Archetypes Of The Author: Early Medieval Conversion Narratives

An oft-repeated feature of medieval European and Mediterranean literature is the conversion narrative. This is partly because of the overwhelming weight of ecclesiastical work in the canon, which by its very nature speaks of religion, its boundaries, its internal and external identification. What is conversion, after all, but a change in identity?

Conversion narrative provides useful historical – and historic – moments for those authors who wish to imbue their narratives with drama, suspense and character insight. It has been analysed ‘as an individual psychological process in several stages involving ‘context’, ‘crisis’, ‘quest’, ‘encounter’ with an ‘advocate’, ‘interaction’, ‘commitment’ and ‘consequences’’. Such terminology is still used in literature and creative writing seminars the world over – conversion is perfect fodder for story-tellers.

Conversion narrative is an advertisement, often employing a celebrity. Whereas in our times the ploy is often aimed at shifting hair-loss remedy or anti-aging cream, in the Middle Ages the product was presented as altogether more regenerative. One of the defining aspects of Christianity (but by no means unique to it) was the idea of evangelism, and to be a believer meant the incumbency of advertising the good news, and as is well known in advertising agencies today, the bigger the name, the more bang to your buck.

In short, then, conversion narratives allow both their characters and their authors to fulfil professional and politico-religious duties. Is the subject simply of interest, another event among many others which needs recording – the duty of the “Chronicler”? Is it a literary device, a conceit that provides a stepping-stone between beginning, middle and end, thought, action and consequence – the duty of the “Narrator”? Is it a political stratagem, an establishment of a new order legitimised – the duty of the “Courtier”? Is it a confession of true belief, an apologia and polemic – the duty of the “Evangelist”?

Following from these questions, how do we classify those duties? Is it purely political to act as courtier in a Christian dynasty, for surely such a line of kings serves a religious goal as well? Even if one truly believes in heartfelt, personal, spiritual conversion, does that preclude them from understanding its political implications?

Conversion narratives often involve all of the above. The religious and political life of the writers which I shall analyse in this essay cannot possibly be picked apart and lain according to Euclidean rules of parallel: there is always a point at which they interweave. The modern, scientifically literate and relatively secular mind could not hope to gain proper understanding of what has been termed the medieval “intuition of divinity”, and quite apart from this general otherness which separates the modern researcher from his or her medieval subject, the more specific issue of conversion is even thornier. As one scholar puts it, ‘‘Conversion’ is inevitably a process of such considerable psychological and social complexity that even a thorough reconstruction of the historical setting and events that occurred, and even a precise descri ption of ‘what happened’ could not convey the significance of the conversion understood and felt, religiously, by the adherents of the new faith and their communal heirs’– or lack thereof.

Therefore, what I will aim towards here is not an investigation into whether, in aim, the respective conversion narratives are religious or spiritual, rather than secular or political. Instead, this is more an analysis of how these two threads interplay across the template of the four duties stated above – “Chronicler”, “Narrator”, “Courtier” and “Evangelist”, and a study, where possible, of the efforts of the author to weave them together into a consciously comprehensive narrative, which itself becomes an historical event.

I will look at conversion stories from the fourth, sixth and eighth centuries, based within what was (and ceased to be) the Western Roman Empire. My reasons for choosing these periods and this geographical area are twofold. Firstly, the period between the fourth and the eighth centuries sees Christianity growing from a persecuted sect to the established religious and political orthodoxy of most of the defunct Roman Empire. Through the lens of this religious and political doctrine, we can more clearly inspect the re-establishment of Antiquity’s norms and practice – from literary convention to governance – by way of converting its political heirs to the most recent manifestation of romanitas – that is, Christianity.

Secondly, throughout those centuries the rubble of the Western Roman Empire was swamped by a fluid and fickle identity crisis. While the Eastern Empire of Byzantium had (relatively) stable borders and jurisdiction, western Europe did not enjoy the same constancy. Gothic and Saxon tribes swept across the erstwhile Roman provinces of Italia, Gallia, Belgica, Britannia and Iberia. These peoples, adapting from the life of a migratory tribe to that of a settled society, unintentionally mirrored the pattern of rejection-migration-assimilation-adoption that was by now part of Christianity’s history. Indeed, as we shall see, the same pattern is discernible in conversion narratives.

