We have little information from primary sources on the peasant religious beliefs of the middle ages, because the common people were not of interest to the scholars of the time, except to be held up as examples of the workings of the devil, and the inferiority of the agricultural class to that of the ruling class. It has only been recently that historians have taken an interest in them, possibly as a result of the recently increased interest in pre-Christian religions and the New Age movements.

What we do know is that the peasant religion of the middle ages aroundthe tenth century was not the same as that of the religious elite, nor even the secular elite. It was commonly believed that the peasant-folk, the agricultural slaves were near-animal, too stupid to be able to properly worship in the proper ways. Religion was meaningless to most, the church building, though physically prominent, was not the focus of religious life, but merely "a communal building whose bells marked the hours of work and rest."

This physical location of the church was paralleled in the spiritual realm. The priest was also a part of the peasant community, and often did not have much more of an education than his parishoners. People were often frightened of the parish priest, because the only time they saw him were in times of death, when he was coming to say last rites over a dying family member. This too increased hostility and increased resistance towards the Church. It can easily be said that although the masses were generally Christianized, their religion was hardly that of the official Church ideology.

What we classify as "religion" was not an essential part of life, though the common people did have well-formed beliefs and theories that explained and incorporated natural phenomenon into the Christian mythology. Signs from God were looked for in thunderstorms, the appearance of animals, cloud formations and solar and lunar eclipses, among many others. This of course, is generally described as "superstition" and mocked as the idiotic fears and beliefs of the unintelligent and uneducated.

The peasant beliefs in the middle ages had really not changed significantly since pre-Christian times. The peasantry was not important enough for the church officials to really care about what they believed or how well they maintained their faith. They were often held up for comparison as the epitome of a bad Christian. Felix Hemmerlin goes on for several paragraphs, describing the evil ways of the peasants, saying they were "'intemperate in their manners, that is, coarse and blubbery, gluttonous, rough-skinned, dirty, rarely well-proportioned in body, and that their crooked manners are a consequence of their crooked bodies...'" Because of this, they were deemed incapable of being truly good Christians, and it was taken as a matter of course that they blasphemed, did not observe the Sabbath properly and were given to superstitions and being led astray by the devil. Felix also says "'And it is the peasants who practise witchcraft and bring hail and thunder upon the land.'"

While Felix does exaggerate to some degree, we do know that popular beliefs and practices did not change much with the advent of Christianity. Because most of the people were completely illiterate, a simpler form way to express the fundamentals of the new religion had to be found. This "picture-book Christianity" consisted primarily of the saints, prayer and blessings representing goodness and Christianity, and with the devil and various demons and evil spirits as heralds of evil and the causes of all ill in the world.

The difficult part of converting the undeducated common people to Christianity was in making them see the evil in the continued worship of their pagan gods. The people were not easily accepting of the rules and regulations of this new religion. The mayor in the diocese of Utrecht said he'd "rather drink a mug of beer than the cup of the Lord" which expressed the sentiment of the most people.

The major concern of the clergy was getting the heathen worhip of other gods to cease, more so than getting the populace to come to church, or do pennance or even donate to the church. According to Atto of Vercelli the most common method of conversion was fostering the belief that the other gods were evil spirits the devil used for leading people astray. The concept of evil spirits was nothing new. The only difference was that these evil spirits now had a single leader who could be defended against by prayer to the "good spirits" who had also always existed. These were now represented by the saints, who interevened on behalf of the people, and intercessed with God. "It would have been impossible for the clergy to suggest to the common people the ideass of hell and the devil if such ideas did not overlap pre-Christian conceptions...Evil spirits had always existed, only now they were understood as the agents of the devil..." The only new part of this ideology was the name of "Satan" and his dominion over the other demons and evil spirits. This would have been taken in stride quite easily and understood without question. Blessings and prayer used to keep satan and demons at bay, which were not unlike the magic and spells used in previous generations, especially during exorcisms when the devil hadto be dealt with personally. Special measures had to be taken to avoid re-possession, including fasting, washing with holy water, and the abstention from watching killings (!?) and looking at corpses.

Conceptions of the Christian otherworldly beings took on various forms, most of which were taken from folk ideology and images. While the devil often appeared in other shapes, as did his followers, Satan himself rarely appeared to anyone but the clergy, specifically in monasteries. To the common folk, the devil and evil spirits were often sent in the forms of animals, and even natural occurrences that fortold evil. Even though the sources we have mostly describe clerical or monastic encounters, we know this was also popular belief, and that the common folk also saw and believed in the devil in all his multiple forms. The line in the baptismal rite when the person being baptized (or by proxy by the godparents) was asked if they "renounced Satan and all his works and associates" is used as an example of this.

"In the Saxon baptismal prayer the person to be baptized rejected not only the devil but Thor, Wotan and Saxnot (Thuner ende Uuoden ende Saxnote)." Because of such precautions, it is obvious that these gods were still alive in people's minds and worldview, and we know that the pre-Christian gods were not refused existance, but were changed into demons or saints either cursed or blessed.

Blessed for some, because not all pagan gods were turned into demons. There is evidence that the cult of St. Brigit of Kildare has not changed in it's common form since the tripple goddess of art poetry and smithcraft was worshipped there. Adso of Montierender built his monastery where shepherds claimed to see inhuman lights that were "of God" and Burchard of Worms and Arnold of Saint Emmeram both describe practices that involved the sacrality of trees and nature, and offerings to the gods in a Christian context.

The importance of the saints was clearly a result of the societal importance of rank structure. People were obsessed with and classified by their rank. Thus came the idea that between the common people and God/Christ there needed to be an intercessor--in the form of both the priests and the saints. This eventually gave rise to the cult of the saints, and the quite pagan and ritualized worship of the saints as the primary focus of peasant religion.

Although we don't have any reliable sources that tell us exactly what the peasant class did in their worship and prayer, we can get an idea of what their religion must have been like, and what it's major influences were. From this we can also begin to extrapolate what the pre-Christian religions of the common people may have consisted of.