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A Change of Mind in Some Scholars of the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Gillian R. Evans
Gillian R. Evans*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Extract

Guibert of Nogent gives a number of examples of a change for the better (bonae mutationis exempla) in the lives of his contemporaries. He evidently considered conversion to be a subject of strong topical appeal to his readers, as well as a matter of importance in itself, and he gives as many examples as he can. He has a double sense of the word conversio in mind. He often refers to the decision to enter a monastery which was the common meaning of the term in his day, but he also understands by it something closer to the larger sense of‘conversion’. Evrard of Breteuil, he says, turned from his pride to examine the wretched state of his soul, and began to look about him for a way of life in which he might live more worthily. He followed the example of Theobald of Champagne, who came to dislike the profession of arms: inter ipsa rudimenta militiae arma despiciens, and made himself self-supporting as a charcoal-burner. One Simon, count of Valois, ‘enriched the religious life of our day by the outstanding example of an unexpected conversion’: mirabili nostri temporis religionem inopinae mutationis claritate ditavit. Such a conversion was often—as Guibert relates it—sudden and irreversible in the change of direction it brought about. For St Bruno, his conversionis initia was something to which he, and others, could later look back with certainty as the moment when he began to live a different kind of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 15: Religious Motivation Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian , 1978 , pp. 27 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978

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References

1 Guibert of Nogent, De Vita Sua, ed Bourgin, G. (Paris 1907) p 22 Google Scholar.

2 Ibid p 25.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid p 28.

5 Ibid p 30.

6 Ibid p 18.

7 Nock, [A. D.], [Conversion] (Oxford 1933)Google Scholar.

8 Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatie between a Christian and a jew is a case in point. See the edition of B. Blumenkranz (Antwerp 1956), and compare Crispin, Gilbert, Disputatio Christiani cum Gentile de Fide Christi, ed Webb, C. C. J., Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (London 1954) pp 55–78 Google Scholar, and Abelard, Peter, Dialogus inter Philosophant, Judaeum et Christianum, ed Thomas, R. (Stuttgart 1966)Google Scholar.

9 PL zio (1855) cols 305-430, see, too, d’Alverny, [M. T.], [Textes inédits d’Alain de Lille] (Paris 1965) pp 156-62Google Scholar.

10 Anselmi Opera [Omnia, ed Schmitt, F. S.], 6 vols (Edinburgh/Rome 1938-68) 2, p 178 Google Scholar, line 3, p 224, line 12.

11 Nock, pp 7-8, see James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience (London 1907) pp 189, 209Google Scholar.

12 Abelard, Peter, Commentarla in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed Buytaert, M. (Turnholt 1969) CC, Cont Med 11, p 68 Google Scholar, lines 725-8.

13 Anselmi Opera, 1, p 93, lines 6-7.

14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Tlieologica, I, Question 2, Article I.

15 PL 117(1881) col 811.

16 Commentaries on Boethius of the School of Thierry of Chartres, ed Hiring, N. M. (Toronto 1971) P 517 Google Scholar line 89.

17 Haring, N. M., ‘Simon of Tournai’s Commentary on the so-called Athanasian Creed’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age, 43 (Paris 1976) pp 152-3Google Scholar, and see Augustine, De Praedestinatione, bk 2, cap 5, PL 44 (1865) col 963.

18 Anselmi Opera, i, p 103, lines 20-1.

19 Augustine, Confessions, bk 8, cap 8.

20 Ibid p 93, lines 15-16.

21 Anselmi Opera, 1, p 93, line 20.

22 Ibid p 97, lines 4-10.

23 PL 146(1884) col 29.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid col 51.

26 Eadmer, Life of St Anselm, ed Southern, R. W. (London 1962) pp 4–5 Google Scholar.

27 Ibid p 5.

28 De Vita Sua 13.

29 Ibid p 60.

30 Ibid.

31 On Abelard’s times as a monk, see his own Historia Calamitatum, ed Monfrin, J. (Paris 1967)Google Scholar and Sikes, J., Peter Abailard (Cambridge 1932)Google Scholar; on Alan’s life, see d’Alverny pp 11-29.

32 De Vita Sua p 66.

33 Ibid.

34 PL 170 (1854) cols 805-6.

35 Ibid col 807.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid col 808.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid col 811.

41 Ibid cols 820-1.