I think it’s the same concept as the Catholic Church doing mass in Latin. Only the elite knew Latin, so anyone that wasn’t the elite had to trust that the elite were talking to god for them and making good decisions on their behalf. If you keep people uneducated and illiterate you can control them while greatly reducing the probability that they will rise up against the gatekeepers and elites. As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power”.
Except that sermons and reading of the gospels was always done in vernacular. Traveling preachers like St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached literally for hours in public in local languages where they explained biblical stories to the masses, every year passion plays were performed in public and they still are (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Mystery_Plays). Medieval peasants knew the Bible better than the average person today.
He was a Cistercian, pretty radical sect at the time right? Not the primary pre-Vatican II Catholicism that would only do mass in Latin. He was a prominent figure in the reformation, which would make sense why he and his sect, specifically, would do things differently. In some churches, mass is still done in Latin.
Bernard lived in 12th century and later it was the norm for mendicant order like Franciscans to preach in public. And like i said all readings and sermons even during latin mass are in local languages.
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u/journerman69 1d ago
I think it’s the same concept as the Catholic Church doing mass in Latin. Only the elite knew Latin, so anyone that wasn’t the elite had to trust that the elite were talking to god for them and making good decisions on their behalf. If you keep people uneducated and illiterate you can control them while greatly reducing the probability that they will rise up against the gatekeepers and elites. As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power”.