The
Medieval Church played a far greater role in Medieval England
than the Church does today. In Medieval England, the Church
dominated everybody's life. All Medieval people - be they
village peasants or towns people - believed that God, Heaven
and Hell all existed. From the very earliest of ages, the
people were taught that the only way they could get to Heaven
was if the Roman Catholic Church let them. Everybody would
have been terrified of Hell and the people would have been
told of the sheer horrors awaiting for them in Hell in the
weekly services they attended.
The
control the Church had over the people was total. Peasants
worked for free on Church land. This proved difficult for
peasants as the time they spent working on Church land, could
have been better spent working on their own plots of land
producing food for their families.
They
paid 10% of what they earned in a year to the Church (this
tax was called tithes). Tithes could be paid in either money
or in goods produced by the peasant farmers. As peasants had
little money, they almost always had to pay in seeds, harvested
grain, animals etc. This usually caused a peasant a lot of
hardship as seeds, for example, would be needed to feed a
family the following year. What the Church got in tithes was
kept in huge tithe barns; a lot of the stored grain would
have been eaten by rats or poisoned by their urine. A failure
to pay tithes, so the peasants were told by the Church, would
lead to their souls going to Hell after they had died.
 This
is one reason why the Church was so wealthy. One of the reasons
Henry VIII wanted to reform the Church was get hold of the
Catholic Church's money. People were too scared not to pay
tithes despite the difficulties it meant for them.
You
also had to pay for baptisms (if you were not baptised you
could not go to Heaven when you died), marriages (there were
no couples living together in Medieval times as the Church
taught that this equaled sin) and burials - you had to be
buried on holy land if your soul was to get to heaven. Whichever
way you looked, the Church received money.
The
Church also did not have to pay taxes. This saved them a vast
sum of money and made it far more wealthy than any king of
England at this time. The sheer wealth of the Church is best
shown in its buildings : cathedrals, churches and monasteries.
In
Medieval England, peasants lived in cruck houses. These were
filthy, usually no more than two rooms, with a wooden frame
covered with wattle and daub (a mixture of mud, straw and
manure). No cruck houses exist now - most simply collapsed
after a while as they were so poorly built. However, there
are many Medieval churches around. The way they were built
and have lasted for centuries, is an indication of how well
they were built and the money the Church had to invest in
these building.
 This
church in Rottingdean, East Sussex, is nearly 1000 years old.
It was made of stone and built to last. It would have been
much larger than a Medieval peasant's cruck house.
Important
cities would have cathedrals in them. The most famous cathedrals
were at Canterbury and York. After the death of Thomas Becket,
Canterbury Cathedral became a center for pilgrimage and the
city grew more and more wealthy. So did the Church. Cathedrals
were vast. They are big by our standards today, but in Medieval
England they were bigger than all buildings including royal
palaces. Their sheer size meant that people would see them
from miles around, and remind them of the huge power of the
Catholic Church in Medieval England.
 This
entrance to Amiens Cathedral in France shows just how vast
cathedrals were. The doors alone are over 20 feet tall, while
the 'porch' which surrounds it makes this doorway nearly 60
feet tall; taller than many houses now. To work on the building
of a cathedral was a great honour. Those who did the skilled
work had to belong to a guild. They would have used just the
most basic of tools and less than strong scaffolding to do
the ceilings. However, if you were killed in an accident while
working in a cathedral or a church, you were guaranteed a
place in Heaven - or so the workers were told.
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