Baptism, Conversion, and Selfhood in the Old English Andreas

The passions and baptisms of the Old English Andreas signal the poem’s numerous conversions. Although Andreas clearly narrates the conversion of others (by the poem’s end, Andrew has converted and baptized the pagan cannibals of Mermedonia), it simultaneously narrates a conversion of the self: Andrew is depicted as a saint in doubt, whose ‘education’ over the course of the poem models for the generic Christian audience the need for perpetual reform of the self. Even the already baptized Christian, even the saint, must be continually ‘turning’ himself toward God, a process that is repeatedly performed in the poem’s cyclical deaths and resurrections. As Andrew’s mission implies, however, the conversion of the Christian self is not an exclusively interior process, but instead must manifest itself in action that serves the spiritual benefit of other selves and of the community to which each individual belongs.