A Codex of Conversion: Centering the Role of Religious and Spiritual Change in BNF Français 375 via Robert d’Orbigny and Gautier de Coincy

This article examines the representation of religious and spiritual conversion in BnF Français 375 through the focal points of Robert d’Orbigny’s Conte de Floire et Blanchefleur and Gautier de Coincy’s Comment Theophilus vint a penitence. These Old French texts are respectively shaped by the interfaith conversion of a pagan-Muslim prince, Floire, to Christianity, and the intrafaith deconversion and reconversion of the cleric Theophilus. It is argued that conversion operates at a sustained thematic and narrative level in these works through the dynamics of the individual versus the group, as well as Floire’s and Theophilus’s allegorical journeys. The multiplicity of these conceptualizations demonstrates that religious and spiritual change was often portrayed as an ongoing process in medieval literature, rather than only occurring in temporally fixed moments, as is commonly assumed. This paper also foregrounds the importance of Robert’s and Gautier’s shared codicological setting, analyzing the unique dialogue found in BnF Français 375 between discrete textual depictions of conversion and broader interfaith and intrafaith transitions across the manuscript’s Latin and vernacular works. As a result, conversion is shown to be a productive heuristic category for understanding the organization of multi-text and multi-genre medieval manuscripts.