What a review of recent scholarship on conversion narrative speaks of more than anything is a need for definition of terms. Most immediately, the terms religion and politics require clarification. Though Christianity originally spread ‘anarchically, without overt strategy or leadership’, the ‘first Christians [seeing] the state as quite separate from their concerns’, with the ‘adhesion to Christianity of Constantine and his successors … Christian bishops were no longer just the disciplinarians of tightly organized sectarian cells but rapidly assimilated as quasi civil servants into the mandarinate which administered the empire.’ By the time Rome fell, bishops were trained not just as evangelists, but as praetors. Importantly, such merging of faith with politics could also be proven to be encouraged by scri pture, and had indeed been encouraged by Eusebius.

Granted, the Western Roman Empire was soon moribund, but the episcopal sees retained enough influence to survive the vacuum left by the legions and governors. In the face of such political crises as the arrival of hordes of Salian Franks upon lately Roman – that is, Christian – land, ‘les évêques furent appelés à jouer un rôle determinant sur la scène politique de l’époque qui dévoila les motivations sous-jacentes de la mission qu’ils s’étaient donné de proteger la romanité.’

Despite this imperative amalgamation of roles in the principal actors of conversion narratives – the converters themselves – modern historians approaching the subject ‘have tended to address it more as a political phenomenon than a religious one, perhaps because of discomfort with what they view as a largely theological issue.’ It is possibly for similar reasons that historians have largely avoided the phenomenon of conversion narrative, preferring that of conversion itself they view the former as more literary concern than historical.

Richard Fletcher is one example. In The Conversion of Europe, he aims to produce ‘an investigation of the process by which large parts of Europe accepted the Christian faith between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries’. This process obviously involves the power of narrative, and Fletcher acknowledges this and addresses it to a certain degree, but his scope is broader than mine. He does, however, as do I, stay as much as possible within the realm of western Europe. Still, his focus is on the historical occurrences described in the narrative of primary sources.

Ryan Szpiech, in Conversion and Narrative, sees that any true separation of the experience of conversion from the story about it actually proves an obstacle to understanding of either, drawing a comparison with vitae, wherein ‘the polemical conversion narrative literally is the convert’. He speaks of Karl Morrison’s useful contrast between the “thing felt” (conversion) and the “thing made” (conversion narrative), which helps focus one’s research when looking into scholarship about the issue, while, perhaps paradoxically, allowing one to realize that narratives of conversion are not just stories about events (which might or might not have taken place), but are events themselves (which demonstrably have taken place). While he pays particular attention to polemical conversion narratives from a later period than my concern here, it holds true that ‘conversion stories, as expression of sacred history, also become a basis for authoritative proof … of Christian auctoritas.’

Anders Winroth, writing about the conversion to Christianity of Scandinavia, goes so far as to claim that historical accuracy was not even in the interests of those authors who wrote conversion stories, that their concern was ‘in extolling the heroism of individual converters, supporting the institutions they represented, and, ultimately, praising God himself.’ In this, he says, they could simply ‘follow the examples set by St. Augustine [and] the standard historians of the time’.

Sally Shockro writes convincingly of the need for awareness of the multi-layered nature of Bede’s work, noting that scholars have hitherto measured him as an historian, rather than a Biblical exegete, and so have missed much of the significance of his text. This is a view perhaps supported by the conclusions of Julia’s Barrow’s investigation into the character and story of Coifi in Bede’s narrative of King Edwin’s conversion.

What is overwhelmingly suggested is that these medieval authors have subtleties yet to be discovered, but that in order to reveal them, we must try new methods and models of critique.

Augustine of Hippo is the first author of conversion narrative at which I would like to look. There is, I realize, a strong case to be made against inclusion of Augustine in an article about narratives from the historiography of the Middle Ages. His Confessions are not strictly speaking a “history” at least one scholar, however, has described them as ‘the greatest work of spiritual autobiography ever written’, and in them we find two highly instructive narratives of conversion.

Nor were the Confessions written in the Middle Ages, but at the end of Antiquity. Nonetheless, however you measure the end of one epoch, and the beginning of another, the Confessions bestride both, being written before the sack of Rome, but continuing to echo long afterwards. In them, we find Augustine as Chronicler, Narrator, Evangelist and, despite his rejection of Eusebian unification of Church and State, Courtier – each in an entirely self-conscious and consciously instructive way. He provides the template upon which much of the later conversion narrative is based. In doing so, he provides, for the modern researcher of medieval conversion narratives, a template with which to examine his or her primary sources.

