This is a very astute question. In fact, timekeeping was deeply tied to religious philosophy and the necessities of monastic life in the medieval period. Most religious orders kept time through a combination of solar observation and primitive water clocks.

Water clocks, also known as clepsydras, existed in several iterations. But the general concept was that time was measured by controlling the flow of liquid into a basin. Sometimes the basin contained markings indicating the passage of time, and some also contained floating devices to aid timekeeping. In places where water froze too often to be effective, other liquids like mercury were sometimes used.

Clocks first entered the Western medieval imagination through contact with the Islamic world, where elaborate mechanized clocks were used for timekeeping, diplomatic gifts, entertainment, and mimicking the movement of the cosmos. These ideas filtered into Europe gradually. When Charlemagne received a fantastical mechanized clock from Harun al-Rashid, it was miraculous. Later, Europeans came into closer contact with timekeeping devices through encounters with al-Andalus. Christian conquerors sometimes "inherited" Islamic technology such as clocks during the Reconquista, such as the water clock in Toledo that remained in operation for several years before falling into disrepair.

The exchange of practical mechanical knowledge through craftsmen and intellectual knowledge through translation and textual transmission led to these ideas spreading to Christian Spain and beyond. There is evidence of a Catalonian monastery implementing Islamic engineering to construct a new kind of water clock in the tenth century. The technology, previously attributed to magic or miracles, could now be used for devotional purposes in the Christian tradition.

An intellectual marketplace of translated texts came into place, in which translated texts in Spain and Sicily were filtered into French, Italian, and eventually English universities. These ideas further cemented the religious implications of timekeeping, and eventually led to the massive mechanized and mimetic clocks of medieval cathedrals with which many of us are familiar.