Religions in Europe and Japan During The Middle Ages

To praise God, the Church built many cathedrals, churches and monasteries, many of which are still visitable today. To work on building a cathedral would be a great honour and you had to belong to a guild to do skilled work. The builders had great motivation though-they were told that if they died while building a cathedral or a church they would go straight to heaven. A cathedral is basically a church with a bishop, a lot more features and they were normally built in the important cities such as York and Canterbury. Cathedrals were used for baptism, marriage, funerals and a meeting area whenever someone important wanted to give a speech. There is also a ‘parish church’ in the middle of every town and each one has stained windows to help people who can’t read learn the story of the Bible. Most cathedrals and churches did not have seats, as they do today so people would either kneel on the floor to pray or stand up to listen to the sermons. People would go to church every Sunday where they prayed, learnt the horrors of hell and to help live their lives by God’s laws.

Japanese people worship the kami at Shinto shrines, which are said to be the homes of kami. Most shrines regularly celebrate festivals to show the kami the outside world. Shinto priests often live near shrines and they perform Shinto rituals. Shrines have one or more torii gates that consist of 2 vertical poles at each end of the street and 2 horizontal bars next to each other at the top. Most torii gates are made of wood and are painted black and orange. They also have a pair of ‘Komainu’ (guardian dog statues) found on each side of a shrine’s entrance. A purification through is found near the entrance and you are supposed to wash your hands and mouth before approaching the main hall. Shrine visitors would write their wishes on wooden plates and leave them at the shrine in the hope that those wishes come true.

The pope was the head of the church and he was known as God’s representative on Earth. Below the pope were the cardinals, who served the pope, elected the pope and became pope when the pope died. Below the cardinals were the archbishops, who were basically a higher rank from a bishop, but their duties were the same. Each bishop/archbishop would have a different duty: some were attached to cathedrals and some acted as advisers to the king. Next were the priests who lived at monasteries and convents, some of which help the community. Last are the villagers who work on church ground. There are also friars who wander around the country preaching and helping people but they aren’t part of the hierarchy. Shinto is completely different as they are just divided into the priests, who live at shrines and the normal people.

Japanese religions and Catholicism were very different from each other during medieval times but it show how different the West and the East were in terms of their religions.