22. Medieval People Were Not as Fanatically Religious as is Often Assumed
Extremely religious people were quite common in the medieval period, ranging from those engaged in mass pilgrimages, to flagellants, to mystics and saints. However, that does not mean that everybody back in the middle ages was obsessed with religion. Nor does it mean that people back then did not engage in skeptical reflection. There were plenty of ordinary people who did not buy into a variety of common beliefs. Their skepticism ranged from doubting whether saints actually performed miracles, to being unsure whether the miracle of the Eucharist was real, to questioning whether there really was a resurrection and life after death.
Others did not even believe that God had anything to do with nature and the growth of crops and plants. Instead, they attributed such things to the simple mechanics of working and taking care of the soil. Many people – sometimes most – expressed their skepticism by simply staying away from church. For example, a Spanish priest wrote his bishop in the early 1300s, complaining that hardly anybody bothered to show up for church on Sunday. Instead, people preferred to spend their day of rest sleeping or larking about.
