FIVE BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT...Going to church in the Middle Ages

From social interaction to confessing your sins, Nicholas Orme reveals why the church HistoryExtra played such a central role in medieval life PODCAST INTERVIEW BY DAVID MUSGROVE

- Nicholas Orme

1 Why was attending church so important?

In the Middle Ages, going to church offered a lot more than merely a way of connecting with God. Christianity was not only a religion, but an entire worldview that sought to explain a great deal more than people's relationship with God. Church-going encompassed ethics, telling you how you should behave, and entire areas of study that we would now separate off as science, sociology or politics. Even history was a part of it; medieval histories of the world took a lot from the Bible.

The importance of the church in the lives of medieval people went far beyond theology. In fact, the church fulfilled a lot of functions which we would now look to the government to carry out. This comprised a huge infrastructure to deal with things like education, morality and charity in the parish.

It also played a valuable social role. Nowadays, there are plenty of other things you could be doing on a Sunday morning, but imagine living in a scattered rural hamlet in the Middle Ages. You might not encounter many people, and so the church offered a wonderful opportunity to meet others. It was a place where you could organise your own social group. Hence you saw the emergence of groups formed from, for example, the young men, wives or "maidens" of the local parish.

2 Were people forced to attend?

In theory, everybody was meant to be in church on Sundays and festival days, of which there were about 40-50 annually. That meant that on at least 90 days of the year, you would be expected to be present for at least the morning service.