Legends, Myths and Religion

The people in the medieval times believed in many mythical creatures like: elves, basilisks, dragons, phenix, daemons and many others.

People’s view of the reality was influenced very much by myths and legends so that they didn’t really have a realistic perception of what would happen in the world. So many myths arose only because people had no other way to explain some natural procedures they saw. They didn’t have the technical equipment that we have now to interpret things so the mythology developed very quickly in those days. Many myths from former days have still remained in people’s heads. E.g. the legend of King Arthur, the Nibelungen-Sage or a bit newer the Yeti. Another thing people were influenced by was the religion.

The church had a big role in the society of the medieval, the people had two choices either they were for the church, then their whole life was religiously influenced or they turned away from the church and were in danger of being persecuted as a whitch. As we see, life was not that easy in these days, you were influenced by anything all the time. During this time the burning of so-called “witches” who were mostly only normal more intelligent women, started. During the 12th and 13th century there were many crusades in which the catholic and the islamic church often had conflicts. At the end of the medieval the church was shortly before the reformation.