The friend

A. Bray

In the chapel of Christ's College, Cambridge, historian Alan Bray made an astonishing discovery: a tomb shared by two men, John Finch and Thomas Baines. The monument featured eloquent imagery dedicated to their friendship-portraits of the two friends linked by a knotted cloth. And Bray would soon learn that Finch commonly described his friendship with Baines as a connubium or marriage. There was a time, as made clear by this monument, when the English church not only revered such relationships between men, but also blessed them. Taking this remarkable idea as its cue, The friend explores the long relationship between friendship and the traditional family of the church in England. Extending from the year 1000 up to the nineteenth century, and using examples from burial brasses to classic works of philosophy, Bray shows that public uses of private affection were common in premodern times. He further debunks the readings of friendship by historians who project homoerotic desires onto their subjects when none existed, and perhaps most notably, demonstrates how the ethics of friendship have evolved from traditional emphases on loyalty to the more private and sexualized idea of friendship that emerged during the modern era.