A Short History of Medieval ChristianityWhat did people really believe in the Middle Ages? Much of our sense of the medieval period has come down to us from the writings of the learned: the abbots, priors, magnates, scholastic theologians, and others who, between them and across Christendom, controlled the machinery of church and state. For G. R. Evans, too much emphasis has been placed on a governing elite and too little on thosethe great mass of the semi literate and illiterate, and the