equally mysterious to the peasantry....

The unending struggle to bring the peasantry in line with orthodoxy eventually relented as practices formerly condemned by the Church – such as astrology, oneirology (the study of dreams), demonology, and the use of talismans and charms – were recognized as significant sources of income. Sales of relics like a saint's toe or a splinter of the True Cross were common and, for a price, a priest could interpret one's dreams, chart one's stars, or name whatever demon was preventing a good marriage for one's son or daughter..."


Who won in this instance? It seems like despite all the work the Church has tried to keep people in line with Orthodox Christian practices; it cannot be done, and Pagan Folk beliefs always win out.

(Number of adherents does not equal the true number of Orthodox believers).

Since Jesus' Two Commandments deal with love of God and love of neighbor, these other factors are of far lesser importance.

 

[The Hammer]

Since Jesus' Two Commandments deal with love of God and love of neighbor, these other factors are of far lesser importance.

Tell that to the Church then.

 

[The Hammer]

It just is not credible to maintain that people did not know the meaning of basic prayers. Latin was used a lot in those days and countless hymns and carols contain bits of Latin, the meaning of which was obviously well understood by the people. There are versions of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English.

Afaik only the clergy knew latin. And they certainly weren't schooling the local peasantry in it. Maybe some of the wealthier more well to do. But the locals, nah.

Edit:

"Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The Romance languages spoken in the were often referred to as Latin, since the Romance languages were all descended from Vulgar Latin itself. Lower-class individuals usually did not need to know the Latin terminology at all so there was little reason to learn it. Part of their catechism before first communion would be learning the rudimentary theology behind that mass. The local parish priest usually oversaw such instruction. Famously difficult Latin authors in the medieval period prided themselves on being linguistic truffle-hunters revelling in using obscure vocabulary. Middle English was a form of the English language usually spoken after the Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century. During church services, audiences for the most part were in total ignorance of the words spoken. "

 

[exchemist]

Afaik only the clergy knew latin. And they certainly weren't schooling the local peasantry in it. Maybe some of the wealthier more well to do. But the locals, nah.

Edit:

"Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The Romance languages spoken in the were often referred to as Latin, since the Romance languages were all descended from Vulgar Latin itself. Lower-class individuals usually did not need to know the Latin terminology at all so there was little reason to learn it. Part of their catechism before first communion would be learning the rudimentary theology behind that mass. The local parish priest usually oversaw such instruction. Famously difficult Latin authors in the medieval period prided themselves on being linguistic truffle-hunters revelling in using obscure vocabulary. Middle English was a form of the English language usually spoken after the Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century. During church services, audiences for the most part were in total ignorance of the words spoken. "

Do you really think the basic instruction referred to here would have failed to include the two most widely said prayers in Christendom? Bear in mind that in most countries the local language was actually derived from Latin. It would not have been rocket science.

 

[The Hammer]

Do you really think the basic instruction referred to here would have failed to include the two most widely said prayers in Christendom? Bear in mind that in most countries the local language was actually derived from Latin. It would not have been rocket science.

Yes, I do believe that they did not know the churches Latin. Maybe a few words here and there like I can pick up out of Spanish, having been raised around it and given minimal instruction (even attended a Spanish roman Catholic church).

But not enough to understand a full church service.

Maybe they knew the words in Latin to the prayer, but did they "understand it"? I doubt it was enforced or required. More of a "repeat after me" scenario.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It just is not credible to maintain that people did not know the meaning of basic prayers. Latin was used a lot in those days and countless hymns and carols contain bits of Latin, the meaning of which was obviously well understood by the people. There are versions of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English.

Knowing Latin (or anything other than your mother tongue) meant you were probably educated and important. A lot of people couldn't read, let alone understand a language they rarely heard outside of church.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Yes, I do believe that they did not know the churches Latin. Maybe a few words here and there like I can pick up out of Spanish, having been raised around it and given minimal instruction (even attended a Spanish roman Catholic church).

But not enough to understand a full church service.

Maybe they knew the words in Latin to the prayer, but did they "understand it"? I doubt it was enforced or required. More of a "repeat after me" scenario.

I agree you are correct. If people could widely understand Latin why would Alfred the Great have made an effort into translating the Bible into English so it could be understood and undertaking literacy efforts so it could be read?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Do you really think the basic instruction referred to here would have failed to include the two most widely said prayers in Christendom? Bear in mind that in most countries the local language was actually derived from Latin. It would not have been rocket science.

They apparently did or there wouldn't have been an urge to translate them so people could understand them.

 

[The Hammer]

Thank you for posting this information, The Hammer. It helps me better understand how paganism greatly influenced Christianity.

