How did the threat of punishment affect the mindset of people in the middle ages?
I have been thinking about your question and one of the problems with it is that we can’t really know what people thought that long ago. In the letters I have read and the books I have read I don’t think people thought much about punishment. The reason I say this because they were taught by the church that life was a punishment for their sin of birth. People were born with sin according to theChurch and they had to redeem themselves in their life to go to heaven. So, if we follow this thought to its conclusion the threat of punishment wouldn’t have been a big deal because they were all ready being punished. Life was extremely hard in this time and it was enough to stay alive.
