Converse Family History

English: nickname from Old French convers literally ‘converted’ used to denote someone converted from secular to religious life in adult age or earlier a lay member of a convent. The Cistercian and Augustinian conversi were men living according to a rule less strict than that of the monks or canons engaged chiefly in manual work with their own living quarters and their own part of the church.

They were numerous among the Cistercians in the 12th and 13th centuries, often outnumbering the monks and were by rule illiterate. These lay brothers were employed on the monastic manors and granges where they were liable to fall into the sin of owning private property.

They acquired a reputation for violence and misbehaviour (at Neath in 1269, they locked the abbot in his bedroom and stole his horses) and they were gradually replaced by more manageable paid servants.