ABSTRACT
Ordinary unregenerate early modern Europeans demanded several things from whatever form of belief in supernatural forces they consciously or unconsciously considered to be their religion. For the traditional unacculturated peasant whose life-world only included a few fragments of the teachings brought in by Christian missionaries in the early Middle Ages, the dominant idea was that death and misfortune were caused by forces which came from outside the sacred space of the village. According to the teachings of the Catholic Church the condition of peace and brotherhood or sisterhood among communicants was a necessary precondition for receiving the elements of the Mass. For ritual purposes, the psychic energies of traditional rural communities were held to be concentrated in special categories of people. In their symbolic importance and in the uses to which Youth Abbeys and youth-dominated festivals were put, a great gulf existed between rural customs and the pragmatic practices of urban centres.
