Love, Separation and Male Friendship: Words and Actions in Saint Anselm’s Letters to his Friends

Abstract

The twelfth century was the century of love. The letters of Abelard and Heloise, the romances of Chretien de Troyes, Aelred of Rievaulx’s treatises on spiritual love and friendship remain the most visible highlights of what was a new, all-pervasive literature of love: romantic heroes were guided by the powerful affections it inspired, while human feelings and divine love took their place in the theology of sin and redemption. Saint Bernard’s sermons on the Song of Songs stand at the centre of a tradition which elevated erotic verse to the level of sublime divine allegory. Love was not merely a literary fashion, it reflected a new vision of the world in which human experience was given a central role. God himself, in the reflections of thinkers like Saint Anselm, was converted from a stern and arbitrary judge into a loving father.1