These passages concern friendship and its limits. Aristotle and Cicero define it, and agree that it is natural and that it cannot exist without virtue; Aesop’s fable shows a false friend found out by danger. Augustine and Bede write of particular friends parted by death: Augustine grieves for his, and Bede tells of two who asked to die together and did. St John and Thomas à Kempis carry the word to Christ: Jesus calls his disciples friends, and Kempis asks that he be loved above all other friends.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
One traveller climbs a tree and leaves the other to the bear; the moral is that misfortune tests friends.
TWO MEN were traveling together, when a Bear suddenly met them on their path. One of them climbed up quickly into a tree and concealed himself in the branches. The other, seeing that he must be attacked, fell flat on the ground, and when the Bear came up and felt him with his snout, and smelt him all over, he held his breath, and feigned the appearance of death as much as he could. … Part 1 →Aristotle begins his account of friendship: necessary for life, natural, and the bond of communities.
… Next would seem properly to follow a dissertation on Friendship: because, in the first place, it is either itself a virtue or connected with virtue; and next it is a thing most necessary for life, since no one would choose to live without friends though he should have all the other good things in the world: and, in fact, men who are rich or possessed of authority and influence are thought to have special need of … Book 8 →Laelius defines friendship as complete accord on things human and divine, with goodwill and affection.
Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection. And with the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better than this has been given to man by the immortal gods. There are people who give the palm to riches or to good health, or to power and office, many even to sensual pleasures. This last is the ideal of brute beasts; … Part 1 →Jesus says no love is greater than laying down life for friends, and calls his disciples friends.
Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15 →Augustine describes his grief at a friend’s death, feeling his own life halved.
… In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my friend, but too dear to me, from a community of pursuits, of mine own age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both school-fellows and play-fellows. But he was not yet my friend as afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is; … Book 4 →Cuthbert and the hermit Herebert, long joined in spiritual friendship, part and die on the same day.
… There was a certain priest, called Herebert, a man of holy life, who had long been united with the man of God, Cuthbert, in the bonds of spiritual friendship. This man leading a solitary life in the island of that great lake from which the river Derwent flows at its beginning, was wont to visit him every year, and to receive from him the teaching of everlasting salvation. … Book 4 →Thomas à Kempis urges that Jesus be loved as a friend above all other friends.
… Without a friend thou canst not live long, and if Jesus be not thy friend above all thou shalt be very sad and desolate. Madly therefore doest thou if thou trusteth or findest joy in any other. It is preferable to have the whole world against thee, than Jesus offended with thee. Therefore of all that are dear to thee, let Jesus be specially loved. 4. Let all be loved for Jesus’ sake, but Jesus for His own. … Book 2 →