Cicero and the Boundaries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century

Abstract

Cicero’s De amicitia exerted a powerful influence on Latin Christian thought in the twelfth century. This paper considers core features of Cicero’s idealization of friendship and the way these ideals were transformed within a Christian context, above all in the writing of Augustine, as a prelude to exploring how twelfth-century writers responded to the themes of the De amicitia. Traditionally, friendship was perceived as operating within a purely masculine environment. I consider the way in which Abelard composed his Historia calamitatum as a way of offering consolation to someone in distress, perhaps intending it to be read by Heloise. I also explore the way in which Heloise sought to redefine their relationship by recalling Ciceronian ideals of true friendship, as not seeking any personal advantage, suggesting further evidence for considering the exchange of love letters known as the Epistolae duorum amantium as a record of the early letters of Abelard and Heloise. The teacher in this exchange alludes to the same passage of Cicero’s De amicitia as Abelard includes in the Sic et Non when considering the nature of caritas. His mature thinking about love in the Theologia “Scholarium” draws on both Ciceronian and Augustinian elements. Although the treatise of Aelred of Rievaulx on spiritual friendship has certain broad themes in common with this exchange, it combines Ciceronian and Augustinian themes in very different ways, and cannot be identified as a literary influence on the love letters. Aelred, whose thinking extends builds on that of Bernard of Clairvaux about love, was also responding to a vogue of interest in Cicero’s De amicitia in the twelfth century, produced his own, very different formulation of the ideals of friendship.