Pliny the Younger speaks ofconversioas a radical alteration of point of view or
opinion,^15 while both Cicero and Quintilian employ the term in the formal
language of rhetoric, namely as the transition from one species of composition
to another, or the rounding out of a period.^16
Turning our attention now in true Erasmian fashion from the ancient
sources to the sacred fountain of the Scriptures, Christ’sfirst speech on
coming out of the wilderness as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew echoes
the admonitory cry of John the Baptist:‘Μετανοεῖτε,ἤγγικενγὰρἡβασιλεία
τῶνοὐρανῶν’—‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’as Tyndale, and
subsequently the King James Version, translate.^17 Andfinally, looking briefly
to the early church fathers, Augustine employs the termconversiotheologic-
ally when he describes (in profoundly Platonic fashion) the fundamental
alteration in the orientation of love (amor) away from thefleeting goods of
the earthly city where the will is constrained by its lust of domination (libido
dominandi) and love of self (amor sui), towards the permanence of the
heavenly city—a republic founded upon justice where the converted rational
soulfinds in the love of God (amor Dei) an object adequate to the fulfilment
(fruitio) of its nature in whose image and likeness it is made.^18 Augustine’s
dialectical depiction in Book 19 of theCity of Godof the soul’s erotic ascent
through a hierarchy of‘circles’towards its ultimate fulfilment of happiness of
the heavenly Jerusalem is an inspired blending of Aristotle’s eudaimonism as
formulated in theNicomachean Ethics^19 with the doctrine oferosas portrayed
by the seeress Diotima in Plato’s dialogueSymposium.^20
In the heady, combative atmosphere of late scholastic and humanist schol-
arship in Tudor England, all of these classical, scriptural, and patristic senses
ofmetanoiaandconversiowere commonplace. The epistemological signifi-
cance Erasmus attaches to the concept of conversion in hisEnchiridionwill
(I hope) supply us with a constructive instrument in the task of interpreting that
somewhat elusive sixteenth-century debate concerning the nature and mean-
ing of the sacraments, and most particularly the signification of Christ’s
presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist. What, then, is the relevance of
Erasmus’s account of the conversion of the faculty of understanding in the
practice of thephilosophia Christito this other important sense of‘conversion’
in the sacrament where an apprehension of divine presence itself is the key
concern? In order to address this question let us turn to consider the case of
for the most part from the definitions of‘metanoia’in H. G. Liddell and R. Scott (eds),A Greek–
English Lexicon, new edition rev. H. Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) and of‘conversio’
inA Latin Dictionary, ed. C. T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
(^15) Pliny the Younger,Epistulae9.13.18:‘tanta conversio consecuta est’.
(^16) Quintilian,Institutiones oratoriae, 10.5.4; Cicero,De oratore3.54.207. (^17) Matt. 4:17.
(^18) Augustine,De civitate Dei14.28. See also 7.33 and 8.24:‘conversio ad verum Deum
sanctumque’.
(^19) See especially Aristotle,Eth. Nic. I.1. (^20) Plato,Symp., Steph. 204d–209e.
100 Torrance Kirby