Why were the Middle Ages called the Age of Faith?

Answer 1

It is called the Age Faith because at the time everything revolved around religion. Much architectural skill was used to build amazing cathedrals with stain glass windows, flying buttresses, and gargoyles. Education was taught by church clergy, monks, and nuns at church schools in Latin, the language of the churches.

Most who were educated were destined to work in the Church anyway and had need of reading Important Religious Documents which were mostly written in Latin.

Holy Wars, like the Crusades, were fought for centuries to secure Jerusalem in the Holy Land (which had little if any strategic value for Europe). Those who fought were promised entrance into heaven and forgiveness of sins.

Lastly the response to the Black Death provides much proof of the prevailing attitudes. People at the time believed it was caused because God was angry with them. Because of this people would pray and flagellate themselves so God would forgive them of their sins. There was also a tendency to blame Jews for the persistence of the plague, both in the sense that they were literally poisoning the wells and in the sense that their existence antagonized God. Of course, in hindsight we know such things to be false (especially because the evidence show that Jews died in similar percentages. Today, the most believed reason for the Black Death/Bubonic Plague is Yersinia pestis discovered in 1894.

Many historians draw a distinction between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era as the difference between the Age of Faith, when religious world views dominated, and the Age of Reason, when scientific world views dominated (and still do).