Maria natare, montes transire: l’amore nei modelli epistolari latini del XII secolo

This paper focuses on the phenomenology of love in twelfth-century letter construction of a lexicon of love, and the initial development of the distinction between love letters and letters of friendship and of family ties. The love letters affect several areas: real love, physically more and more explicit, marriage, and literary (or courtly) love, akin to romance themes. On the other hand, the models convey the ecclesiastical law on sexual norms, showing the daily needs, the aspirations, and the conventions of a changing society, in all its rich complexity.