Entre praxis, évangélisme et conscience de Chrétienté. La conversion des musulmans au Moyen Âge central (XIe-XIIIe siècles)

Abstract

This article studies the subject of the conversion of Muslims to Christianity in the High Middle Ages (the 11th to the 13th centuries), in the light of the historiography of the past twenty-five years. Much importance is given to the notion of «discourse», carefully separating the ideology of conversion –ever more central in this period of reinforcement of the universal ideal of «Christendom»– and the reality of economic and social relations in practice. Within this scheme it seems exaggerated to oppose war and conversion so radically. It is also suggested that the conversion of Muslims cannot be studied without taking into account the ideal of the conversion of the Christian within the very same Church, an ideal that is affirmed in the same era. Finally, neither can one forget the importance in every type of conversion of the paradigm of Eucharistic conversion, which is useful in order to understand the conversion of objects as well as that of persons. Medieval Christianity is a Christianity of conversio.