You're welcome

 

[Rival]

The issue of Latin is an often misunderstood one. Both Shadow Wolf and Exchemist are spouting some truth. Here's the main point:

In the Early Middle Ages Latin was still spoken and understood, but it is not what modern scholars, perhaps rather arbitrarily, call Latin. Nowadays when we refer to Latin were are generally referring to the, usually written, language of such as Cicero and Tacitus. However, when those in the Early Middle Ages referred to Latin, they meant Latin as they spoke it. The languages we now call 'Old French' or 'Old Italian' or, to go back further, the languages these peoples termed 'Romanz' were Latin. This is how the pronunciation of Latin had changed. I'll give an example of what I'm talking about using English:

'One' - we now say this with a 'w' sound and no longer pronounce the 'e', and yet the spelling has stayed the same. Back in the day, this would have been said as 'on' or some variant thereof. The same thing happened in Mediaeval Latin. For example, in the Pater Noster we get this in Latin:

Pater noster qui es in caelis

Which in Old Piccard was said like this:

Peres nostres qui es es chiuls

So they would write the Classical Latin version, but pronounce it in the Piccardian way. Everyone did, in fact, understand this.

It would have been this way until around the 9th century, with the Carolingian Church Latin reforms, but even then, these folks would have been so used to the Mass by this point it likely made little difference. Priests were likely still saying the words in the vernacular in many Churches as this is how they understood Latin.

Naturally as these languages evolved further they became no longer mutually intelligible.

 

[Mock Turtle]

View attachment 63776 It is a fascinating subject @The Hammer . One of my favourite places is the Scottish island of Iona. These are a part of the remains of an ancient convent there. Although it is very faint, there remains, carved into the wall an image of a woman which could be described as pornographic. The Christians who built the place still used customs from the old religion to ward off evil spirits.

The island has strong associations with St Columba. He referred to Jesus as "his druid".

If anybody gets the chance, the island is well worth a visit.

Visited on a yachting holiday in the 1970s once - we felt obliged to - but being so long ago can't remember much - the weather was nice.
Took some photos but probably just within the abbey though.

 

[exchemist]

Knowing Latin (or anything other than your mother tongue) meant you were probably educated and important. A lot of people couldn't read, let alone understand a language they rarely heard outside of church.

I think we all know that.

What I mean is that people could quite easily know the meaning of bits, most obviously the Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria. I’ve sung enough old carols to know it was common to intersperse well-known Latin phrases into English text.cf. Ding dong merrily on high, Adam lay ybounden etc. You don’t need to know a whole language to pick up the meaning of phrases that are repeated week in, week out. We all know what kyrie eleison means, even if we don’t know any Ancient Greek.

It seems to me there is always a danger of patronising or underestimating people long ago. They weren’t stupid, back then.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You're using words (speaking/reading/writing), so you are already using our reliance on woo (abstraction).

“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There​

 

[KW]

Religion in the Middle Ages

"Christianity did not immediately win the hearts and minds of the people of Europe. The process of Christianization was a slow one and, even toward the end of the Middle Ages, many people still practiced 'folk magic' and held to the beliefs of their ancestors even while observing Christian rites and rituals. The pre-Christian people – now commonly referenced as 'pagans' – had no such label for themselves. The word 'pagan' is a Christian designation from the French meaning a 'rustic,' one who came from the rural countryside, where the old beliefs and practices held tightly long after urban centers had more or less adopted orthodox Christian belief....

The belief in fairies, sprites, and ghosts ('ghosts' defined as spirits of the once-living) was so deeply embedded that parish priests allowed members of their congregations to continue practices of appeasement even though the Church instructed them to make clear such entities were demonic and not to be trifled with. Rituals involving certain incantations and spells, eating or displaying certain types of vegetables, performing certain acts or wearing a certain type of charm – all pagan practices with a long history – continued to be observed alongside going to Church, veneration of the saints, Christian prayer, confession, and acts of contrition....

In the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500 CE), the Church continued to root out heresy on the large scale by suppressing upstart religious sects, individually by encouraging priests to punish heterodox belief or practice, and by labeling any critic or reformer a 'heretic' outside of God's grace. The peasantry, though nominally orthodox Catholic, continued to observe folk practices and, as scholar Patrick J. Geary notes, "knowledge of Christian belief did not mean that individuals used this knowledge in ways that coincided with officially sanctioned practice" (202). Since a medieval peasant was taught the prayers of the Our Father and Hail Mary in Latin, a language they did not understand, they recited them as incantations to ward off misfortune or bring luck, paying little attention to the importance of the words as understood by the Church. The mass itself, also conducted in Latin, was equally mysterious to the peasantry....

The unending struggle to bring the peasantry in line with orthodoxy eventually relented as practices formerly condemned by the Church – such as astrology, oneirology (the study of dreams), demonology, and the use of talismans and charms – were recognized as significant sources of income. Sales of relics like a saint's toe or a splinter of the True Cross were common and, for a price, a priest could interpret one's dreams, chart one's stars, or name whatever demon was preventing a good marriage for one's son or daughter..."


Who won in this instance? It seems like despite all the work the Church has tried to keep people in line with Orthodox Christian practices; it cannot be done, and Pagan Folk beliefs always win out.

(Number of adherents does not equal the true number of Orthodox believers).

