To specify my question: I’m curious about the degree of religious awareness of regular medieval peasant of the Catholic faith given illiteracy and overall low degree of education among the contemporary people. What were the means of instilling one true faith and would there be any differences between say Easter and Western Europe (given old Slavic pagan beliefs) in what said peasant knew and understood about Catholicism and how sophisticated would such knowledge be?
Most likely, yes. Consider Carlo Ginzburg's book, The Cheese and the Worms. This book is a microstudy about an Italian peasant named Domenico Scandella "Mennochio", who was a Miller in the North of Italy. The book is a reconstruction of Mennochio's belief using Catholic Church interrogation reports. Mennochio was an otherwise unremarkable man save for the fact that he was a target in the Catholic Inquisition and he held some pretty irregular theological beliefs.
Mennochio was somewhat of a pariah in his community because he was always trying to engage others in theological debate. Others would avoid him because they wanted to avoid the trouble of getting interrogated as Mennochio had a long interaction with the Catholic church involving many interrogations.
Mennochio also referenced several works of non-liturgical literature that Ginzburg contends influenced Mennochio's worldview including an unnamed book that may have been a Koran.
Mennochio's ideas about the formation of world were described as follows, "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed-as cheese is made out of milk- and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. Mennochio also held a lot of beliefs that would remind one of Protestantism- mainly that the Clergy was not the only way to know God and he also rejected the Holy Sacraments as inventions of man and thus, unnecessary.
Mennochio, and The Cheese and the Worms are important not just on a theological level, but it's important because Ginzburg examines what we really know about peasant intelligence and challenges the notion that there was nothing interesting intellectually going on. The major problem with peasant ideas and thought is one of sources- they just didn't write much down so we don't know as much about them as we know about kings and queens and their courts and generals and details of such and such battle.
Thank you all guys for awesome answers!