Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds

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Friendship is presented before our eyes as a kind of universal bond, as the ideal way to bond with the rest of human beings. Its deployment over time, the loyalty or fidelity with which it solidifies friendly relations seem a topic more proper to ethics than to politics, although decades ago Jacques Derrida revealed it to us as a political issue. However, this work of unveiling that requires us to fully understand the nature of this bond was not such for don Juan Manuel. In his works, friendship occupies a specific function within the discourse on nobility. In fact, the friendship resulted from a pact, as requested by the Fuero de Castiella, between noblemen in order to pacify their relations and to proceed with their political struggles. In this article we propose to analyze the characteristics of this link in the Manueline texts or, in other words, to understand what is friendship for Don Juan Manuel and how it is articulated within the representation of his sector.