Pagan beliefs are silly superstitions. Who believes any of that today?

There are 2.3 billion Christians. Not bad starting from a small group of Jewish fishermen.

 

[metis]

Tell that to the Church then.

We know it but not all live it, thus the Church is not monolithic.

 

[Rival]

Pagan beliefs are silly superstitions. Who believes any of that today?

I do.

Many do.

There's also no one set of 'Pagan beliefs', as I'm sure you're aware, so I'm curious to know to which beliefs you refer.

 

[Heyo]

There are 2.3 billion Christians. Not bad starting from a small group of Jewish fishermen.

2.3 billion Christians in 41,000+ denominations. There are a lot more pagans than the average Christian of a specific denomination.

 

[Clara Tea]

Religion in the Middle Ages

"Christianity did not immediately win the hearts and minds of the people of Europe. The process of Christianization was a slow one and, even toward the end of the Middle Ages, many people still practiced 'folk magic' and held to the beliefs of their ancestors even while observing Christian rites and rituals. The pre-Christian people – now commonly referenced as 'pagans' – had no such label for themselves. The word 'pagan' is a Christian designation from the French meaning a 'rustic,' one who came from the rural countryside, where the old beliefs and practices held tightly long after urban centers had more or less adopted orthodox Christian belief....

The belief in fairies, sprites, and ghosts ('ghosts' defined as spirits of the once-living) was so deeply embedded that parish priests allowed members of their congregations to continue practices of appeasement even though the Church instructed them to make clear such entities were demonic and not to be trifled with. Rituals involving certain incantations and spells, eating or displaying certain types of vegetables, performing certain acts or wearing a certain type of charm – all pagan practices with a long history – continued to be observed alongside going to Church, veneration of the saints, Christian prayer, confession, and acts of contrition....

In the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500 CE), the Church continued to root out heresy on the large scale by suppressing upstart religious sects, individually by encouraging priests to punish heterodox belief or practice, and by labeling any critic or reformer a 'heretic' outside of God's grace. The peasantry, though nominally orthodox Catholic, continued to observe folk practices and, as scholar Patrick J. Geary notes, "knowledge of Christian belief did not mean that individuals used this knowledge in ways that coincided with officially sanctioned practice" (202). Since a medieval peasant was taught the prayers of the Our Father and Hail Mary in Latin, a language they did not understand, they recited them as incantations to ward off misfortune or bring luck, paying little attention to the importance of the words as understood by the Church. The mass itself, also conducted in Latin, was equally mysterious to the peasantry....

The unending struggle to bring the peasantry in line with orthodoxy eventually relented as practices formerly condemned by the Church – such as astrology, oneirology (the study of dreams), demonology, and the use of talismans and charms – were recognized as significant sources of income. Sales of relics like a saint's toe or a splinter of the True Cross were common and, for a price, a priest could interpret one's dreams, chart one's stars, or name whatever demon was preventing a good marriage for one's son or daughter..."


Who won in this instance? It seems like despite all the work the Church has tried to keep people in line with Orthodox Christian practices; it cannot be done, and Pagan Folk beliefs always win out.

(Number of adherents does not equal the true number of Orthodox believers).

Mantras by rote (Hail Marys, for example) lost their meaning. They remind me of first graders who are forced to say the pledge of allegiance. Many people want to force kids to say it, because they say that they are pledging to help America. But, most kids don't know what the words mean.

I think that the meaning of a pledge is far more important than the words.

The Mafia counts rosary beads and says Hail Marys (before and after they do evil). It is a way of fixing the evil that they did (or intend to do). I don't think that forgiveness works that way. I think that atonement is necessary, and that means that one has no intent to ever do the foul deed again.

This is one of the failings of the Catholic faith (the idea that people will be forgiven for any sin, so it frees them to sin and sin again).

The Christian faith was intentionally kept in the Latin language so that priests would retain power over the people (because most peasants didn't understand Latin). King James VII of Scotland (who became King James I of England) was among the first (but not the very first) to translate the bible into English (King James Version), so that everyone could understand it if they could read or if someone could read to them.

During the Dark ages, the church passed a rule that Catholic priests could not marry. They wanted to keep the money in the church, rather than spend it on the family members of the priests. Such decisions are against the laws of God. God said "go forth and multiply." In the context of the bible, that meant, have sex and don't worry about nudity (though embarrassed). But, by keeping priests from marrying, they fooled around with little boys, because they went against God's rules.

In following the rules of men (such as the rule that priests can't marry), things go wrong. This is why churches should only force people to follow God's rules.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It seems to me there is always a danger of patronising or underestimating people long ago. They weren’t stupid, back then.

No, they weren't, but there were clearly those who didn't understand Latin and efforts were made to translate things so people could understand them.
Of course they knew bits and pieces. The Saxons, for example, interchangeable used rex and king. Even kings of York have had Rex printed on coins. But knowing a handful of words and phrases doesn't mean you know the language. I know a handful of Spanish, but it would be a farce to say I know and understand Spanish.