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The current historiography of the medieval self, still dependent on nineteenth-century definitions, finds a sense of self emerging, at best, during the long twelfth century that began c. 1050. This article surveys and critiques the purveyors of this view. It then turns to one sense of self – an “emotional self” – that certainly existed in the early Middle Ages. The moments in which early medieval people saw themselves (or imagined others) converting to a model were self-revelatory experiences in which people were exceptionally aware of themselves as feeling beings.