36. People Were Not Blindly Religious in the Middle Ages
Examples of extreme religiosity abound in the Middle Ages, ranging from mass pilgrimages, to flagellants, to mystics and saints. However, that does not mean that medieval people were fixated on religion, nor does it mean that they did not engage in skeptical reflection. Many ordinary people were not that sold on a variety of beliefs, doubting whether saints actually performed miracles, whether the miracle of the Eucharist was real, or 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, but attributed such matters 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, and that people preferred instead to spend their day of rest sleeping or larking about.
