One central yearning had great force in later medieval life: an intense desire for religious experience. In the 1200s, the church, more than ever before, began successfully reaching people through preaching, art and drama, books and pamphlets, and annual confession and Communion, among other things. In response, there was a widespread hunger for religious experience, a hunger, ironically, the church, which created it, could not satisfy. People found parish life humdrum and spiritually undemanding.