New HReligion and Medieval Literature A Look at Mystery and Morality Plays

As The Norton Anthology of English Literature says, "By far the larger proportion of surviving literature in Middle as in Old English is religious" (7). This shouldn't be surprising since we know education had a religious affiliation; men were educated, went to "universities" to become clerics. "The church offered a path for gifted commoners to make a career" (7), but left the majority of commoners illiterate. The fact that Latin was the language of education and books …

…of the "medieval view" that were discussed earlier. The views of history, of property and ownership, as well as the state of the world are present in many works of the period, and each one reaffirms the others. Today we make think the belief system of the Middle Ages was peculiar and naive, but if any of the people from that period were alive today they would find our beliefs to be no less odd.