Department of History
The University of Chicago
This course considers
conversion as a governing metaphor for thinking about the intellectual,
cultural, and social transformation of Europe from late antiquity through the
Enlightenment. It begins from
Augustine’s understanding that to convert is to transform more than just one’s
religious belief; rather, it is to accomplish a “making over” of one’s very
social and psychological reality.
What from this perspective did it mean for Europeans to
convert—from paganism, from Judaism, from Catholicism, from
Protestantism, from Christianity itself?
Readings will be taken from Augustine, the Old Saxon Heliand, Herman Judah, Bernard of
Clairvaux, Marguerite Porete,
Martin Luther, Bartolomé de Las Casas,
and David Hume. Emphasis throughout
will be on the tension between conversion as a metaphor of making (on the part
of the convert) and catechism as a problem of making meaning (on the part of
the missionary), and on the problem of belief as itself a criterion of
conversion.
Books
Available for Purchase from the Seminary Co-op Bookstore
Augustine,
Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961) ISBN 014044114X [PA6220.A55C81
P65]
Karl
F. Morrison, Conversion and Text: The
Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992) ISBN 0813913934 [BR110.M670
1992]
Bernard
of Clairvaux, Sermons
on Conversion, trans. Marie-Bernard Saďd
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981) ISBN 0879079258 [BX1756.B4451]
Marguerite
Porete, The
Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen Babinsky
(New York: Paulist Press, 1993) ISBN 0809134276 [BV5091.C7P67130
1993]
Martin
Luther, The Large Catechism, trans.
Robert H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959) ISBN 0800608852
Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of
the Indians, trans. and ed. Stafford Poole (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1992) ISBN 0875805566
[F1411.C4250 1992]
David
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion and The Natural History of
Religion, ed. Richard H. Popkin, 2nd ed.
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998) ISBN 0-87220-40202 [different edition on reserve
B1493.D520 1993]
Wayne
Proudfoot, Religious
Experience (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) ISBN
0520061284 [BL53.P8190 1985]
Richard
Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion from
Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt, 1997; Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) ISBN 0520218590 [BR200.F57 1998]
Course
Requirements
1. Reading and participation in class discussions, including a
number of short oral presentations to be assigned over the course of the
quarter [20%].
2. Written comments on three
of the primary texts assigned for the quarter. The choice of texts is up to you, but should be distributed
evenly over the course of the quarter if at all possible. These comments should be approximately
3-4 pages each and are due on the Chalk site (chalk.uchicago.edu) by 10am on
the day that we meet to discuss the texts. Everyone should read the comments posted for the day and
prepare responses to bring to class.
I will ask you on the first day of class to commit to at least one of
these comments so as to ensure that each week we will have at least one to read
[35%].
3. Final paper (10-12 pages) on one of the primary texts that we will have read for the quarter,
due by 5pm Thursday, December 12 [45%].
Reading
and Discussion Assignments
October 3 What is religious belief?
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, bk. 11 (trans. Jack Lindsay [Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1960], pp. 235-55; trans. on-line by Adlington
[1566] at English server: http://eserver.org/books/apuleius/bookes/eleven.html)
[PA6209.M3L7 1962]
Tatian, Address to the Greeks (trans. in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 [New York: Christian Literature Co.,
1890], pp. 65-82; on-line at Christian Classics Ethereal Library [CCEL]: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-37.htm#P1114_299739)
[BR60.R7]
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. xi-xix, 1-40
October 10 What is conversion?
Augustine,
Confessions, bks. 8-10, pp. 157-252
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. 41-74
Morrison,
Conversion and Text, pp. 1-38
Fletcher,
Barbarian Conversion, pp. 1-33,
193-284
Peter
Cramer, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200-c.1150 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), pp. 179-220 [BV803.C730 1993]
Celia Chazelle,
The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era:
Theology and Art of Christ's Passion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), pp. 165-208
[BT431.3.C48 2001]
Herman-Judah,
Short Account of his own Conversion,
trans. Morrison, Conversion and Text,
pp. 76-113
Morrison,
Conversion and Text, pp. 39-75
Fletcher,
Barbarian Conversion, pp. 285-326
Bernard
of Clairvaux, Lenten
Sermons on the Psalm “He who dwells,” pp. 113-261
Karl
F. Morrison, Understanding Conversion
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), pp. 28-65 [BR110. M68 1992]
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. 75-118
Marguerite
Porete, The
Mirror of Simple Souls, pp. 65-222
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. 119-54
Martin
Luther, The Large Catechism (also
on-line at CCEL: http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/large_catechism/large_catechism.html)
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. 155-89
Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, pp. 3-97, 175-99, 221-61, 304-12
Sabine
MacCormack, Religion
in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 205-48 [F3429.3.R3M28 1991]
November 28 Thanksgiving Holiday
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, pp. 1-89
Proudfoot, Religious Experience, pp. 190-236
J.
Samuel Preus, Explaining
Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 84-103 [BL41.P690 1987]