Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals

362 Pages·2000·16.793 MB·English

by  Guyda Armstrong, Ian N. Wood

CHRISTIANIZING PEOPLES
AND CONVERTING INDIVIDUALS
INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL RESEARCH
Volume 7
Editorial Board
Axel E. W. Müller, Alan V. Murray, Peter Meredith, & Ian N. Wood
with the assistance of the IMC Programming Committee
CHRISTIANIZING PEOPLES
AND CONVERTING INDIVIDUALS
Edited by
Guyda Armstrong
&
Ian N. Wood
H
F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Christianizing peoples and converting individuals. –
(International medieval research ; 7)
1. Conversion – Christianity – History – To 1500 2. Evangelistic work – History – To
1500 3. Church history – Middle Ages, 600-1500 4. Europe – Church history – 600-
1500
I. Armstrong, Guyda II. Wood, Ian, 1950-
270.3
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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without prior permission of the publisher.
D/2000/0095/88
ISBN 2-503-51087-6
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper.
Contents
Introduction ix
IAN N. WOOD
The Early Medieval East
The Life of St Nino: 3
Georgia’s Conversion to its Female Apostle
EVA M. SYNEK
Why Orthodoxy Did Not Spread among the Bulgars 15
of the Crimea during the Early Medieval Era:
An Early Byzantine Conversion Model
THOMAS S. NOONAN
The Early Medieval West
Some Historical Re-identifications 27
and the Christianization of Kent
IAN N. WOOD
Converting Monks: Missionary Activity 37
in Early Medieval Frisia and Saxony
WOLFERT VAN EGMOND
Deliberate Ambiguity: 47
The Lombards and Christianity
WALTER POHL
The Conversion of Scandinavia
New Perspectives on an Old Problem: 61
Uppsala and the Christianization of Sweden
ANNE-SOFIE GRÄSLUND
Early Christian Burials in Sweden 73
BERTIL NILSSON
Adam of Bremen and the Conversion of Scandinavia 83
HENRIK JANSON
Approaches to the Conversion of the Finns: 89
Ideologies, Symbols, and Archaeological Features
DEREK FEWSTER
The Conversion of
Central and Eastern Europe
Signs of Conversion in Early Medieval Charters 105
ZSOLT HUNYADI
Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws 115
JÁNOS M. BAK
Signs of Conversion in Vitae sanctorum 125
ANNA KUZNETSOVA
Conversion in Chronicles: The Hungarian Case 133
LÁSZLÓ VESZPRÉMY
Mission to the Heathen in Prussia and Livonia: 147
The Attitudes of the Religious Military
Orders Toward Christianization
MARIE-LUISE FAVREAU-LILIE
The Conversion of the Jews
The Forced Baptism of Jews in Christian 157
Europe: An Introductory Overview
BENJAMIN RAVID
Living in Limbo: The Experience of 169
Jewish Converts in Medieval England
REVA BERMAN BROWN & SEAN MCCARTNEY
Crusade and Conversion
in the Mediterranean Region
Marriage As a Means of Conversion in 195
Pierre Dubois’s De recuperatione Terre Sancte
MICHAEL R. EVANS
Mission et frontière dans l’espace Méditerranéen: 203
Tentatives d’une société guerrière pour
la propagation de la foi
LUDWIG VONES
Competing Faiths in Asia:
Muslims, Christians,
Zoroastrians, and Mongols
The Conversion Stories of 225
Shaykh Abu Ishaq Kazaruni
NEGUIN YAVARI
To Baptize Khans or to Convert Peoples? 247
Missionary Aims in Central Asia
in the Fourteenth Century
JAMES D. RYAN
Cum hora undecima: The Incorporation 259
of Asia into the orbis Christianus
FELICITAS SCHMIEDER
The Theology of Conversion
St Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Conversion 269
PATRICK QUINN
Aquinas, the Intellect, and Divine Enlightenment 277
PATRICK QUINN
Conversio ad bonum commutabile: 283
Augustinian Language of ‘Conversion’
in Medieval Theology
DONALD MOWBRAY
Converting the Other and Converting the Self: 295
Double Objectives in Franciscan Educational Writings
BERT ROEST
Platonism and Plagiarism 303
at the End of the Middle Ages
PETER O’BRIEN
Conversion in Art
The ‘Conversion’ of King John and its 321
Consequences for Worcester Cathedral
UTE ENGEL
Conversion As Depicted on the 339
Fourteenth-Century Tring Tiles
MARY CASEY
Introduction
IAN N. WOOD
T he anniversary of Augustine’s arrival in Kent in 597, and the subsequent
christianization of England, made conversion an obvious theme for the 1997
International Medieval Congress. It was also a theme which attracted massive
interest, and not just from early medievalists interested in the christianization of
England and its near-contemporary parallels. Indeed, if anything Augustine’s mission
was underrepresented in the considerable number of papers dealing with conversion and
christianization.
If the Anglo-Saxons, and indeed the West Germanic peoples, were underrepresented,
the Early Middle Ages were present in a number of papers concerned with Central and
Eastern Europe—and as far east as Georgia. In addition, interest in the Baltic region
took this aspect of the christianization of Europe well into the fourteenth century. Papers
on these regions constitute a good proportion of the present volume, and they provide
a very useful point of entry into work currently being done on christianization in areas
which are less well known to most historians than is Western Europe—not least because
of the range of languages involved.
At the same time, interest in christianization and conversion in later periods of the
Middle Ages was fully apparent in numerous papers. Two issues predominated: one was
the interface between Christians and Muslims—in Spain and in the Holy Land—and
also between Christians and Jews—once again in Spain, but also in England, and more
generally in Western Europe. The other was the rather more theological question of the
nature of conversion, as discussed by Aquinas, and in Franciscan writings.
In deciding to devote a volume of the IMR series to the topic of conversion, we also
decided to make that volume as wide-ranging as possible. Limitations of space meant
x IAN N. WOOD
that certain topics had to be excluded—and there was a decision to concentrate on
historical approaches to the topic, which meant leaving aside, with regret, a number of
essentially literary studies. Within those limitations, however, we have been able to
gather together a considerable range of papers. Chronologically they begin in the early
fourth century with the christianization of Georgia, and they stretch to missions to Asia
almost exactly a millennium later. Quite apart from the chronological range, the
different types of questions posed and materials used are a fascinating indication of the
different interpretations of the topic to be found among specialists in different fields.
Christianization, as a process affecting complete peoples, or at least large groups,
attracts attention, as does conversion of the individual. By putting these varying
approaches together, we hope we have given some indication of the range of current
work on christianization and conversion history—and that the range itself, quite apart
from the individual studies, will prove to be an eye-opener.