Baptism and the Language of Conversion: Patterns in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Crusade Literature

This study focuses on the patterns of the religious conversion depicted in selected literary works of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries with the ultimate goal of gaining a sense of how that process is transmitted through a literary text. I analyze sources from various regions of Western Europe as case-studies. Literary sources of this period often have conversion episodes built into the larger stories and themes. However, I would argue that the patterns certainly reflect in some ways the historical realities of the contemporary experience. The sources that I employ for this study are drawn from a selection of examples from the early twelfth century through the early thirteenth century.  Each source is in some sense crusade themed such as the Old French Song of Roland. These sources often reflect a variety of reasons for conversion, but usually share similarities in language when discussing the process of conversion. These sources also reflect important changes brought on by the experience of crusading since Christian churchmen and rulers were confronted with increasing numbers on non-Christians (or Christians of differing creeds).  As such, there are increasing examples of mission and conversion scenes in the emerging Latin and vernacular literature of the time.  In particular, baptism scenes or the citation of baptism often appears as a linguistic marker for indicating conversion. In part, I hope to challenge one of the conceptions put forth by Karl Morrison in his work, Understanding Conversion in that baptism was not understood by twelfth century audiences as representing a major feature of the conversion experience. However, as my analysis indicates, when it came to the many literary works, the citation of baptism and the depiction of baptism scenes was central to the language of conversion and that this is likely connected to the on-going experience of crusading.