A Pervasive Presence.

The importance of religion in all facets of medieval life can hardly be overestimated. One of the reasons for the pervasive presence of religious ideology was that the dominant or most influential figures (often those in power) in Western European, Byzantine, and Muslim cultures each lived according to a revealed religion that reached deeply into every aspect of daily life. Many historians have attributed the early growth of such influences in northern Europe to the efforts of Christian missionaries, most of whom were members of monastic orders from the remnants of the western Roman Empire. In the Byzantine Empire (the former eastern part of the Roman Empire, centered in what is now Istanbul, Turkey) and areas dominated by Islam, organized religion was connected to the offices of both emperor and caliph (the spiritual and political head of Islam). The shaping of...