Medieval Religion

One was religious, which was that cleanliness is next to godliness. They believed the way a people took care of their bodies was an indication of how they took care of their souls. Clearly, by this way of thinking, a person who was dirty was liable to trouble in the afterlife.

On a material level, they believed that bad air was a vector for diseases. So they tried hard to avoid bad air. The easiest way to tell that the air was bad was that it was likely to smell bad. So anything that smelled bad was likely to be cleaned up.

The result of these beliefs was that they had public baths in most all villages except the smallest. I have read that people even bathed in streams in the winter, if that is how they had to keep clean.

The idea that medieval people were stinky and dirty was promoted by those of the Renaissance, who wanted to look down on medieval people, but had forgotten the reasons to bathe because they had perfume and did not care much for religion.

There is a link below to the history section of an article on bathing.

•It is true that there was a cold period around this time in Western Europe, but it probably came a little later, in the 500's and 600's AD, too late to be the cause of the fall of Roman government. But around 500 the climate did get colder.

• In the south, like in Spain, this may have been good: more rain, maybe. In the north, in France, Germany, and England, it was bad. There was a lot of flooding in the river valleys, and many Roman villages in the valleys had to be abandoned as people moved up onto the hills. You couldn't grow olives or wine so far north as before. One result was a general shift to eating butter rather than olive oil and using tallow or beeswax candles for lighting instead of oil lamps.

•By about 800, in the time of Charlemagne, the weather began to improve again, and around 1000 AD was probably a very good time in Europe, when it was easy to grow wheat and barley and even wine again. The same weather patterns that made for good weather in north-western Europe, however, may have made southern Spain hotter and drier than people liked.

•Again toward the end of the Middle Ages, around 1400 AD, there was another "Little Ice Age," with much the same effects as before. There was a lot of flooding, and in England especially there were many years where the crops were ruined and people went hungry. Although changes in government do have important effects on ordinary people's lives, the weather also plays a very important role.

In Roman times, the plow was pulled by attaching it to a horse by tying a rope from one to the other, with the rope simply tied to the horse's neck. This was very fatiguing for the horse. Plows were light and could not turn much soil or plow deeply. The invention of the horse collar and the heavy plow during the Early Middle Ages made agriculture much more efficient, and this made it possible to free more people to pursue crafts.

Horse shoes did not exist in Roman times (nor did stirrups, though this was not a factor for agriculture). Horse shoes added to the value of horses for agriculture.

Wine presses were introduced, making wine production less labor intensive.

Hops came to be used for beer, which meant a new crop was being raised in Germany. Their use spread to other places in later times.

The Middle Ages saw the introduction of three crop rotation instead of two crop. This meant that on any manor, two thirds of the fields were in use at any time instead of half. One third was for crops planted in fall, and one third for crops planted in spring, and this created a different mix of crops.

During the High Middle ages, someone in Britain figured out that cows, which had little to graze on in the winter, were healthier if they had food from storage. Turnips did nicely for this, and the result was a very large increase in milk, cheese, and beef.

Some specialty crops were introduced. One example is a type of thistle with an edible flower bud. Today we call it an artichoke.

Heavy horses bred for jousting were made available for farms.

An increase in interest in spices from the East lead to an increase in locally grown seasonings.

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There is much background material covered in both, especially concerning the "coldness" which had settled into society and religion for two centuries before the protestant catastrophe.

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It wasn't so much the conduct of the Church, although the conduct of individuals - from Popes to laity - certainly played a part in it. But it was a whole host of factors including several major famines, the Black Death (starting around 1350), the Avignon Papacy ( 1378 - 1417: The Great Schism when the Pope moved to Avignon, and no one knew who the real Pope was. For most of this period there were two claimants to the Papal throne, near the end of it, three. This threw Christendom into crisis with the end result of greatly weakening the Papacy and contributing to the protestant revolt a hundred years later. That and the rise of heresies including those of the Bohemia, John Hus, the heresy of Nominalism. And then there was the rise of Renaissance thought. Originally Renaissance thought saw the good in the Greek and Latin classics and tried to bring them into the Christian present. Thomas Aquinas has done a magnificent job of this earlier in the 13th century with Aristotle, on whom he based his classic Summa Theologiae which is still used to this day in teaching theology. But later Renaissance intellectuals had a whole different mind set and through their fascination with pagan ideas, they adopted the worldly outlook of their writers. Finally there was the rise of the business culture and the love of money - the root of all evil according to the Sacred Scriptures. The love of money and business became prevalent in this era wiping out the great Age of Faith that had just ended.).

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Then the heresy of Conciliarism (following the Great Schism, Council of Pisa 1409 (which did not end the Schism), Council of Constance (1414-1418 which did end the Schism but claimed superiority over the Pope), Council of Basel (1431-1449), according to which a Church council was a higher authority than the pope (this Council "fell apart") and finally the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) which ended the heresy of Conciliarism and started modest Church reform. Then there was the coldness that was seeping into religious life, which was first noticed by St. Francis of Assisi. The collect from the Tridentine liturgy for the Feast of St. Francis on September 17 refers to this growing coldness:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love, graciously grant that by His merits and prayers we may continually bear the cross and bring forth fruits worthy of penance. There, of course, are many more reasons in these two centuries that led to the protestant revolt, I would suggest that you pick up Diane Moczar's book, Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, and read chapter the chapter headed 1517 AD The Protestant Catastrophe.

