conversus

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin conversus.

Noun

conversus (plural conversi)

1. (chiefly historical) A lay brother.
   • 1856, Edward L. Cutts, “The Monks of the Middle Ages”, in The Art-Journal, volume 2, pages 342–3:

     There were again the Novices, who were not all necessarily young, for a conversus passed through a noviciate; and even a monk of another order, or of another house of their own order, and even a monk from a cell of their own house, was reckoned among the novices.

   • 1874, Edmund Sharpe, The Architecture of the Cistercians, volume 2, page 9:

     The Conversi were, in fact, the servants of the Monks; or, as the chronicler more mildly phrases it, the Monks were the head and the Conversi were the arms of the conventual body.

   • 1995, Jennifer Carpenter, “Juette of Huy, Recluse and Mother […]”, in Jennifer Carpenter, Sally-Beth MacLean, editors, Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, →ISBN, page 74:

     A story in the early thirteenth-century vita of Arnulf (d. 1228), a conversus who was Abundus’s confrere at Villers, offers us some insight into the kind of relationship Juette and Abundus may have had: […]

Latin

Etymology

Perfect passive participle of convertō.

Participle

conversus (feminine conversa, neuter conversum); first/second-declension participle

1. inverted
2. turned over
3. recoiled
4. rotated
5. reversed
6. converted

Declension

First/second-declension adjective.

Number	Singular				Plural
Case / Gender	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter		Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	conversus	conversa	conversum		conversī	conversae	conversa
Genitive	conversī	conversae	conversī		conversōrum	conversārum	conversōrum
Dative	conversō		conversō		conversīs
Accusative	conversum	conversam	conversum		conversōs	conversās	conversa
Ablative	conversō	conversā	conversō		conversīs
Vocative	converse	conversa	conversum		conversī	conversae	conversa

References

• “conversus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• conversus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • (ambiguous) what follows has been translated into Latin from Plato's Phaedo: ex Platonis Phaedone haec in latinum conversa sunt
    
  • (ambiguous) the work when translated; translation (concrete): liber (scriptoris) conversus, translatus