"He is Young, Honest, Educated, Welcome Him": For an Overall Analysis of the Twelfth-Century Letters of Recommendation

The letter-collections of high ranking twelfth-century religious men in Western Europe contain multiple examples of letters aimed at asking the addressee to welcome a certain person in their entourage or to provide for his or her needs. The first part of the article analyses the typical structures of such "letters of recommendations", pointing out recurrent traits and rhetorical strategies of this subgenre of twelfth-century Latin letter-writing. The second part of the article addresses the possibility to undertake comparative analyses of letter of recommendations, pointing out that a comparison based on the typology of beneficiary seems to be the most promising. A selected number of examples shows that letters of recommendation were, for the twelfth-century religious elite, a flexible and versatile means through which networks of relationships were built, strengthened and kept alive over time.