Do you know the Monkees' song "I'm a Believer"? (Or, let's face it, the Shrek cover version.) Because:

Welcome to the world of pre-modern Christian Latin, where conversio does not mean what you think it means.

In mainstream western culture today, a "religion" is a set of beliefs that someone assents to (or not). "Conversion" means switching from one set of beliefs to another. In Confessiones, yes, Augustine definitely describes how Ambrose's preaching and teaching opened his eyes to the non-worthlessness of Christianity, and eventually to its worth. We might even say he became a Christian "believer."

But that's not what the Monkees or Smashmouth meant when they sang:

Love was out to get me

That's the way it seemed

Disappointment haunted all of my dreams

But then I saw her face

Now I'm a believer

They're not singing about accepting a list of commandments or memorizing a catechism. You can't even really call it emotional, either, I don't think. The singer "knew" what love was and that it existed and longed for it &c &c &c, bult felt excluded. But now they know. More importantly, now they know they are included in this concept of "love."

Through late antiquity into the Middle Ages, that's what "conversion" means. It's an intensification of faith, not the adoption of a new one. Scholars tend to like referring to the basic meaning of "turning towards," but I prefer the paradoxical "turning upwards and sinking down into."

Medieval Christian mystics, in particular, like to speak of their conversions. Basically all of them grew up Christian. But they'll also talk of their childhoods as not Christian, in a sense, because they didn't have the same blending or alignment with God and God's will that they do when they're writing.

So, for example, my girl Mechthild of Magdeburg, a 13th century German visionary and author:

All the days of my life before I began this book and before a single word of it had come into my soul, I was one of the most naive persons ever to be in religious life. I knew nothing about the devil's malice; I was unaware of the fragility of the world...

I, unworthy sinner, was greeted by the Holy Spirit in my twelfth year, while I was alone, with such an outpouring that I could never, ever after that endure letting myself be led into a clear sin.

This precious greeting occurred every day and lovingly spoiled me for all worldly sweetness, and it is still increasing day by day.

Mechthild states outright that she had been Christian, possibly even in some kind of organized religious community (we don't know much about her)--but she doesn't conceive of herself as really that way. Not in comparison to how she perceives her place while she's writing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Confessiones became exceptionally popular among medieval monks and nuns, who often either sought or actually experienced a similar "turning upwards/sinking down into." (...And there were plenty of them who didn't care, of course.)

And that's why Augustine spends about a paragraph in Confessiones talking about Ambrose's preaching, and scatters little bits about his developing beliefs (as we would say today). But his conversion scene, where he hears the child's voice saying "Tolle lege, tolle lege" ("Take it up and read"), is an eloquent, effusive scene that spills on for pages.

I like using "I'm a Believer" here, because thinking of conversion that way helps avoid our modern-day sharp divides between belief and faith, mind and spirit, religion and spirituality. (Religio in premodern Christian Latin also does not mean what you think it means, hehe.) It's not a distinction between "knowing" and "feeling," but about being absorbed into and by a power overwhelmingly greater than you.

So to Augustine, tolle lege is the conversion that matters.

Or at least, that's how he wants to teach his readers, because Confessions is first and foremost a work of theology, not autobiography.

...Another word which, of course, would not mean the same thing to a premodern Christian (if the word had even existed) that it does to us today.