Before using this template on conversion narratives found in Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum and Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, it would be useful to illustrate its formation. In Book VIII of Confessions, we find the denouement of a process which has haunted Augustine throughout the previous seven books. Preceding his own famous, sudden and private epiphany, however, Augustine records the public conversion of another, that of Victorinus.

Despite being offered the opportunity to declare his faith privately, Victorinus (a well-known figure in Rome who has defended Christianity but held back from converting, mainly because of peer pressure), prefers to announce it ‘in conspectu sanctae multitudinis’. This episode would be of little topical interest, except that Augustine emphasises why he chose such an historical parable of conversion in one so well-known as Victorinus, a rationale that would recur in conversion narrative thence, and about which I will say more shortly. In his depiction of this event, Augustine acts as Chronicler he tells us of Victorinus’ success in Rome, his work, his skills and his relationships. He speaks of ‘mos’ and ‘Romae reddi solet ad eis’, allowing us a glimpse of customs surrounding Church practice. He is the consummate Narrator, allowing his audience to eavesdrop on private conversations between his actors, their sarcasm with one another, their anxiety. Victorinus at first ‘inridebat’ before ‘erubuit veritati’. He is a human being, persuaded by what he sees around him to convert to Christianity. As far as Evangelist is concerned, Augustine could not be clearer. For one thing, his text is littered with direct quotes from scri pture. The whole is addressed to the power and wondrousness of God, and is a polemic against ‘superbos daemonicolas’.

And where is the Courtier in this? Shortly, we shall see far clearer definitions of this archetype, but Augustine, we know, felt no urge to evoke the idea of a king in Christ. And yet, he specifically dedicates a chapter to his audience’s comprehension that the conversion of ‘multis noti, multis sunt auctoritati ad salutem, et multis praeeunt secuturis’. Though qualifying this message with a wish that there be no preference for the rich over the poor into the kingdom of God, he admits that the conversion of a famous face is certainly more useful to the cause. He is not trying to set up a dynasty himself, but he is instructing his audience how to do so.

I would also like to briefly look at Augustine’s descri ption of his own conversion. This is a well-known passage, and needs little explication other than to highlight something which is perhaps a product of its autobiographical nature, but which would be much used in later third-person narratives. In Book VIII.xii, ashamed of his tears, Augustine withdraws from his friend Alypius and pleads with the God he has not yet discovered to show himself and cure him of his sin. (There is an interesting adherence to the notion of historicity here - ‘et non quidem his verbis, sed in hac sententia multa’ – both an honest Chronicler and skilful Narrator.) In the midst of his weeping, he overhears a child’s voice from next door singing, over and over again, ‘tolle lege, tolle lege’. Augustine obeys, and upon finishing the sentence, experiences his spiritual conversion.

What stands out from this tale is the internal torment of the convertee, and the internal peace wrought by realization. This is only hinted at in his tale of Victorinus, perhaps because Augustine, so close in time and acquaintance to the character, does not wish to speak for him too much. Instead, the audience is given that climax in the first-person, in vivid language – the experience of conversion is not the baptism, but the personal revelation in one’s self. Thus does narrative – Morrison’s “thing made” – become one with experience – the “thing felt”.

This, then, is the template for the conversion of notable people in later conversion narratives. The author acts as Chronicler, to make the story historical as Narrator, to make it historic. He acts as Courtier, to instruct us how to be effective Evangelists. We shall see now how in the work of both Gregory of Tours and Bede, the two themes of private revelation and public conversion are interwoven by the author, in all four archetypal offices, to provoke an experience – an event – exterior to the words on the page.

Firstly, I will look at the narrative of the conversion of Clovis, included by Gregory of Tours in his Decem Libri Historiae. Briefly, his tale of this ‘newly arrived barbarian warlord … patiently shepherded into the Christian fold’ goes thus: Clovis marries Clothilde, a Christian Burgundian, who tries again and again to have her husband allow their son to be baptized. Clovis is reluctant, believing that the Christian god ‘nihil posse … nec de deorum genere esse probatur’. Clothilde sticks to her guns, and prepares the son for baptism, hoping that ‘quo facilius vel hoc mysterio provocaretur ad credendum, qui flecti praedicatione non poterat’. The son dies. Clovis blames his death on the uselessness of the Christian god, but doesn’t stop Clothilde having another go with another son – albeit sceptically. This one lives, but still Clovis is reluctant. It is only when he is in the midst of a battle against the Alamanni, which he is on the point of losing, that he raises his eyes to heaven and asks for the help of ‘Jesu-Christe, quem Chrotechildis praedicat esse filium Dei vivi’. Immediately, the Alamanni are routed and surrender.

