"The peculiar intensity of medieval piety had as many causes as it had symptoms. But pre-eminent among them was a view of the natural world as a chaos in which the perpetual intervention of God was the only guiding law. God appeared to control the entire natural world from moment to moment. He was the direct and immediate cause of everything that happened, from the most trivial to the most vital incidents of human life...
"...the most normal incidents of everyday life were interpreted as signs of divine favour or disfavour, provoking displays of general jubilation or incalculable terror. Simple men were terrified of the dark, sometimes to the point of insanity. Thunderstorms brought panic to whole communities and drove them to take refuge round the altars of saints. A flash of lightning created havoc in a small village, the people all fearing the punishment of God was about to descend on them wherever they might try to escape. Terrible cries were heard during an eclipse of the moon. Since all phenomena sprang not from natural causes but from the direct action of God, it followed that the will of God could be discerned in them if only people new how."
-- The Age of Pilgrimage: The Medieval Journey to God, Jonathan Sumption, 1975, p. 10.
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