Medieval Christian Rituals

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To begin with Everyman deals with the structure of the medieval Christian religious ritual. Everyman takes a psychomachic journey from the living world to meet with God on his day of reckoning. Medieval Christian’s had a standard set of performances they engaged in before their own day of reckoning, they needed to “show” their compliance with the main Christian rituals. God commands the Messenger to Everyman which portrays God as the powerful being and the Messenger as the supporting character in the performance of ritualized confession. Julie Paulson, in her 2007, “Death's Arrival and Everyman's Separation” essay states:
Everyman’s focus on the communal practices established by penitential ritual reflects the degree to which, in the late …show more content…
The communitas following the traditional ritualistic confession performed to the ideals set forth on them by the priests during mass.
Penance was attendant on the confession ritual. The penitent had to perform the assigned tasks and the divine had to see the performance in order to forgive. During the medieval time period the expectations of Christians to attend penance several times a year. Rasmussen states that “since 1215, every adult Christian was obliged by church law to go to penance at least once a year” (Rasmussen 368). The importance of attending penance and cleansing one’s sole became very popular during the middle ages. Depending on the type of sin one committed would depend on the level of punishment one would have. Medieval Christians could commit three forms of sins; original sin, deadly sins, and forgivable sins (Rasmussen 369). Of the three of these sins, two of them were punishable by Hell. The original sin, although resolved at baptism could be punishable by going to Hell, as well as committing a deadly sin. However, instead of damning a deadly sin sinner to Hell right away they had the chance of serving a penance to release himself from the penalty of the sin, the same went for the release of sin of a forgivable sin. Rasmussen in his 2009, “Hell Disarmed? The Function of Hell in Reformation Spirtuality” essay, states: “This was also the politics of the church: to call all Christians to penance at least once a year and relieve them first of all from deadly sins” (369). Although, unspecified; within the morality play; whether Everyman went to penance every year, readers can assume that as a medieval Christian during this time period he did. Thus being said, on his day of reckoning, Everyman had to make account of forgivable
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