The Latin west

Abstract

Friendship has always remained a treasured ideal in the Latin West, from the time that Greek thought was first absorbed by Latin writers in the age of the late Roman Republic to the Renaissance, when a renewed interest in classical antiquity asserted itself throughout Western Europe. In truth, classical traditions of friendship never completely disappeared in those centuries that scholars came to identify as “medieval.” Yet there were also profound shifts in the understanding of friendship, provoked not least by the encounter between the elitism of classical culture and the universalizing ambitions of the Christian religion. Above all, we see - at least in the context of formal religious lif..