Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

2: Alterity and Auctoritas: Reason and the Twelfth-Century Expansion of Authority

59 ch a p t er 2 Alterity and Auctoritas Reason and the Twelfth-Century Expansion of Authority The question of the representation of difference is therefore always also a problem of authority. —hom i bh a bh a , The Location of Culture In the beginning of his Little Work on His Conversion, written sometime in the middle decades of the twelfth century, Judah/Herman, the “former Jew” (quondam iudaeus), as he is called, observes the following in a letter to a certain Henry that precedes his conversion story: “I was not converted with that ease with which we often see many unbelievers . . . converted to the Catholic faith by a swift and unanticipated change [repentina et inopinata mutatione]. . . . [B]y contrast, my conversion was gained in the face of powerful waves of temptations . . . and, finally, with the greatest toil. For these reasons, it ought to be as delightful [delectabilis] for pious ears to hear, as it is amazing [mirabilis] in light of the difficulty with which it came to pass.”1 “Tanto delectabilis . . . quanto mirabilis,” “as delightful as it is amazing.” So amazing, in fact, that some critics argue that Judah/Herman’s is not a real account of a real person, sparking the debate over facticity to which I alluded in the introduction.2 More fruitful than the issue of the real Judah/Herman ’s existence and experience—a question now handily reframed by Jean-Claude Schmitt—is the question of how to read Judah/Herman as a character, a protagonist in a gripping narrative. One can begin by asking why Judah/Herman the protagonist—already a character in the story even before the action begins—claims that his text will be “more pleasurable” because his conversion was “more difficult” than most. Following the logic of the parables of the prodigal son or the lost sheep, by which “there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to chapter 2 60 repent” (Luke 15:7), the further the convert strays from the truth, the more delightful will be his final reform and conversion. What meaning did this hold for Judah/Herman and his readers? The standard for the drama of the arduous conversion was, as we have seen, set by Augustine. Given that Judah/Herman, after his conversion , writes, “[I] changed my life with my way of dress [regulam vitam cum habitu mutavi], according to the rule of St. Augustine,” his model is obvious, pointing directly back to Augustine’s characterization of the fruits of conversion gained through “great toil.”3 In his multilayered meditation on conversion in book 8 of the Confessions, considered in the previous chapter, Augustine pays particular attention to the conversion of the orator Marius Victorinus and considers how a longer and more difficult conversion leads in the end to a greater joy. He uses the conversion of Victorinus to reflect on the nature of this law of mutual inversion, explaining that “joy is always greater after greater affliction [maius gaudium molestia maiore praeceditur].”4 Such a phenomenon can be seen, he says, in the case of ship passengers despairing of imminent death and then miraculously surviving a shipwreck or a mortally ill man unexpectedly getting well. The same surprise of joy is a dramatic effect of a protracted and difficult conversion. “For, the enemy [the devil] is more overcome in [losing] him of whom he had more hold and through whom he held many [others].”5 Other Christians also have greater cause to rejoice at the conversion of a great man because, like the well-known Victorinus, such a figure becomes an “auctorita[s] ad salutem,” a “model for salvation” for other Christians to imitate. To be sure, after Augustine heard of the orator’s conversion, he “was on fire to do as he did.”6 By calling Victorinus an auctoritas, Augustine epitomizes his unified vision in which the individual soul becomes a staging ground for the drama of salvation history writ large. His characterization of Victorinus as an auctoritas also signals an important aspect of his understanding of conversion that will eventually take the center of that dramatic stage: the connection between conversion narratives and authority. This is evident in his characterization of the Jews in a letter to Bishop Paulinus of Nola in 414 as a testimonium scripturarum, “a testimony of the Scriptures,” and a witness of the old Mosaic law given by God “so that the name of...