Religion in the Middle Ages

[blü 2]

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).

Graham Robb's The Discovery of France makes the following report of remote parts of rural France in the mid-19th century ─

In most people’s minds, the [village priest] was supposed to be useful, like a doctor, a snake-catcher or a witch. He should be willing to write inaccurate letters of recommendation, to read the newspaper and to explain government decrees. He should also be able to pull strings in the spirit world, influence the weather and cure people and animals of rabies. [...] Naturally, this put the priest in a tricky position. If he refused to ring the bells to prevent a hailstorm, he was useless. If he rang the bells and it hailed anyway, he was inept. In 1874, the curé of the Limousin village of Burgnac refused to join a ‘pagan’ harvest procession. It duly hailed, the harvest was lost, and the curé had to be rescued from an angry crowd. [...]​

If his magic powers were weak, the priest would be seen as a busybody and a kill-joy. No one took kindly to an outsider who tried to stop people feasting in the cemetery, chatting and walking about during mass and bringing their animals into church to be blessed.​

He also mentions villagers threatening violence to their new priest because he (unlike his predecessor) wouldn't baptize their cattle; and states that they thought God and Jesus were useless since Mary held the keys to heaven and was the center of their devotion. One village church had a statue of Samson, and the moss growing on his penis was highly esteemed as an aid to fertility, the organ being diminished over time by the scraping. Indeed, there were many many things about fertility that tended to shock outsiders.

 

[Glaurung]

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.

Having recourse to set prayers is really useful. Of course, true prayer assumes that whatever prayer you recite is recited with attention and conviction.

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.

I wouldn't take professional criminals as role model Catholics. This should be pretty basic.

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).

As someone who has actual experience with the Catholic faith, that's not how it works. Outside an act of perfect contrition, the only means to have your sins forgiven is though a sacramental confession. And yes, going to confession with no intention of avoiding future sin is itself a sin. And living a sinful life with the intention to 'repent' when you're old is a sin called presumption.

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.

The Douay-Rheims (a Catholic translation into English) predates the King James. That's right, Catholics had access to an English language Bible before the King James existed.

I know it's a convenient narrative, but the notion that the Roman Church only held onto Latin simply out of an obscurantist desire to keep the 'truth' from the unwashed masses is untrue. Prior to the printing press books were prohibitively expensive. Parchment was not cheap and texts had to be copied by hand. Most vernaculars did not have written standards (if they were written at all) and even if someone had the time and money to get a vernacular Bible made the vast majority would not have been able to read it anyway as most people were illiterate. Protestantism had the advantage of coming into being contemporaneously with the printing press at a time when paper was readily available. Protestantism just so happened to come into being at a time when books became somewhat affordable and mass producible.

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.

The ideal of clerical celibacy goes back very early, even if it wasn't truly enforced until the Gregorian reforms. The idea is that a priest (who acts in persona Christi) should live in a deeper imitation of Christ. And if you really want to talk about what the Bible teaches, then you have to deal with Paul's explicit teaching of celibacy's superiority over the married state.

One major advantage of clerical celibacy is that it prevented the priesthood from becoming an hereditary privilege.

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.

 

[Ella S.]

I think we also forget how influential Manichaeism, Bogomilism, Waldnesianism, and so on were, too, all religions which most people have never heard of today despite their influence.

This is not to mention the rise of Hermeticism among scholars and travelers, especially physicians.

 

[Callisto]

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.

Pagan religions tended to see the divine as not only pluralistic but immanent, so the divine was an unavoidable aspect of everyday, in every way rather than some remote transcendent power that was all-seeing and expressly engaged with one day a week in a designated setting. You weren't fed admonishing or dictating dogma to keep you in line. Right living, being honorable and productive, and maintaining established traditions fostered closeness with the gods. That's hard to give up when the alternative is brimming with fear-inducing rhetoric and penalties.

 

[Callisto]

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.

In the Catholic school I attended, the Spanish instructor gave us printouts, by the formatting we surmised it was some kind of poetry. She had us read it aloud, and try to take a stab at what it was. Some could pick out. a word or two but it wasn't recognizable. She then started reading it out loud in a pattern that was familiar, it was the Trinitarian Formula, Hail Mary, and The Lord's Prayer. She had us repeat after her a few times so we could get the pronunciation. We were to memorize them even though we hadn't started learning the language yet. *IF* you knew the prayer beforehand then you could surmise what each line was. You didn't know what each word was, you learned to recite using the cadence. Singers who don't speak the language a song's lyrics are in do this, it's called phonetical singing. They don't understand the language, they're simply mimicking. Similar to actors who have to portray a character from another culture and have to convincingly deliver lines in an unfamiliar language.

Medieval peasants didn't learn prayers or responses in English to then match up the Latin. They memorized Latin responses phonetically and without understanding what they were saying.

 

[Twilight Hue]

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.

Not surprising either since in the middle ages, if you were not a declared Christian, you were probably dead or soon to be.