The Faith

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The Church
The Church plays a far greater role in life than you might expect. In society, the Church dominates everybody's life. All people - be they village peasants or nobility - believe that God, Heaven and Hell all exist. From the very earliest of ages, the people are taught that the only way they can get to Heaven is if the Holy Church permits them. Most everybody is terrified of Hell, and people are told of the sheer horrors awaiting for them in Hell during the weekly services they attend. The control the Church has over the people is total. Peasants work for free on Church land. This proves difficult for peasants as the time they spend working on Church land, could be better spent working on their own plots or those of their liege.

Everyone pays a tithe (or percentage of their income) to the Church. Tithes are paid in either money or in goods produced by the civilians. What the Church receives in tithes is kept in huge tithe barns; sadly, a lot of the stored grain will be eaten by rats or poisoned by their urine. Regardless of the waste, failure to pay tithes, so people are told by the Church, will lead to their souls going to Hell after they have died. This is one reason why the Church is so wealthy, their coffers triple the King's, allotting them a vast amount of power and control. One of the reasons why one might want to reform the Church is to get their hands on the Church's money. However, the majority of people are too scared to contemplate such a notion, nor will they stop paying tithes, despite the difficulties it means for them.

Monastery Life
Daily Life - Although the details of daily life differ from one order to the next, monastic life is generally one of hard physical work, scholarship and prayer. Some orders encourage the presence of "lay brothers", monks who do most of the physical labor in the fields and workshops of the monastery so that the full-fledged monks can concentrate on prayer and learning.

The Daily Grind - The day of a monk or nun, in theory at least, is regulated by regular prayer services in the abbey church. These services take place every three hours, day and night. When the services are over, monks are occupied with all the tasks associated with maintaining a self-sustaining community. Abbeys grow their own food, do all their own building, and in some cases, grow quite prosperous doing so. Wiltford Abbey and Canterbridge, both in Sabinrow, are enormously wealthy, largely on the basis of raising sheep and selling the wool.

Learning - Monasteries are practically the only repository of scholarship and learning. The monks are by far the best educated mermbers of society - often they are the only educated members of society. Monasteries act as libraries for ancient manuscripts, and many monks are occupied with laboriously copying sacred texts (generally in a room called the scriptorium).

Illuminated manuscripts - In the areas where pagan influence is strongest, for example in Dunlath, the monks create "illuminated" manuscripts; beautifully illustrated Bibles and prayer books with painstakingly create images on most pages.

The Abbey hierarchy - The abbey (the term for a monastery or nunnery) is under the authority of an abbot or abbess. The abbot can be a landless noble, who has used the church as a means of social advancement. Under the abbot is the prior/prioress, who runs the monastery in the absence of the abbot, who might have to travel on church business. There is also a sub-prior. Other officers include the cellerar (in charge of food storage and preparation), and specialists in the care of the sick, building, farming, masonry, and education.

Pilgrims - One of the main sources of revenue for monasteries is pilgrims. Pilgrims can be induced to come to a monastic house by a number of means, the most common being a religious relic owned by the abbey. Such a relic might be a saint's bone, the blood of Christ, a fragment of the cross, or other similar religious artifact. The tomb of a particularly saintly person can also become a target for pilgrimages. Pilgrims can generally be induced to buy an isignia which proved they have visited a particular shrine. Some popular pilgrimage centers have hotels to lodge pilgrims. The St. Paul Inn in Fenrigh is one such lodging, built to take the large number of pilgrims flocking to Haftonbriar Abbey.

Marriage
Coming Soon.