Friendship

<p>This chapter examines how friendship was defined, conceptualised, and experienced by both individuals and communities according to parameters influenced by religious, ethnic, cultural, and social belonging, as well as by pragmatism and emotional connections. Special focus will be placed on the conceptual and semantic associations and interplay between love and friendship, which often coincided. Such views were influenced by ideas and models of behaviour gathered from both Classical and Roman philosophy, along with the Arabic tradition and translations, which were adapted to comply with a dominant Western European Christian scenario. Some of the key questions that this chapter will address are the following. </p>\n<p>This chapter also examines the role played by gender in categorizing relationships defined as friendship when referring to connections among and between men, women, men and women. They included a wide range of interactions: from companionship, patronage and tutorship to sensual love and sexual exchanges. In most cases, such friendships were exposed to threats similar to those associated with passionate love, as they depended on human affect and passions, as much as they were expected to be built upon shared moral virtues or to be shaped by rational judgment aimed at achieving pragmatic goals. </p>\n<p>The study of friendship in the pre-modern period is therefore particularly important to understand how both its ideas and practices contributed to shape individual and collective ‘identities’ and how different people conceived and experienced interpersonal exchanges, some of which were culturally recognized and accepted as emotionally charged.</p>