Metanoia and metamorphosis : transformations of saint Jehan Paulus (13th c.)

The 13th century life of a legendary saint Jehan Paulus abounds in changes, all submitted to the logics of the conversion, understood in the sense which saint Bernard of Clairvaux exposes in his sermon Ad clericos de conversione: a dynamic process of metanoia, the change of the heart. But the repentant hero undergoes also bodily metamorphoses which transform him into a hairy anchorite, a mythical figure of a wild man, or a Holy Fool. The story thus combines the marvelous elements from various traditions, unifying them in the deeply Christian perspective.