Following this victory, Clovis is instructed in the Christian faith, in secret, by Remegius (Remi) of Rheims. The secrecy is because Clovis worries that ‘quod populus qui me sequitur, non patitur relinquere deos suos’, but his anxiety is unfounded. Before he can consult them, they unanimously announce that they too wish to convert, and so Clovis, ‘novus Constantinus’, is led to his baptism, along with his family, his nobility and his army.

Until relatively recently, Gregory of Tours was seen as ‘a blunt, sincere, and artless recorder of the world around him,’ and his depictions of Clovis’ conversion as naïve as the rest of his work. But the same scholar from whom I have quoted that view of also wonders ‘whether the age speaks through an ingenuous Gregory or whether, instead, he deliberately shaped the age he depicted.’ I would suggest the latter, for several reasons.

Firstly, as has been noted by Heinzelmann, Brunhölzl and Brunterc’h, there is a conscious effort on the part of Gregory to evoke the idea of Christly authority when speaking of Clovis. This is much the same practice as emulating Christ to emphasise the holiness of saints in hagiography, and part of Gregory’s duty as Evangelist and Courtier is to paint Clovis as both saint and king, truly a ‘novus Constantinus’. But such carefully constructed emulation is not the work of a rube. The imitation of the announcement of Jesus’ birth in Luke by Gregory for that of Clovis, noted by Brunhölzl, is especially subtle, coming as it does a full nineteen chapters before the tale of his baptism – during which, it must be said, Gregory takes available opportunities to criticise Clovis.

Here is Gregory as Narrator, for this is the climax of a cliffhanger on which he left the chapter of Clovis’ birth – ‘hic fuit magnus et pugnatur egregius’ – before returning in the subsequent chapters to his job as Chronicler. The reader is left to wonder at what made Clovis so magnus and egregius, and to hope that this shall be explained further.

Secondly, there is the role of Bishop Remegius of Rheims. Heinzelmann has said that Gregory’s ‘literary activity is best understood with reference to his quality as a bishop, a leader of society’, and as mentioned above, contemporary bishops performed consciously multifaceted roles. Gregory takes great care to show how instruction in the faith by a bishop is necessary for authentic conversion, not to mention how close to the royal family Clothilde’s bishop was – and this despite Clovis’ initial animosity towards the Church. As Heinzelmann demonstrates, ‘Gregory’s self-consciousness as an author was formed principally from the exceptional value he placed on his quality as a bishop’ taking the conversion narrative as much an historical event as the conversion itself, we see Gregory announcing – stamping with his seal, almost – the continued involvement of the episcopate in matters of state. This is him speaking as Courtier, but a powerful one, part of the ruling order, who has inherited the same authority that Remegius had in the time of Clovis.

Thirdly, and following from my second point, Gregory is establishing a dynasty in Christ. It is not just the patent emulation contained in the words ‘novus Constantinus’, nor that Clovis’ whole family was also anointed at the same time, but that ‘omnis populus’ and ‘de exercito vero eius baptizati sunt amplius tria milia’. This was not just the conversion of a man, or a king, or a family – it was, at a stroke, the regeneration of an entire tribe, army and all. What better result could an Evangelist hope for?

In Book II of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the author dedicates several chapters to the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria. As with Gregory’s Clovis, the process starts with a marriage, this time to Ethelberg of Kent. However, this time there is concern on the part of her family that ‘non esse licitam Christianem virginem pagano in conjugem dari’ Edwin’s response, if anything, is nonchalantly agnostic. He says that he will allow Christianity into his kingdom, and even submit to it himself if it will mean the marriage can continue. Ethelberg is accordingly sent north, bringing with her a bishop, Paulinus, as anti-pagan protection.

Meanwhile, the West Saxons send an assassin to kill Edwin. Just as the killer is launching himself with poisoned dagger at the king, however, one of Edwin’s closest friends interposes himself and takes the hit. On that same night, which happens to be Easter Sunday, Edwin and Ethelberg’s daughter is born. Paulinus jumps at the chance to tell Edwin that, thanks to his prayers to his God, the queen was able to give birth without pain. Edwin is over the moon about this, but it isn’t quite enough. However, were that same God to allow him ‘victoriam … pugnanti adversus regem’ then he would absolutely give up his idols in the service of Christ. As proof of his promise, he allows his newborn to be baptized before heading south and beating the Saxons. Upon his return, however, while he does give up worshipping the old gods, he still doesn’t convert.

