Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

Within the large body of polemical works written in the Middle Ages by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim authors, especially compelling and powerful are autobiographical conversion narratives written for polemical or apologetic aims. [...]accounts often appear at the opening of polemical works, describe the circumstances of the author's conversion, and attempt to establish his authority by citing his personal experience and his lingual and textual knowledge of the texts of his former religion. The inclusion of Jewish and Muslim texts permits a multi-cultural perspective on the topic, although, as the author asserts, the model of all these conversion stories remains Christian, and the conversions stories of Saul / Paul and especially of Augustine underly "both the imagery and the conceptualization of conversion" in Christian as well as in non-Christian sources.