Did most people in medieval Europe actually attend church once a week (or more)?
I know the common answer is "yes", but I'm having trouble figuring out how it would've been possible for people living in rural areas, which in many cases would have been small farming hamlets located pretty far from any kind of town center capable of supporting a church. It seems like it would be especially problematic if the people didn't own a horse.
Were there simply a lot more churches back then, or is this a case of history being remembered from the perspective of people living in towns versus peasants?
I know "medieval Europe" is an impossibly broad category, but if you happen to be able to answer this question, please feel free to choose from any place and time you're familiar with even if it's not necessarily representative.
which in many cases would have been small farming hamlets located pretty far from any kind of town center capable of supporting a church
To begin to answer this question, we have to start at this misconception. It's an easy one to make given the splendid rural isolation which marks most current farms, but it's hard to overstate the differences which Inclosure Acts, industrialisation and mechanisation have made to the agricultural landscape since the 18th Century. John Deere (other agricultural machinery brands are available) estimate that one of their latest models of combine can harvest and thresh about 30 acres of cereal crops in an hour 1. This is, essentially, the same as a virgate, the rough average parcel of land held by a tenant farming household at the time of Domesday Book. Incidentally this would be land that would take about a month to plough. The average size of a farm in the UK is just over 200 acres (although the largest, Elveden, is 10,000 acres), and could therefore be ploughed and then harvested by a modernised mechanised farmer in 2-3 days by a single farmer and perhaps some seasonal labour. During the Medieval period, however, that same 200 acres might be supporting and farmed by 8-10 households as well as day labourers, probably some 50-80 people. With the vast majority of the medieval population employed in agriculture, this meant that the medieval rural landscape would have been surprisingly densely populated to modern eyes. In England, in part as a legacy of the 9th Century burh network and in part a simple reflection of economic necessity and basic biological limitations, you were rarely if ever more than 20 miles - a long day's walk - from a market town.
As a case study, we'll look at the Hundred of Blandford in Dorset. Alongside the town of Blandford itself and the royal vil at Kingston Lacy, Domesday lists fourteen other settlements and two smaller agricultural holdings. The largest settlement, Wimborne, was effectively a town in its own right, a walled settlement at the confluence of two rivers with a population of about 150 households (around 400-700 people) centred around a Minster church and one-time West Saxon royal convent. Other sizeable settlements were Hinton Martell (49 households), Moor Chrichel (38 households), Shapwick (38 households), and Didlington (23 households). Hinton Martell's medieval church burned down in the 1800s, but elements of its 13th century Gothic reconstruction remain. Moor Crichel's medieval church was another victim of Victorian reconstruction, while St Bartholomew's Shapwick is another 13th Century Gothic building which most likely replaced an earlier Romanesque building. The Church of All Saints at Didlington and Chalbury is extensively remodelled and no longer in use, but again retains much of its original 13th century fabric which, again, likely replaced an earlier building.
Two smaller settlements, Petersham and Thorn Hill, shared a chapel at Holt, that may have been ministered to by priests commuting from the Minster Church in Wimborne, which functioned as a hub to provide religious services to smaller communities which were too small to sustain a permanent member of the clergy. Three of these settlements were clustered around Wimborne - Walford, Wilksworth and Leigh - and would also have been within short walking distance of the Church there, while parishioners at Leigh would also have been able to cross the River Stour to attend the Saxon church at Canford, in the neighbouring Hundred of Cogdean.
To answer your question, then, Churches were more common, but only because Medieval rural communities were typically much larger and populous than modern farming communities, and even people within small communities with no church of their own typically lived no more than a few hours walk from a larger settlement where they could worship, or which had a minster church to provide clergy as needed to smaller chapels.
I'll add just a few numbers to strengthen /u/BRIStoneman's excellent argument further.
Thomas calculates and sums up the average distances between the parish church and its dependent chapels across the British Isles and in Later Middle Ages, and the followings are the summary of her tables (Thomas 2018: 67):
(under the British church provinces)
+++
(Under the Norwegian church Province of Trondheim-Nidaros)
Chapels were, so to speak, satellite service stations to the parish church (that priests were to be sent for the service there), so in theory, the parishioners didn't have to take a visit to get the holy services more than the half of the distances summarized above. Even if we take some additional time on road in consideration, these figures suggest that the majority of parishioners could travel to the church to attend the mass every week within a or two hours, at least in England and Cornwall.
At a first glance, the contrast between those of the British ones and those in the Norwegian archbishoprics is considerable - the latter had to travel as about twice as long to attend the mass every Sunday. Many of the medieval local churches in the latter category (that is to say, in the Norwegian church province), however, are located by water, so to take a boat might have shortened the 'commuting time' of its parishioners to attend the service considerably, Thomas also makes a note (Thomas 2018: 67).
The most long average one, the case of Sodor (Hebridean) diocese, also seemed to have had a special regulation. In 1350, one clause of the Manx-Sodor synodal statute issued by Bishop Russel in 1350 states that: "a man or woman from every house, or both of them, should come to church on each Lord's day to hear divine worship, unless they might be reasonably excused." (Thomas 2018: 45). On the other hand, the Norwegian archbishop's statute lack such a special clause that every Norwegian parishioners (including those in Bergen diocese mentioned above) were in principle expected to attend the mass regularly. Even in the case of Manx-Sodor, the habitual absent parishioners were imposed to pay the fine of 3 shillings and 4 pence.
Reference: