Alfonso de Madrigal, el Tostado, on the Politics of Friendship

Abstract

This article focuses on the related notions of friendship and communication as they are developed in a political framework in two works, the Brevyloquyo de amor e amiçiçia (ca. 1437) and De optima politia (1436), by the fifteenth-century Castilian scholar Alfonso de Madrigal, el Tostado. Through a reflection on the possibility of friendship and communication with the divine, Madrigal puts forward a model of civil friendship based on the composite and permeable natures of both human interiority and human social structures such as the city.