Following two chapters dedicated to papal missives to the king and his wife exhorting them both to ensure Edwin’s baptism, we read of when Edwin, years before and while in exile, is about to be betrayed by his protector. A friend tries to persuade him to escape, but unwilling to break his word with his protector, Edwin stays. Then he has a vision, wherein a figure, ‘vultus habitusque incogniti’, approaches him and asks three searching questions. What reward would Edwin give the man who might get him out of this mess? Edwin answers that he would repay him with everything he has. What would Edwin give him if he told him that he was going to beat all his enemies and be the greatest king England had ever known? Yes, that would certainly deserve a fitting reward. All this coming true, and he who told it proving to be a better counsellor than Edwin had ever before known, would Edwin submit to him wholly? Edwin answers that he would do so. At this, the figure ‘imposuit dexteram suam capiti ejus’ and tells Edwin to remember the gesture. He then vanishes. Almost straight away, Edwin hears news that he won’t be betrayed after all, and instead his protector is going to help him vanquish his enemies and get back his throne.

Paulinus, having discovered this story, goes to the vacillating Edwin and ‘imposuit dexteram capiti ejus’. This is the moment of Edwin’s conversion, but before he formally converts he wishes to consult his council. There, his head pagan priest, Coifi, reasons why conversion might be a good idea after all – he hasn’t gained much at all in the way of a good life by following the old gods, what harm could there be in trying a new one? Another nobleman gives a prettier account of why conversion to a religion of everlasting salvation appeals, likening man’s time on earth to a sparrow’s flight on a winter’s night through a bright and warm feasting hall. Further to this, and at Coifi’s request, Paulinus speaks more on the faith Coifi’s convinced and immediately rides forth to destroy a pagan shrine. Following instruction in the faith, Edwin is baptized, along with many others, on Easter Sunday at York.

There are several elements here which merit examination according to our template. Most obviously, this tale comes in a self-professed history. Much in the same way as Gregory’s Decem Libri Historiarum, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica is concerned with the history of establishing the authority of an ethnically identified people. In the former, it is the Franks in this case, it is gentis Anglorum. While our Chronicler is careful to note not only the anno domini, but also the number of years into a certain reign, and the number of years after the arrival of the “English” on the island something took place, our Narrator approaches the matter of history, and Edwin’s situation within it, in a literary manner: ‘non solum omnes tuos progenitors, sed et omnes qui ante te reges … fuerant’.

How is Bede acting as Courtier? ‘One of the reasons Bede wrote [Historia Ecclesiastica] was precisely to provide models for policy and conduct’, one scholar has noted, and in his set piece on Edwin’s conversion Bede is actively creating the model of a Christian king. While Gregory uses Constantine as his model, Bede goes right to the source, evoking the life of Jesus himself, from baptism in the Jordan to the Passion on the Cross. As his entire Historia begins with a dedication to his king, Ceolwulf, it is unsurprising that he should wish to claim that such unity of kingship as was later found under Edwin can only be attained through observant Christianity, under the single jurisdiction of ‘regni in caelis’.

According to Barrow, Bede ‘hoped that readers and hearers of his book would be moved to meditate on what he had to say’. Note that she speaks of both readers and hearers much of Bede’s intended audience would not have been able to read, and would have needed the text to be read to them. This requires much thought on the part of the Narrator Bede would have intentionally written his work with the performative in mind. Thus the repetition of such phrases as ‘imposuit dexteram capiti ejus’ in order to echo back not only to a previous passage but to a previous gesture, one that would have been very familiar indeed.

In Barrow’s article, she proposes the theory that the laying of the right hand upon Edwin’s head by first the shadowy figure and then Paulinus is Bede’s meditation on the fulfilment of Old Testament promises in the New. She remarks on the similarity of Coifi with Caiaphas, argues convincingly that ‘it seems safest to read HE ii.13 not as a historically accurate descri ption … but as a meditation on the Redemption.’