Probably the single biggest behavior that effected the Church in the Late Middle Ages was the Great Schism, which ran from 1378 to 1417. This was known as the Avignon Papacy,

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from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Great Schism, otherwise know as the Schism of the West was not strictly a schism at all but a conflict between the two parties within the Church each claiming to support the true pope. Three months after the election of Urban VI, in 1378, the fifteen electing cardinals declared that they had appointed him only as a temporary vicar and that in any case the election was invalid as made under fear of violence from the Roman mob. Urban retorted by naming twenty-eight new cardinals, and the others at once proceeded to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, who went to reside at Avignon. The quarrel was in its origin not a theological or religious one, but was caused by the ambition and jealousy of French influence, which was supported to some extent for political reasons by Spain, Naples, Provence, and Scotland; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Flanders and Hungary stood by what they believe to be the true pope at Rome. The Church was torn from top to bottom by the schism, both sides in good faith (it was impossible to know to whom allegiance was due), which lasted with its two lines of popes (and at one time three) till the election of Martin V in 1417. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Urbanist popes were the true ones and their names are included in semi-official lists; moreover, the ordinal numbers of the Clementine claimants (who, however, are not called anti-popes,) were adopted by subsequent popes of the same name. Extracted from

What Every Catholic Wants to Know Catholic History from the Catacombs to the Reformation, by Diane Moczar, c 2006 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

The five key elements that made up the "medieval synthesis" were:

- The harmony between Faith and reason.

- The balance of power among nation-states as parts of Christendom

- The balancing of the authority of the king with local self-government.

- The harmony between the goals of individual self-fulfillment and those of society.

- The equilibrium - and an uneasy one, it is true - between Church and state.

In the fourteenth century everything started to fall apart beginning with famine and plague. Cold, wet weather between 1315 and 1322 brought ruined crops in northern Europe and the resulting famine produced mass starvation, the mortality rate was as high as ten percent. But within 25-20 years the Black Death struck Europe. Between 1347-1350 an estimate average of thirty percent of the population on the continent died. In some cases, the death toll was much higher. It returned again in 1363 and would recur periodically for the next three centuries. All of this caused social friction and rebellions, not to mention some bizarre heresies. In addition to all of this the Hundred Years's War began, the Ottoman Turks began their onslaught of Europe, and the Papacy was going through many troubles beginning with the Avignon papacy. All of this set the stage, so to speak for the protestant catastrophe. Which brings us to the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1519) the first serious, official attempt to reform the Church. Giles of Viterbo, the general of the Augustinians was the most prominent Church member and he took the popes to task for most of the current abuses in the Church, although he put great hope in Leo X (1513-1521) who had succeeded Pope Julius II (who had called the Council).

The Lateran Council issued a whole laundry list of abuses that they wanted to end, including

"worldly prelates, bishops neglecting their responsibilities, and cardinals living away from Rome. The Council Fathers castigated the clergy for irregular ways of attaining benefices, nepotism, and unchastity. It condemned Averroism . . and even established Catholic pawn shops under Church auspices, to provide affordable loans to the poor." For a complete detailing of the Catholic reformation please see Chapter 9 from Hitchcock's book History of the Catholic Church.

I guess you mean how did they dress.

From the early 12th century onwards, specific colours of habit were set for the various Orders of monks in western Europe:

• Benedictine and Cluniac monks wore black habits (really a very dark grey/brown)
• Cistercian and Carthusian monks wore white habits (really undyed, unbleached natural wool, so anything from very pale brownish grey to pale ivory colour)

Benedictines and Cluniacs were permitted to wear natural linen shirts under their habits; Cistercians wore no underwear, while the Carthusians wore very scratchy hair shirts.

Monks had their heads shaved in the Roman tonsure, but only at set times throughout the Church calendar, so often they would have had very stubbly growth on the top of the head; Carthusians had the entire head shaved (presumably, as in everything else, to appear more austere and strict than the other Orders).

Simple medieval turnshoes of tan or black leather were worn on the feet and the habit was belted with a tied leather strap. The sleeves of the habit were deliberately made very wide and far too long, completely hiding the hands when fully extended - they were normally worn turned back or crumpled up the arm.

Cowls were worn at certain set times, covering almost the whole head and face.

Benedictines were permitted to wear beards, the other Orders were not - we have a surviving self-portrait of a Canterbury Benedictine scribe-monk in the 12th century who wore a beard.

Additional layers of clothes were allowed in cold climates such as the north of England, where a garment of fur might be worn under the habit.

One particular feature would have been seen in all monks - they were permanently tired. The regime included going to bed around 8 or 8.30 in the evening, only to rise again for the Night Office at around midnight or 2 AM, then a short return to bed before Prime at about 6 AM. Lack of sleep was part of the lifestyle and is something that has been dropped from the routine by most modern monks.

See links below for images:

The purpose of wall and ceiling paintings inside medieval churches was twofold:

• The church building represented Heaven and Earth, with paintings representing good overcoming evil and the lives of the Saints or Bible stories at the lower level; while above at the altar end of the church were representations of God, Christ in Majesty and His angels.
• Most people could not read so the Bible stories and other religious texts were illustrated on church walls to help people understand those stories: St Christopher carrying the baby Jesus across a river, the virtues dressed as knights overcoming Vices, the temptations of Hell and the results of doing evil things were all illustrated to bring home the message.

Another important aspect was simply about colour - most working people had little or no colour in their lives, since there were no magazines, posters, colourful clothes or television. Their lives were full of browns, greys and straw colour, so the impact of entering a very brightly-painted church building was immense.