Conversion Archive
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Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England. -
Louis the Pious and the Conversion of the Danes
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was part of a very interesting session on the Early Middle Ages. The papers covered Eastern European Infant Burial, the archaeology of medieval feasting and conversion. This paper contrasted the conversion policies of Charlemagne versus those of Louis the Pious. -
Holding The Border: Power, Identity, And The Conversion Of Mercia
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsExamining the conversion of the kingdom of Mercia from the perspective of that kingdom’s origins and development and its rulers’ interests and concerns will enable us to understand both resistance and conversion to Christianity in seventh-century England. -
From Paganism to Christianity: Transition of the Insular Celts As Seen Through The Archaeological Record
Posted on December 21, 2012 | No CommentsThese centuries of tension and adaptation provide the evidence for the interaction of Christianity and Celtic religions, but one must use caution when examining Celtic religion because of potentially biased evidence. -
Conversion and Empire: Byzantine Missionaries, Foreign Rulers, and Christian Narratives (ca. 300-900)
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsFor a broader modern audience today, if taken somewhat journalistically, Pusicius’ story is an example that cuts along cultural and religious lines that presumably originate in ancient, political divisions and confirm a “clash of civilizations” thesis. -
The Law’s Violence against Medieval and Early Modern Jews
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsKen Pennington examines the issue of forced baptism of Jewish children in the legal literature from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. -
“Kings as Catechumens: Royal Conversion Narratives and Easter in the Historia Ecclesiastica” by Carolyn Twomey (Boston College)
Posted on November 3, 2012 | No CommentsThis is the first paper from the Haskins Conference at Boston College - it focused on Bede's narratives of Royal conversion. -
Coptic Conversion and the Islamization of Egypt
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsMost recently, Tamer el-Leithy has made a comprehensive study of Coptic conversion during the Mamluk period. In length and depth, this still-unpublished work eclipses the preceding article-length studies. Its subject is focused on conversion among the Coptic upper class in Cairo during the fourteenth century... -
The Secret Society: Descendants of Crypto-Jews in the San Antonio Area
Posted on September 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe history of the converso Jews began in medieval Catholic Spain, which was constantly wracked with anti-Semitism that, many times, led to mass conversions or massacres of the Jewish population. -
Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Reconsidered
Posted on July 22, 2012 | No CommentsWith the notable exception of R. I. Page, the attitude that historians and archaeologists alike have taken to Bede’s words about the religion(s) of the pre-Christian occupants of conversion-age Anglo-Saxon England has overwhelmingly been to accept what this eighth-century commentator has to tell us. -
Petrarch’s “Conversion” on Mont Ventoux and the Patterns of Religious Experience
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsPetrarch’s letter, with its moments of meditation, its allegorical exploitation of the features in the physical ascent, and its program of classical allusions informing even the geographical descriptions, is much more than a travel narrative. -
Black Africans’ Religious and Cultural Assimilation to, or Appropriation of, Catholicism in Italy, 1470-1520
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsCurrent scholarship emphasizes that the old model of conversion—of, say, Christianity being actively forced onto passive and subordinate peoples—is no longer satisfactory, and instead prefers to frame the issue around concepts of cultural interaction or cultural transmission, and selective appropriation of the host religion. -
The Christianization of Kieven Rus’ and Piast Poland
Posted on June 6, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough both came from pagan and ethnically Slavic backgrounds, the leaders diverged in the branch of Christianity each chose, although, both conversions took place each region within a similar time frame. -
MISSION AND CONVERSION IN THE LIVES OF CONSTANTINE-CYRIL AND METHODIUS
Posted on May 31, 2012 | No CommentsMission and conversion have long been, and continue to be a preoccupation among historians. Mission as understood in this paper refers to an individual or group traveling outside of their land to achieve a purpose, whether it be instruction, securing peace, or conversion. -
The Adoption of Christianity by the Irish and Anglo-Saxons: The Creation of Two Different Christian Societies
Posted on March 23, 2012 | No CommentsFrom the Celts to the Anglo-Saxons, nomadic tribes of Europe fostered pagan beliefs. Today, few records exist to explain these faiths because of their roots in oral tradition and a demise of animistic traditions brought about by the adaptation of a new conviction. -
Conversion and Convergence in the Venetian-Ottoman Borderlands
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsIn this essay I seek to explain this surprisingly peaceful outcome to a potentially explosive situation, and more broadly to contribute to a new kind of history of early modern diplomacy that takes as its starting point practices of mediation in all their complexity. -
The Irish Christian Holy Men: Druids Reinvented?
Posted on March 17, 2012 | No CommentsThe druids as members of the pagan 'priestly class' were an important, high-status force in Celtic society. This class of druids was one of the most formidable groups that early Christian saints and missionaries had to face and overcome in order to establish firmly the roots of Christianity in pagan Celtic Ireland. -
The Conversion to Christianity in Medieval Ireland: St. Patrick vs. St. Bridget
Posted on March 17, 2012 | No CommentsBoth St. Bridget and St. Patrick are patron saints of Ireland, but each had very different methods of converting people to Christianity from paganism during medieval times in Ireland. -
Making Christian Landscapes: Conversion and Consolidation in Early Medieval Europe
Posted on March 13, 2012 | No CommentsInternational conference to be held at University College Cork, Ireland on 21-23 September, 2012 -
Boniface’s Booklife: How the Ragyndrudis Codex Came to be a Vita Bonifatii
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe most recent addition to the family of literary genres may be the booklife. Finding its origin in Roland Barthes's Roland Barthes and now taught in English departments, the booklife proposes a union of sorts of writing and living. Whether the genre will be long-lived is an open question, that it can be fruitful is not in doubt. But medievalists already knew that the dividing line between book and life is always thin, especially if that life has been lived in and among books. -
Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain
Posted on February 29, 2012 | No CommentsFrom the late eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth, significant populations of Jews and Muslims lived under Christian domination in the lands we now call Spain. Their coexistence was not easy, for each of the three religious communities felt at risk, both physically and spiritually, from the others -
Reconquista and convivencia: Post-conquest Valencia during the Reign of Jaime I, el Conquistador: Interaction between Christians and Muslims (1238-1276)
Posted on February 5, 2012 | No CommentsThis study will focus on just one aspect of the transition from Muslim kingdom to medieval Christian state. In 1238, Ciudad de Valencia, the most important urban center in the Muslim kingdom of Valencia would fall to Jaime I, el conquistador, king of Christian Aragon and Catalonia, opening up a vast region to Christian influence. -
On the Language of Conversion: Visigothic Spain Revisited
Posted on January 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn fifth-century Spain, the Visigoth conquerors – Christians and Arians – had to live with the native Hispani, who were Roman by culture and law and Catholic by faith. -
Christianity and burial in late Iron Age Scotland, AD 400-650
Posted on January 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn the period after the fall of Rome and before the Vikings, Scotland became a Christian society, but there are few historical documents to help understand how this happened. -
Beowulf, Orality and the Anglo-Saxon Conversion
Posted on December 19, 2011 | No CommentsThere is no source quite like the Beowulf manuscript, as it is the longest poem and the only epic composed in Old English which has survived to the modern era, and thus is central to any understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature.
