Lucian of Samosata, Peregrinus Proteus, and the Fiction of Christian Conversion

The nature of religious conversion (and apostasy) is a matter of ongoing historical and theoretical interest. This study takes Lucian of Samosata’s Passing of Peregrinus as an illustrative test case for this phenomenon in the second century. Its eponymous protagonist converts to Christianity temporarily, and after being quickly elevated as an authority and champion, he soon defects to become a Cynic and celebrated sage, then ultimately ends his life in self-immolation. These self-alterations demonstrate, in Lucian’s account, that Peregrinus was a lifelong performer, shape-shifter, and charlatan, able to exploit the simple-minded for his own wealth and fame. Lucian’s satirical narrative deflates its subject’s status as a philosophical hero and ridicules the Christian community for their gullibility in accepting him as one of their own. More than this, he provokes a reappraisal of conversion itself: religious identity, as evident throughout the life of Peregrinus, is a construct of rhetoric and performance and thus ultimately a fiction.