FAMILIARITY with classical and early Christian treatises on friendship is essential to any study of Christian spiritual guidance. We turn to three classical sources on friendship, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero; and four Christian authors, Ambrose, Cassian, Gregory the Great, and Aelred of Rievaulx. 

THE fundamental discussion of friendship, on which all other classical treatises depend, is found in Books 8-9 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We will look only at Book 8, and also briefly at a short text on friendship from Plato’s dialogue Lysis.

THE western (Latin-speaking) world generally received Aristotle’s insights through their restatement and adaptation by Cicero in his treatise On Friendship, (Laelius de Amicitia). This book was widely-read in the Christian West and constantly used (as we shall see) as a source-text on friendship by patristic and medieval authors.

AMBROSE of Milan offers a very condensed summary and Christian adaptation of Cicero in his De Officiis; while John Cassian in his Sixteenth Conference particular emphasizes the dangers to friendship posed by unrestrained or inappropriately-expressed anger.

THE medieval world particularly treasured Gregory the Great’s definition of a friend as custos animæ, the “guardian of one’s soul.” He offers a vivid depiction of this role in the latter part of the Life of Benedict, recounted in Book 4 of his Dialogues.

THE most enduring medieval treatises on friendship are Aelred of Rievaulx’ The Mirror of Charity and On Spiritual Friendship, from which we shall study brief selections.

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