Rodney Stark - Tumblr Posts
Everyone 'knows' that once upon a time the world was pious— that in olden days most people exhibited levels of religious practice and concern that today linger only in isolated social subcultures. But, like so many once-upon-a-time tales, this conception of a pious past is mere nostalgia; most prominent historians of medieval religion now agree that there never was an 'Age of Faith' (Morris 1993; Duffy 1992; Sommerville 1992; Bossy 1985; Obelkevich 1979; Murray 1972; Thomas 1971; Coulton 1938). Writing in the eleventh century, the English monk William of Malmesbury complained that the aristocracy rarely attended church and even the more pious among them 'attended' mass at home, in bed: 'They didn't go to church in the mornings in a Christian fashion; but in their bedchambers, lying in the arms of their wives, they did but taste with their ears the solemnities of the morning mass rushed through by a priest in a hurry (in Fletcher 1997: 476).
Secularization, R.I.P. Rodney Stark (1999)
As for the ordinary people, during the middle ages and during the Renaissance, the masses rarely entered a church, and their private worship was directed toward an array of spirits and supernatural agencies, only some of them recognizably Christian. Alexander Murray's assessment of medieval Italian religious life is typical: 'substantial sections of thirteenth-century society hardly attended church at all.' [The Dominican prior Humbert of Romans] frankly acknowledged that the masses 'rarely go to church, and [when they do attend] rarely to sermons; so they know little of what pertains to their salvation.' Finally, Humbert admitted that the regular clergy were so involved in gambling, pleasure, and 'worse things' that they too 'scarcely come to church'. In similar terms, Blessed Giordano of Rivalto reported that, upon arriving in Florence to preach, he suggested to a local woman that she take her daughter to church at least on feast days, only to be informed that 'It is not the custom' (Murray 1972: 92-94).
Secularization, R.I.P. (Section: The Myth of Past Piety), Rodney Stark (1999)