322 THE CHURCH
Let us start with the village church and the services which the
peasant was accustomed to attend there. The building itself was
symbolic of security, although it was rarely in England that it
became literally the one place of safety, as so often in Germany
and Switzerland, when people sheltered themselves behind its
walls and doors, and the passage of the enemy left of their frail
houses only wreckage and smouldering ruins. Besides giving a
sense of security, the comparative magnificence of many village
churches must have made a deep impression on the simple mind.
The lofty tower, the spacious nave, together with the tracery of
the windows and the carvings on capital and portal, gave men a
sense of " other-worldliness", while the comparison between the
peace and dignity of God's house and the squalor and turmoil of
their own hovels made its constant appeal—not very consciously,
perhaps—but inevitably and as part of the whole ethos of the
religious world.
There the church stood, and the peasant could not but be
aware of it, as he passed it on his way to his fields, or as lie heard
the Mass bell sounding as he worked in the meadows or on some
distant forest clearing. How often he entered it is another
matter. We have already seen conclusive evidence that on some
manors the lord was unwilling that his work should cease because
a holy-day strictly required his serf's attendance at the church;
and we may well conclude that any theory that the majority of
men and women spent their holy-days, as well as Sundays, at
church has no foundation in actual fact. Even writers such as
Myrc do not seem to contemplate any very serious attempt by
ordinary folk to attend all such services.1 We shall probably be
near the truth if we think of the peasant as attending Mass on
Sunday, and on a few great festivals, such as Christmas and
Easter, on the name-day of the patron saint of the church, and
on days when some special local ceremony, such as carrying the
Virgin from the church to a little chapel on the edge of the parish,
was performed. Otherwise, church-going was much as it is now
—a matter of daily refreshment and happy duty for some, and
only a matter of "use and wont" for many, for whom the
Sunday and other special services sufficed.
Such attendance, however, had more importance than we are
1 Manning, op. cit. 5.