But there is something else. Edwin’s vision is not only tense with biblical allegory for its audience it would also have had vivid liturgical significance as well. What is the conversation between Edwin and his eerie visitor, concluded by the right hand laid upon the head, but an enactment of baptismal vows, wherein the convertee swears allegiance to God above all else? What is the figure’s exhortation to remember the gesture but Bede the Evangelist’s appeal for his audience to remember their vows? And what is Paulinus’ repetition of the same gesture – for which Bede repeats his own words – but Edwin’s private conversion? Moreover, were this to be read aloud, what would be the effect of seeing the reader raise their right and lower it in benediction?

Richard Fletcher, addressing the same narratives which I have included here, notes four themes: the promise of victory uxorial persuasion deliberation and the inheritance of romanitas. I agree with him, but there are other patterns which reveal themselves if we look further back, in the tradition of conversion narrative, to Augustine.

One, I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, that of rejection-migration-assimiliation-adoption. What is Augustine’s spiritual journey, after all, but a rejection of Catholic Christianity, followed by a migration from heterodoxy, followed by assimiliation of its sacred texts and philosophy, concluded by personal adoption of the faith? Does Clovis not deride the faith, only to move grudgingly closer to it, assimilate it under the tutelage of Remegius, before finally adopting it? Aside from his offhand acceptance of Christianity in order to win Ethelberg as bride, does Edwin not behave according to a similar process?

In these narratives, history is being written not just of individual conversions, but of the entire movement of Christianity, consciously by authors who are duty-bound to various offices. They are acting as chroniclers, so that history can be put in its order as narrators, so that posterity will engage with history as courtiers, so that the heritage they espouse lasts into posterity and as evangelists, so that that heritage, in whose establishment they had a hand, will be Christian.

Word count: 5274

Bibliography

Augustine, Confessions, Volume I: Books 1-8, translated and edited by Carol J. -B. Hammond (Massachusetts 2014),

Barrow, Julia, ‘How Coifi Pierced Christ’s Side: A Re-Examination of Bede`s Ecclesiastical History, II, Chapter 13’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62, pp. 693-706

Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, edited by George Moberly, (London, 1881),

BeDuhn, Jason David, Augustine`s Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1: Conversion and Apostasy, 373-388 C.E. (Philadelphia, 2010)

Black, Antony, ‘Religion and Politics in Western and Islamic Thought: A Clash of Epistemologies?’, Political Quarterly, 81.1 (2010), pp. 116-122

Carlyle, A. J., ‘Some points in the Political Theory of the Early Middle Ages’, Economic Review, 5, 3 (1895)

Coleman, Janet, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past, (London, 1992)

Dobell, Brian, Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity, (New Yprk, 2009)

Dodd, C. H., (ed.) New England Bible: The New Testament, (Oxford 1970)

Emerick, Ellen L., Geography of Conversion in the Early Middle Ages, (Lexington, 1999)

Fletcher, Richard, The Conversion of Europe, (London, 1997)

Gaudet, J., and N. R. Taranne (eds.), Gregorii, Episcopi Turonensis, Historiae ecclesiasticae Francorum libri decem, (Paris, 1836),

Goffart, Walter A., The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D.550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon, (Princeton, 2005)

Hodgson, Peter C. (ed. and trans.), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume II: Determinate Religion, (London, 1996)

Hoelzl, Michael and Graham Ward (eds.), ‘The Division of Christ’s Political Body’, in Religion and Political Thought, (London, 2006)

Heinzelmann, Martin, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century (trans. by Christopher Carroll) (Cambridge, 2001)

Murray, Alexander Callander, (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, (London, 1998)

McKitterick, Rosamond, ‘The Pleasures of the Past: History and Identity in the Early Middle Ages’, Early Medieval Europe, 22.4, (2014), pp. 388

Papaconstantinou, Arietta, (ed.), Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam and Beyond, (Farnham, 2015)

Redgate, A. E., Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 800-1066, (Oxford, 2014)

Szpiech, Ryan, Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Philadelphia, 2013)

Shockro, Sally, Reading Bede as Bede would Read, (Boston, 2008),

Shanzer, Danuta, ‘Dating the baptism of Clovis: the bishop of Vienne vs the bishop of Tours’, Early Medieval Europe, 7.1, (1998), pp. 29-57

Sellar, A. M., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England: A Revised Translation, (London, 1907)

Valente, Sylvie, ‘Chlodueci Aduentus: foi et politique en Gaule’, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Ottawa, 2012)

Winroth, Anders, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Viking, Merchants and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe, (London, 2012)

Weinrich, William C., ‘Evangelism in the Early Church’, Concordia Theological Quarterly, 45.1-2 (1981), pp. 61-75